Join Justin Vacula, host of the Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast, as he dives into the world of low-cost travel with Amtrak with special guest Deker.
In this episode, they cover Amtrak Guest Rewards, credit card benefits, loyalty programs, and exciting journeys.
Justin and Deker give a shoutout to Amtrak fan Pari Kim, PurplePrincessPari, on Instagram, who recently appeared on season three of the Netflix show ‘Love on the Spectrum.’
Discover tips on booking, maximizing points, and enjoying a hassle-free travel experience. They also discuss upcoming meetups, the 2025 PointsQuest Conference, and listener questions. Perfect for travel enthusiasts looking to explore the world at low cost!
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction to Low-Cost Travel with Points and Miles
00:32 Meet the Host and Special Guest
00:47 Amtrak Guest Rewards and Meetups
01:38 Deker’s Journey into Points and Miles
02:35 Discovering Amtrak’s Loyalty Program
03:16 Hosting PointsQuest Conference
06:16 Amtrak’s Popularity and Challenges
10:55 Exploring Amtrak’s Scenic Routes
17:10 Amtrak Credit Cards and Benefits
24:12 Creative Spending Strategies
25:05 Listener Question: Earning Guest Rewards Points
26:54 Maximizing Amtrak Points and Deals
29:33 Travel Tips for Long Amtrak Journeys
34:55 Connecting with Amtrak and Social Media
39:19 Upcoming Travel Plans and Credit Card Tips
45:46 Closing Announcements and Future Events
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Rough Transcript:
Theme Song: [00:00:00] Travel at low cost with points and miles. Credit card rewards bring the smiles. Many adventures tells to be told, make and save money, the world will unfold.
Fight the war on happiness. Pick up the gold. Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast breaks the mold.
Justin Vacula: You’re listening to the Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast. I’m your host, Justin Ula. Here to help you travel the world at next to no cost with credit card points, miles, benefits, and loyalty programs. Make money, save money, and take advantage of great deals. Thanks for joining me for today’s episode, Amtrak Guest Rewards with special guest deker.
Visit meetup.com/phillyMilesand points to RSVP for monthly Greater Philadelphia [00:01:00] Travel. Credit Miles and points meetups I host in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. The next meetups are April 12th and May 17th, 2025. Find a link in the show notes. For more content between podcast episodes, follow Hurdy Gurdy Travel podcast on Facebook and x.
Follow Justin Vacula on Instagram. Subscribe to Hurdy Gurdy Travel podcast on YouTube where you can also become a channel member for daily content, including travel videos, podcast clips, community, and bonus videos. Welcome to the show, Decker. Thank you so much for having me, Justin. I really appreciate that.
Great to be here. We are here mainly to talk about Amtrak, but before we do that, how did you get into this space with points, miles, and travel?
Deker: I got involved about five years ago, right at the start of Covid. I was just bored at home, locked down. I. And I knew that because of Covid, I knew travel was gonna be difficult for a [00:02:00] long time because of what was going on, but I just wanted to learn more about credit cards and rewards just in general.
So I said, let me just read and I’ve got time at home now. Let me just dig into this. The more I read, the more I kept getting pulled further, further down the rabbit hole, and I learned early on that. It never stops. There’s always something new going on. There’s always something new to learn about. So for me, it’s just been a journey and it just, it’s never ending.
Justin Vacula: Yes, we’re definitely on the same track with this.
Deker: Absolutely.
Justin Vacula: And that leads to Amtrak as you were a fan of Amtrak and now you’ve found that the miles and points space, and particularly the Amtrak loyalty program and credit card. Has saved you tons of money on travel.
Deker: That’s right. So I’ve always been a big Amtrak guy.
I’ve loved taking the train for many years now, but when I saw that they had this credit card and that you could actually earn miles on it, that [00:03:00] really made a huge difference for me. ’cause then I started seeing where I could take advantage of better rooms, sleeper cars, Ella, so high speed rail, basically.
All of that was possible because of the credit card and earning these miles and points to go with it.
Justin Vacula: It’s full steam ahead and that led you years later to host the Points Quest Conference in New York City with the group. Point me to New York. Thanks for inviting me as a speaker and I thought the event was fantastic.
Deker: Yeah, I’m really pleased at how it turned out. Point me to New York was a group that I established with two co-organizers. Shout out to Sandeep. A K, a Royal and the Point Bandit, a k, a Frank. So shout out to both those guys for helping to put the group together and building it. And from there we basically decided that New York was ready for a conference.
And so we started Points Quest.
Justin Vacula: Nice. And you [00:04:00] kept it on the rails as you made New York City, the host location. That’s right.
Deker: So New York City was the host location because it’s such a huge hub. While we didn’t know that we were gonna get a nationwide turnout, I mean, we had people coming from as far as Canada, Seattle, California, Texas.
