Day 1: Departing Chicago for a Refreshing Break from Airports We now understand the appeal of this trip and are excited to share it. While coach class on the Empire Builder was not entirely comfortable for two nights, it was fun to take it slow, rolling across the vast Great Plains into the awe-inducing Rocky Mountains. Mentioning how this inexpensive ticket simply gets you a chair to sleep in for two nights in a row, without showering nonetheless, will kill much of that notion of rail romanticism.īut despite these realizations, we still found crossing the US on the Amtrak Empire Builder to be a good experience overall. For budget travelers like us, taking the Empire Builder across the northern US sounds like tremendous value!īut videos showcasing the low price point of this cross-US train trip fail to point out that budget-friendly pricing is for a coach seat rather than a more comfortable, and much more expensive, sleeper cabin on the Empire Builder. This economical ticket covers two nights of accommodation, a scenic rail journey, and transportation from one side of the US to the other. Those buying Empire Builder tickets in advance can take advantage of the Saver rate, which gets passengers from Chicago to Seattle by rail for a mere $150! (2022 pricing) We regularly see viral videos about this rail journey across the US shared on social media, which play up the romanticism of rail travel and show what appears to be a fantastic value for the price. Over the past several years of roaming around the world, we’ve taken rail journeys across exotic locations such as Ukraine, Bolivia, Thailand, Cuba, Serbia, Zimbabwe, even a tequila train across Mexico, and the DMZ Train to North Korea! Yet we had never crossed our home country by train. We love train travel and are certainly no strangers to lengthy train trips. It had always been a dream journey for us to travel across the country by rail. In our mission to circumnavigate the globe without flights, taking the Amtrak Empire Builder across the US fit perfectly into our travel agenda like a missing puzzle piece. Our Experience: Riding Amtrak Across the US on the Empire Builder
FREIGHT HOPPING TICKEY HOW TO
FREIGHT HOPPING TICKEY UPGRADE
How to Upgrade on Amtrak from Coach to Roomette.Different Seat Options on Amtrak Empire Builder.How to Get the Lowest Priced Amtrak Tickets.
🚂 What It’s Like to Travel Across USA on Amtrak Empire Builder This post recounts our rail trip across the US to give a balanced look at what it’s really like, while further providing an Amtrak Empire Builder review and travel tips for anyone considering this classic rail journey. So we boarded in Chicago to take the entire length of this train trip to judge for ourselves. Many of those passengers remark the Empire Builder line is the most scenic Amtrak train route. We decided to join these slow travelers on what has become Amtrak’s most popular long-distance train route, with nearly a half-million passengers taking the Empire Builder each year (433,373 riders in 2019, source: Amtrak FY 19 Ridership Report). (Map source:, an interactive map that you can use to zoom in and out.)īut there remains a sect of society with a preference to instead pursue this classic rail journey, traveling across America’s most Northern states over the course of three days, rather than the 5-hour flight zipping above the US. This 2,206-mile rail trip across the US can easily be accomplished by flight in one-tenth of the time and for about the same price. Yet now well into the 21st century, it’s a time when the Amtrak Empire Builder is a wildly inefficient way to travel from Chicago to Seattle.
The final call for passengers was one of the many morsels of Americana to enjoy when crossing the US by train on this Empire Builder route that’s been in use for nearly 100 years. For us, that holler from deep in the lungs proved to be a most appropriate welcome as we boarded those shiny silver train cars that had just rolled into Chicago’s ornate Union Station. After stepping onto the Amtrak Empire Builder, we soon found out the crew really does belt out an “all aboard” call as the train is departing.
0 kommentar(er)