We had people coming from all over the country flying into New York City, and I feel like it worked out really well because of New York being the central hub for airlines.
Justin Vacula: Yes, it was a great platform to speak and this was the first public appearance as far as I know of Katlin from
Deker: Teis. That’s right.
Huge shout out to Kat for, uh, for taking the time and for being willing to actually, I’m gonna use it like this. I don’t mean it in a bad way, but for being willing to step from out of the shadows and come forward and make a public appearance and to talk about their platform there, which is a fantastic platform.
So shout out [00:05:00] to her for coming out and for speaking.
Justin Vacula: Really great meetup. There were some gold buyers and resellers, gift card resellers, all kinds of travelers, fellow Amtrak fans. It was quite a meeting of the minds, and in quarter one of 2025. Far from other events. So I think that accounted for the good turn.
Deker: That’s right. Yeah. And while I’m giving shout outs, which I think I’m gonna do throughout the episode here, shout out to Danielle and Eric for being our volunteers at that event to make sure everything was going really smoothly, along with Shair for helping out and Brian Geller for helping out. So quite a few people that chipped in to make sure that everything was really smooth, and I cannot say enough thank yous to all those guys.
Justin Vacula: Really nice event. Maybe we’ll see one in 2026 or 2027.
Deker: Yeah, I feel like it’s interesting because we had so many great people this time around. I almost feel like how can we outdo [00:06:00] ourselves if we were to do it next year? So I don’t know if if next year would be doable, but if there’s some really high end popular speakers.
Maybe some of the big boys in the space that wanna come forward and come and talk, we would definitely consider it.
Justin Vacula: All right. Let’s get back on track with Amtrak. How did you become an Amtrak fan?
Deker: Yeah, so I might be giving my age away a little bit here, but, but all started really around nine 11, where terrible catastrophe, obviously one of the worst events that ever happened in my life, and I just really didn’t feel safe flying.
I just needed something, an alternative option to see my family. I had family at the time down in North Carolina. I had family in Orlando, Florida, and I just wanted to see them, but I just didn’t feel safe flying there. After researching it for a bit, I saw that Amtrak was a viable option, comparable price wise.
It [00:07:00] just took a lot longer.
Justin Vacula: And you’ve been using a lot of points from the Amtrak credit card to save money on travel?
Deker: That’s correct. Yeah. During Covid, once I found out about the credit card and all the perks, I, I jumped right on it because I knew that I enjoyed trains. I enjoy traveling on them. If I’m not in a rush, I would always try to figure out if there’s a way, a route on a train for me to get to where I wanna go.
But again, you have to not be in a rush. If you’re in a rush or you’ve got a tight deadline, then you know you gotta fly. Gotta do the airline thing. But I will say this, and this is something that you and I had spoke briefly about, but to the federal law as it states with Amtrak, they share a lot of their rails and a lot of their routes are run by by freight train companies.
And the law states that Amtrak is supposed to have right of way on those lines. However many times that doesn’t happen. [00:08:00] And so what happens instead is the freight companies or the freight dispatchers give their trains the right of way and make the Amtrak trains wait. So I think Amtrak could actually have a better service and a more efficient and faster service if they didn’t have these delays, which are technically illegal.
So really think the federal government should start cracking down. And I believe there has been some inquiries being done about that. So hopefully they could take that further.
Justin Vacula: All right. Hopefully that idea gains steam. Absolutely. And you mostly travel out of Penn Station, right?
Deker: That’s right. And as a matter of fact, they, they’ve done a really great thing with the Moynihan Hall side of Penn Station that they’ve opened up a couple years ago.
They have tons of retail shops in there. As well as they’ve put up a Amtrak Metropolitan Lounge, of which there aren’t very many, but the one in Moynihan Hall in New York City is actually the nicest one there is, and you can get in for free [00:09:00] if you are an Amtrak guest rewards loyalty member with a select plus or a select executive status, you also could be traveling on the Ella first class category That would get you in for free.
You could also be a private sleeper room customer on a long route train, and if you don’t have any of those, then technically you can use your Amtrak guest reward points to buy, to use your points to get a single day lounge pass. So that’s another way that you can get into that lounge.
Justin Vacula: And how does status work?
How do you earn status to get the guest rewards, select plus and select executive status?
Deker: So essentially you need to have paid rides. That’s the way to do it. Select executive is usually meant at business travelers who commute on Amtrak quite often, and once they have earned enough miles, that will put them into that [00:10:00] status.
Justin Vacula: Can you spend your way to status on the credit card?
Deker: That’s a great question. As far as I know, it’s if you have the paid annual fee card, you can earn some loyalty status and points with spent. I believe it’s every $5,000 of spend will give you a thousand of the loyalty points. Toward that select advanced Select plus or select executive status.
However, I don’t think you could do it all the way. I think they will. They will let you in a certain amount with spend, but not the whole thing.
Justin Vacula: Okay. So a combination of rides and spend could possibly get you there. And we’re going to talk about the credit card a little bit later, the particulars with that.
But first, the general with Amtrak. Have you taken longer rides with Amtrak?
Deker: I have, yeah. The points in Miles community has [00:11:00] this, this thing they do every year called Chicago Seminars. They’re, uh, there used to be one, they’re now two sort of events. They actually seem to have not done at the same time this past year.
So one was in September, one was in October, but I went to the one in September in 2024 and I took the train for 17 hours. Yep. Wow. I had a sleeper car, so it wasn’t too bad. It was very comfortable, but I did have a sleeper car and you know, it was an overnight, overnight journey. So that was great and I enjoyed it.
And it wasn’t in a rush, but my longest run was back when they had a, this really complicated run all the way from Miami up to New York. And I’d gone down to Miami because I was doing some consulting for a client who was setting up an office. Down there in Miami, and on my way back I said, you know what?
I don’t have to rush home. I’ve got some time. I will take the train. However, because it was on [00:12:00] the client’s dime, the client was paying for that cost. I had a limited budget, so I had to be in coach. So it was, I. 30 hours Miami to New York City in Coach, which was a rough experience a little bit, but, but it was at the end it all worked out, so it was fine.
Justin Vacula: Alright, cool. And what was your favorite Amtrak ride that you’ve taken?
Deker: So that’s, that’s a great one. I really liked the Ella first class and I, this was actually prior to Covid. I had two friends of mine shout out to, to Adam who was with me on that ride. Yeah, we just, three of us were just having a fantastic time on ACell first class, so we actually paid, we just paid just to have a great experience and phenomenal food.
Unlimited drinks. Unlimited snacks. And so we were just was, we were going from New York to Boston and we just were having a blast having drinks and just laughing. Great experience there with those guys.
Justin Vacula: Ah, that’s very interesting. You mention Boston [00:13:00] as I believe Amtrak’s biggest fan, Pari Kim, PurplePrincessPari on Instagram is I think Amtrak’s biggest fan.
It’s a special shout-out to her as we’re supposed to record a podcast episode in Boston later in April, and she’s a fan of the show. And we’re recording also on April 2nd, 2025. This is the debut of the Netflix show, Love on the Spectrum, season three, and she is one of the cast members.
Deker: Yeah, shout out to Pari for her love of Amtrak.
That’s fantastic. I’m, I’m a pretty big fanboy myself and I look forward to, to getting on Netflix to check out the show.
Justin Vacula: Yeah, absolutely. It is available on Netflix, the full season, not just one episode, seven episodes of season three. Nice. And she had mentioned that one of her favorite routes that she had not taken was the Coast Starlight route.
Do you know anything about that?
Deker: Yeah, so it’s [00:14:00] supposed to be one of the most scenic routes on the entire Amtrak map, so it’s something I’d really like to check out at some point as well.
Justin Vacula: I’m seeing there are different segments. There’s Seattle to Portland or San Francisco to Los Angeles. It could be a very long ride if you take the whole route, or you could just take segments,
Deker: right?
But I think the one thing you’d wanna see is get some reviews from users that have already taken it, that will tell you where the most beautiful sections are, the most scenic, the most picturesque sections.
Justin Vacula: I see here it’s a long distance Amtrak train route that runs between Seattle, Washington and Los Angeles, California.
It covers about 1,377 miles and offers some of the most scenic train rides in the United States, passing through Washington State, Oregon and California, along the Pacific Coast mountains and forests.
And on this coast Starlight route, they have sleeper cars and observation car dining in cafe car, and business [00:15:00] class as well.
Deker: Excellent. Nice. It’s definitely worth checking out and I, I hope to do it one day.
Justin Vacula: How do the different cars compare? Coach versus observation versus sleeper versus business?
Deker: Yeah, so if you’re in a long distance run like New York to Florida, for example. Your train will have a sleeper car if you’re either really tall or you just find it difficult to get comfortable in like just a regular seat. Even though Amtrak coach seats are much better than airline seats, they have way more width.
There’s way more space on the long runs, but at the same time, like they only recline so far back. So if you have trouble sleeping and getting rest in a coach seat, you’re gonna want that sleeper. The observation cars are there for really scenic routes. I think they, they may do it as well. You mentioned the coastal starlight.
There might be a couple other routes where they do that. Maybe somewhere closer to Arizona or like somewhere like [00:16:00] out there where like the Grand Canyon and stuff is, there might be some other routes that have those observation cars where you can go to and it’s basically almost entirely made of glass.
So you have these like 360 degree views of everything as you pass it, which is really interesting.
Justin Vacula: Ah, that sounds really cool. The differences between the different types of cars. How does Amtrak compare to other modes of transportation?
Deker: Yeah, so for me it’s much less stressful and it’s actually more rela relaxing if you don’t have anywhere to be and you’re not rushing somewhere.
I think just sitting back in a train, relaxing if you’re in a long distance run. Getting to just walk over. Amtrak does have a dining car where you could actually have a sit down dinner on a train. I’ve done it a bunch of times when I’ve gone down to Florida to Orlando to see my cousin. Shout out to my cousin Jay, by the way, he does not like trains ’cause he thinks they take too long.
But, but, but he never gives me a hard time about taking them. [00:17:00] He comes to the train station in Orlando and picks me up, so it always works out fine.
Justin Vacula: Warren
Deker: Happiness.
Justin Vacula: All right, let’s move on and keep this train going. Tell us about the Amtrak credit cards, the benefits, the earnings, and even a welcome bonus with the annual fee card.
And as of recording, there is an increased offer on the Amtrak credit card that has a small annual fee.
Deker: That’s right. So you’ve got the higher end card, which is the, the world MasterCard, I believe is what they call it. It’s issued by. Ooh. Yeah, all the fun
Both: names. It’s issued by
Deker: First National Bank of Omaha, FNBO.
It does have a $99 fee, but the increased bonus offer is actually a 40,000 point signup bonus that is good till April 30th. From what I’m seeing, some of the benefits there are gonna be three points per dollar on Amtrak travel. So if [00:18:00] you use the card to buy Amtrak. An Amtrak ticket, you’ll get three points per dollar, but you’d also get two points per dollar at just being a member of their guest rewards program.
So you’ll all, ah, it’s stacked. Stacked, that’s right. And then you’ll also get two points per dollar spent on dining, travel, transit, and rideshare, which is great. So anytime you’re out having food, you know, any kind of travel, even airlines, local city transit, Uber, Lyft. You’ll get your two x there. They’re also gonna throw in with that higher level card, with the annual fee card, a round trip companion coupon.
So if you have a P two, that’s fantastic. You’ll get, essentially, the $99 is nothing at that point. If you took a trip, let’s say, from New York to Orlando or New York to Maine or something like that, you would easily cover that in a roundtrip ticket. If you know it’s a free coupon for a roundtrip ticket.
You also get one free upgrade coupon. So if you’re [00:19:00] traveling solo on a paid ticket, you can apply your upgrade coupon there. Get that. You also get one free lounge pass. So I talked earlier about the Amtrak Metropolitan Lounge. With that fee card, you’ll get a free visit there, and then you’ll also get 20% rebate, which is a cash back from FNBO on any food that you purchase on a train.
Justin Vacula: So really good. I think people newer to miles and points lament annual fees and people talk about what’s the best no annual fee card, but it’s very often the case that with these small annual fees, it’s super, super worth it. It’s a great investment to pay something like a 95 or $99 annual fee getting all of these really great benefits.
Deker: That’s right. Absolutely, absolutely. I currently have the free card, which is still really good ’cause I will give you two points for paid Amtrak travel. Two points per dollar for dining, and then you get a 10% rebate on the food on board. Also, having [00:20:00] either of the cards will give you a 5% points rebate when you redeem points for Amtrak travel.
So if you’ve got that credit card, once you purchase your ticket using points, you will see a little bit of a credit will come back. So you will see that on your statement. You’ll see a little couple of points come back to you, 5% of what you paid out.
Justin Vacula: And this is the Amtrak Guest Rewards Preferred MasterCard is the annual fee one.
That’s the increased offer, the 40,000 point bonus offer at the moment, as of recording April 2nd, 2025, and the no annual fee card is only a 12,000 point signup bonus. So what are these points really worth? Two x, three x, what? What are we getting? What might be the average redemption value of Amtrak?
Points are redeemed
Deker: at roughly 2.60 cents per point, and it’s based on a variable cash rate. I’ll give you a couple examples [00:21:00] here that I actually pulled earlier, and this is for travel in late April. One of the examples I use here is New York Penn Station to Boston on the Acela. That is $224 one way in business class, or 8,400 points.
So 8,400 points for that one way trip. Now, you could do the same thing on the regular Northeast Regional. That is a much cheaper ticket cash wise, and it only costs you 2,850 points.
Justin Vacula: Oh, okay.
Deker: So it’s different. It. I’ll give you another example here. So you’ve got, this is getting a little bit closer to travel date.
So if you were to head to Charlotte from New York in the next week and a half, it would be $239 one way, which is actually pretty expensive, but then your point rate would also go up and that would be quite [00:22:00] expensive as well for 8,963 points. But now to do the flip side of that, to show you where Amtrak actually can shine in value.
If we go out to mid-May and we do a longer run, so let’s do New York Penn Station to Orlando. That’s actually only $135 cash fair, which is very cheap, even compared to airlines, but that is 5,063 points, which is a great value.
Justin Vacula: Oh, nice. America really loves math and I think it’s a common thing in points of mouths that don’t just assume, don’t just redeem points at any time.
You want to compare the points to the cash rates and try to find the good value when you’re using points. It’s a big advantage to have.
Deker: That’s right. Always, and in this case, because the value of the points is pretty much fixed, it’s really shopping for the best cash rate and then seeing if you’d like to spend the points or if it’s cheap enough where you could just go ahead and [00:23:00] just pay cash.
Just earn some points. On top of that,
Justin Vacula: you have the no annual fee card. Is it possible for you to apply for the annual fee card at the end of April? Can you have both cards? As far as I know
Deker: you actually can, so if I wanted to, I could. One of the things with me is lately I haven’t been traveling as much on Amtrak, so that’s one of the reasons why I am holding out on the annual fee card.
The. No annual fee card has been serving my needs just fine. And I’ve been putting my dining spend on that and earning points pretty quickly that way. And, uh, my one big splurge every year is the, the sleeper to Chicago for the seminars. So that’s where, as long as I can get my, it’s roughly in a sleeper car because they are so much more costly, because there’s a very limited amount of them on every train because of that, I think a one way.
This past year ran me around 18,000 points, and that was me booking early. One of the good [00:24:00] things about that sleeper car though, is your meals are included for free as part of that ticket. So I did get some good meals. Oh, nice. From dinner and some breakfast the next day, which is really nice.
Justin Vacula: That’s good.
So you can spend in very creative ways. We’ve talked about a lot of that earlier in other episodes. About creative spending to generate lots of spend on the card. And even if you’re only getting two x, if you’re getting maybe between two and 3 cents per point, that two X could be as much as 6% back.
That’s
Deker: absolutely right. That’s absolutely right. America loves math, right? So this works really well. If you can maximize getting some of that either dining spend or travel spend on those cards. You could really be in very good shape to quickly save up for a free trip.
Justin Vacula: Yes. It is issued by the First National Bank of Omaha, so you can use powerful portals for those in the know, whereas American Express hasn’t been working recently, but the train has not [00:25:00] been derailed, but the Amtrak is still good to go online.
That is correct. Absolutely. All right. We have a listener question from Purple Princess Pari. As we mentioned, give her a follow on Instagram and see her on the Netflix show, Love on the Spectrum Season three, she wanted to know how many guest rewards points do you earn per trip? How is that determined?
Deker: Yeah, so essentially you earn guest reward points at two points per dollar spent on Amtrak travel. So if you don’t have the credit cards. You just have a loyalty account with them for guest rewards, and you make sure that your guest rewards number is added on your ticket. When you make your booking, you’ll get two points per dollar on that spend.
And then I also read that there is a point bonus of an extra 25% for all business class travel, and then you get 50% for a sell of first class travel. [00:26:00] So you could actually get more points per dollar. Based on the type of train you’re taking or, or rather the class of seat that you’re buying, that would be more accurate to say.
Justin Vacula: All right. And if you have the credit card, you’re also going to be spending towards status in addition to the points earning, as you mentioned. So a big bonus for having the annual fee card. The Amtrak guest rewards preferred MasterCard, or the no annual fee. The Amtrak guest rewards MasterCard, but personally, I’m looking at applying at the end of April before this offer expires.
As I’m just waiting for some payments to post to my credit score to rebound after heavily using lots of lines of credit, riding the credit card rollercoaster last month. So hopefully at the end of April I two, we’ll have the annual fee card and generate tons and tons of Amtrak points for basically free or very low cost driver.
Excellent.
Deker: Yep. That’s the way to do it.
Justin Vacula: How do you find good deals with Amtrak? Both the cash rates and the points
Deker: rate? So the best [00:27:00] advice I can give is to start looking early. That that really is the main key. You need to look one or two months out. Sometimes when it comes to a Chicago and as I’m planning my sleeper car trip up to Chicago, I may be looking as, as far as four, five months out.
But I think it’s something that, that all. Miles and points enthusiasts, whether it’s Amtrak or airlines, it’s something that, it’s a known thing to always look early, look often, and and see what dates are giving you the best bang for your buck. The one thing I can say is if you find a good cash rate and you feel like you have the points and you’d rather the points go toward that trip, instead of paying cash, and you looked early enough.
That it’s a very good price. Then just go back on the website and just say, okay, I’d like to search based on, there’s actually a toggle, which will say, use points, and you could just redo the search with that toggle on and it’ll give you the points [00:28:00] value, and you could book your trip that way.
Justin Vacula: All right. A good way to conduct yourself when looking for routes.
And I wonder, can you book Speculative Travel with Amtrak? If you were to say, oh, maybe I’ll go to Chicago. In September, would you be able to book today in April and then cancel with no penalty?
Deker: So I believe that there is a small penalty on points travel, however. However, I believe if you cancel it far out enough and you call in, there is an Amtrak guest rewards line, and from what I have experienced in the past, they’re very good about that, where they will just say, don’t worry about it.
We’re just gonna credit you back all of your points. I think those penalties only apply if you get really close to that departure date, and then that’s when you start to run into some issues.
Justin Vacula: We don’t have official dates yet for the Chicago Seminars events, but it could be an interesting train of thought [00:29:00] to book multiple weeks speculating on possible arrival dates.
And if you could just cancel those without penalty, you’ve probably saved points or saved money by booking ahead of time. Right?
Deker: Absolutely. And if you had the enhanced bonus offer for that preferred card, you definitely would be able to get a couple of couple of speculative dates out there because 40,000 points.
It does go quite a long ways on Amtrak.
Justin Vacula: Yes. We don’t want to go down the tunnel, we don’t wanna go off track. We wanna make sure that we don’t lose points or get penalized for cancellations.
Deker: Absolutely.
Justin Vacula: And how does the experience change if you were maybe a tall person or if it were a long trip, how would that be on?
Deker: Yeah, so like I talked about, the trip that I took, the 30 hours Miami to New York in Coach was quite challenging. Luckily, I’m not too tall, so I was able to just put the, put the seat back as far as it would go and try to get a couple hours of decent sleep. But if you [00:30:00] are tall and that kind of seat configuration would be uncomfortable, you definitely don’t wanna do that For long distance journeys, there’s two types of sleeper cars on a lot of long distance trains.
One are ettes, which actually ettes have actually a bottom bunk and a top bunk. They’re very slim beds, but you could actually book it for two people and you could have one on top, one sleeping on top, one on the bottom. But then you also have a bedroom configuration, which usually will have much more space to walk around and a private bathroom with a shower.
The Florida routes do have that. Some routes may not. If I’m remembering correctly, the majority of the Chicago trains are all Ru Mets. So they’re more tinier rooms. But the Florida rooms or the Florida, yeah, the Florida rooms essentially do have, uh, bedrooms and ettes. So you have some options there, [00:31:00] but, but either way, you know, if you’re taller, you’re gonna want that sleeper car.
The other thing is, the other sort of tip is even if you’re a shorter person, you don’t wanna just be stuck sitting in your coach seat. For the entire ride for a long distance journey. So on these long runs, Amtrak does have what they call certain stops that are smoke break stops, and you don’t have to be a smoker to get out and just stretch your legs.
So those stops usually are about 10 to 15 minutes, sometimes a bit longer depending. A good example is Washington DC If you’re going from New York down to Florida, Washington, DC. Is the last stop where the Amtrak system has electric tracks. Everything beyond Washington DC going south actually uses regular freight tracks, which use diesel engines.
When you get to [00:32:00] Washington DC there is a 30 minute long break there because they actually need to switch the engine from electric to diesel. And so that is a fantastic place to. Get out, walk on the platform. Maybe even go upstairs to the Washington DC Union Station and grab a bite to eat or bring it back with you.
Bring some food back with you to sit back in your coach seat. So that’s the way to do it is always take advantage of those smoke break stops. Stretch your legs and you also have the cafe car that you could walk over to and sit there. You can just get a little juice or a soda there. Sit down and just look at, look out the window there, and it’s really nice.
It’s very relaxing, very fun. But yeah, definitely don’t sit in the coach seat for the whole time. Get up and move your legs.
Justin Vacula: And to be more comfortable on these journeys. What would be some must bring items for these [00:33:00] longer rides? And is there wifi that you,
Deker: yeah, so that’s another thing that Amtrak needs to fix.
It’s there. Why? Uh oh. Their wifi, from what I’ve experienced is not great, especially I guess, when a lot of people try to connect all their devices all at once and all the passengers are trying to connect, they definitely can do better there with the speed. But in terms of just being comfortable, but you want to have a toiletry bag handy, you wanna keep it easily accessible.
Just if you need toothbrush, toothpaste, mouthwash, any kind of soap or lotion. It’s good to have that handy. You also, if you’re in coach, you may wanna invest in a neck pillow ’cause that’ll help. And then always have a laptop with some movies loaded. So this way, if it is a long ride and you get a bit bored and you don’t wanna just keep looking out the window, you’ve got some music or a movie you could listen to.
Justin Vacula: Watch some love on the
Deker: spectrum. Absolutely. That’s a great, and then [00:34:00] if you. Are not sure if you’ll enjoy some of the food offerings with Amtrak. A lot of their stuff is microwavable food or some snacks and chips. You could always bring some food and drink with you and one, one thing you could do, they usually don’t enforce this, but you can take your food and drink to the cafe car and eat it there.
If they ever said anything, you could always just buy the drink from the cafe car, but the food itself. You could just bring your own and you could eat and you could, if you had the soda that you bought from them, you could at least still show them you’re a customer and just say, Hey, I did buy something.
I did buy a food item through you guys, so I’d like to sit here and eat it. And 99% of the time, they won’t even say anything. You don’t even have to even buy anything to sit there. But if somebody ever did say something, you could just get the drink and then sit there and have your meal.
Justin Vacula: Very good. We’ll move on to some more listener questions.
Another from [00:35:00] Purple Princess Pari on Instagram. Do you have any connections with the Amtrak social media team? She would really like to partner with Amtrak. Hopefully this episode will help her accomplish that goal. But do you have any connections?
Deker: Yeah, unfortunately I don’t know anybody directly that works there.
I do know, though, that they’re pretty active on X and Instagram. So you can message them there or kind of comment on some of their recent posts. The other thing that I’m gonna add is if you take an Amtrak journey, a lot of times they will ask you post-trip to fill out a survey. Don’t ignore that.
Actually. Go ahead and fill that out because the more you respond to those, that may get you into a queue for a. In person research survey because Amtrak tends to like to do these every so often where they’ll do research surveys and they may think about [00:36:00] adding a product or adding a food item, and they will actually invite people that have previously responded to them online.
They will invite people to come in, and that’s a great way to meet people from the Amtrak team and actually have some direct FaceTime with them.
Justin Vacula: I often tag brands on Instagram and X. I recently stayed at Borgata, I tagged Borg Gata. I visit Caesar’s Properties, tag them, and I’ve often got responses, or at least they would see the post.
So I think tagging them say, okay, look, I’m on this train. I’m at this station. I think that can be helpful. Absolutely. I agree a hundred percent. I see the Amtrak senior social media manager, Nicole Lopez, is also. A possible connection there. I know that some employees with Amtrak are on LinkedIn, so that’s another possible.
That’s
Deker: right. And then I’ll add one more. There is an R slash Amtrak subreddit, and there are Amtrak [00:37:00] employees that are actually participating actively in that Reddit. So that’s another place where if you look at some of those posts, you might see someone that comes in there and says, oh, I’m an employee and here’s my take on this topic.
Justin Vacula: Yes. And the Reddit is very active for Amtrak.
Deker: Absolutely it is. That’s right.
Justin Vacula: And there might also be possibilities as an influencer, as someone who promotes Amtrak. So it might not be a standard nine to five be in the office type of position, but I’m sure there’s a lot of opportunity there, especially with the exposure she’s been getting with Netflix.
I’m sure that they’re going to see her and hopefully bring her on onboard. Absolutely.
Deker: Yeah.
Justin Vacula: Another question from Purple Princess Pari on Instagram. Why do Amtrak cafes sometimes randomly close and reopen? Yeah, so there’s two
Deker: reasons that I could think of. One of the big ones is if you have that longer route, and like I [00:38:00] mentioned, they do an engine switch at Washington DC and so during that engine switch.
The train actually loses power because the engine has been disconnected, and so there’s a small window where you actually don’t have electricity on the train. The lights go out and it’s just for a brief moment while they disconnect one engine, the electric engine pull it away, and then they back in a diesel engine and reconnect everything.
So the cafe car can’t be open because there’s literally not even lights on in the train during that point. So. That is one reason where, again, depending on the run and depending on when there’s, where, when and where they’re swapping engines. That’s one reason. The second reason is if it is a longer route, the cafe car attendant that you have on that train will pretty much work the entire run, and so they need to close and reopen the cafe because they’re the one employee [00:39:00] assigned to that.
To that run to that entire journey. So they do get mandatory break periods. Those are part of their federal regulations that they do get breaks and times for their lunches and meals. They will close the cafe car to go ahead and take their break to take their meal, and then they’ll come back and reopen it.
Justin Vacula: Very good. Do you have upcoming Amtrak rides that you’ll be taking in 2025? Besides, I
Deker: think that’s gonna be the main one, but you never know. I may head out to Orlando just to see my cousin again, hang out with him. I actually have another, uh, cousin out in Charlotte, North Carolina, so shout out to cousin V out there.
I might go and see him and yeah, we’ll see what, we’ll see what happens. We’ll see what the future holds.
Justin Vacula: And you mentioned earlier in the episode, Danielle had also taken Amtrak several times. I had her in a past episode. I’ve been doing lots of podcasts recently. So been getting that content. I love it.
Other travels coming for you? [00:40:00] Flights, cruises, hotel days, yeah,
Deker: absolutely. So I do have a cruise this summer out of Seattle, going up to Alaska, so I am very excited. First time on that one. And that one is gonna be with cousin Jay and family. So shout out again to Cousin Jay
Justin Vacula: and any upcoming credit cards, maybe the annual fee Amtrak card before the end of
Deker: April.
It’s definitely a possibility I might go for that card. I’ve also been hearing some good things about the Venmo card from Synchrony, so they may need to look into that, see if maybe they have an enhanced signup bonus at some point. May wanna jump on that one.
Justin Vacula: I know the future card, debit card also gives some cash back for Amtrak and other transit.
I was seeing 5% cash back and they also had some extra offers. If you ride a certain amount of times per week or per month, they give you additional cash back. [00:41:00] So for those that don’t have the Amtrak credit card, the future. Card can work pretty well. Are there other credit cards that might bonus Amtrak that people can use?
Deker: Yeah, so I would tend to think that the Chase Sapphire Reserve with that $300 travel credit annually would code on Amtrak as well. So if you have that card and you haven’t spent your $300, taking a train trip would help to to get that credit used up.
Justin Vacula: After the $300 travel credit, it should probably code for travel for three x ultimate reward.
I, I would tend to think so. Absolutely. Maybe the altitude reserve for those that have it. I know that the applications have been discontinued or it seems to be that way, but still a worthy, worthy
Deker: contender if they bring that back. I think. I think that’s pretty much wraps up and covers everything about Amtrak, but I look forward to always coming back and having other topics and other things to talk about.
Justin Vacula: [00:42:00] And any train rides outside of the us
Deker: I have heard some amazing things about Canada’s via rail or via rail. I don’t know exactly how they pronounce it, but uh, it is another one on my bucket list to try.
Justin Vacula: Ah, and a shout out to Sarah Ramkissoon, who had taken the via or via rail and sent some pictures to me that I shared with Pari
So that’s. A possibility in the future going to Canada and riding the trains out there. Yeah,
Deker: absolutely. I would love to do it.
Justin Vacula: And potentially New Orleans. I see that has lots of train activity there. Yeah, there
Deker: is a run that used to be there. I’m, I have to look and see if it’s still there, but it was known as the Crescent Line and that went from New York all the way to New Orleans.
Justin Vacula: Ah, and any other routes in the United States that you like or think.
Deker: I mentioned
Justin Vacula: briefly,
Deker: I mentioned Maine, and so there is a route [00:43:00] that will go New York up to Maine, and that is another one that is on my list.
Justin Vacula: Any experience with Tokyo?
Deker: Nothing. I’ve heard that they’re much better, much better quality, and much faster than the United States, so you never know.
That might be another one to check out and I think it’s something that this country, the US could benefit from China. Fix our rails and make it faster and improve the infrastructure so that we could have high speed trains and better trains on par with the ones that they have out there.
Justin Vacula: I’m seeing the Tokyo station in Japan is very big, but Grand Central takes the crown for platform count, grand Central Terminal.
In New York City, I’m seeing 44 platforms, 67 tracks. Covering about 48 acres opened in 1913. A major hub for commuter and inner city trains serving millions of passengers. Amazing.
Deker: Yeah, grad Central is a beautiful [00:44:00] station.
Justin Vacula: Alright, thank you for coming on. Thank you for having
Deker: me. I really appreciate it.
Justin Vacula: And one more time, if you can plug, point me to New York.
Deker: Yeah, so we are on Telegram and so you could find us there and join the conversation there. We also do have occasional meetups. We were doing them monthly until Points Quest. We’ll see how those pick up as the weather gets nicer and we’ll go from there.
Justin Vacula: You have point me to new york.com. At the moment it’s redirecting to the Points Quest event that was in February, but hopefully some more meetups to come.
And I’ve seen you in Willow Grove. So thank you for coming for my meetups. The Greater Philadelphia Travel Credit Miles and Points meetups. You can find us at meetup.com/philly. Miles and points. So how do people find the point Me to New York Telegram?
Deker: Yeah, so there is a link. Point me to [00:45:00] ny.com website does lead, unfortunately at the moment to the old ticket page for the Point Quest conference.
But if you scroll down there, there is a link there to the Telegram group. And I will definitely talk to my co-administration to update that page and get the old ticketing out of there.
Justin Vacula: And how can people find you on social media?
Deker: So I’m at, I’m on Facebook as Decker travels, so D-E-K-E-R. And you could also get me at decker travels on Instagram, and I welcome all kinds of questions and interactions with people there.
And always look forward to learning more from other people about points and miles.
Justin Vacula: Thanks for listening and stay tuned for future episodes, some closing announcements. Ticket sales for Zork Fest 2025 A Miles Points and gambling event are live@zorkfest.travelzork.com. [00:46:00] I hope to see you at ZorkFest 2025 in Las Vegas from December 5th through December 7th.
I’m also looking forward to other events in 2025. And had a successful 2024 speaking at events with Award Travel 1 0 1 Travel Zork Frequent Traveler University, and both Chicago Seminars events. If you’re an event organizer and would like to have me speak at your 2025 event, please contact me. Visit meetup.com/philly miles and points to RSVP for monthly Greater Philadelphia Travel credit, miles and points meetups I host in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania.
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