Rail Trip – Planning and Cost

The initial idea for this trip was born in September of 2015 while chatting with my brother and savoring local beers in Riga – we both came to the conclusion that we haven’t been on a real vacation with our parents for a loooong time. After some brainstorming and more beer, the train trip across the USA looked like a pretty cool idea – we would get from point A to point B at a slow relaxing pace, get to see a number of different states (through a window) and spend some quality time with our parents at the same time.

Amtrak has quite a few routes from Chicago but our preferred direction was to go west – our parents hadn’t been to the West Coast, so we figured we could combine this train trip with a few extra days in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland or Seattle. After reading numerous reviews online, confirming dates that worked for everyone, checking award availability for the train, hotels and flights, we came up with the following plan: ride the California Zephyr train to Emeryville, spend a couple of days in San Francisco, take a mini road trip to Big Sur and fly back to Chicago.

There are a few types of “accommodations” on that route – coach, roomette, bedroom and family bedroom. Since the length of the trip is over 50 hours, we decided to spurge a bit and opted for the Superliner Bedroom – it was large enough for two people, had two beds, bathroom/shower in the room and all meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) were included in the price.

At the time of the booking the Amtrak Guest Rewards program was a transfer partner of the Chase Ultimate Rewards program and the cost for a one way trip in the Superliner Bedroom from Chicago to Emeryville was 40,000 points. So, we transferred some UR points to Amtrak and booked two bedrooms for a total of 80,000 points. Keep in mind that it’s no longer possible to replicate this for the following reasons:

• both programs have discontinued their partnership and you can’t transfer chase UR points to the Amtrak Guest Rewards program anymore.
• Amtrak has since devalued their redemption rates – the same one way ticket for two people in the Superliner Bedroom would now cost you over 60,000 points instead of 40,000.

Just to give you an idea how much it cost – the cash price for the same ticket was $1,961 ($3,922 for two bedrooms).

For the two nights in San Francisco we booked two rooms at the Hyatt Centric hotel – this is a category 4 property and requires 15,000 points per night; I also had an annual free night certificate that could be used here. Paid rates for the same dates were going for $299/night ($348.17 once you include tax and other fees); so, instead of paying $1,392.68 for our stay (2 nights X 2 rooms) we ended up redeeming 45,000 Hyatt Gold Passport points + free night certificate.

The only option that worked for us in terms of points for our one night stay in Big Sur was the Hyatt Carmel Highlands hotel – 25,000 points per night was a bit steep, but considering paid rates for the same same dates were going for $621/night ($709.81 with tax), it looked reasonable. So, we redeemed 50,000 Gold Passport points for two rooms instead of paying $1,419.62.

We assumed (correctly) that the 4 hour flight on the way back to Chicago was a better option than spending another 50 hours on the train. Southwest seemed like the best option flying back since both of us (my brother and I) have companion passes with the airline – that means your designated “companion” flies with you for free (you still have to pay taxes). So, for this particular flight we made our parents our “companions” and redeemed a total of 20,076 Southwest points + $22.40 for our flights back. Not a bad redemption considering paid flights were going for $163.98 per person and it would have cost us $655.92 for four people.

Bottom Line

Once again, points & miles proved to be a huge benefit – I don’t think we would have been able to afford this trip without it. Had we paid cash, the same trip (train, hotels and flights) would’ve cost us almost $7,400!! Whereas now our cash portion was $22.40…. The points amount redeemed for this trip was quite large, but we managed to pull it together between the two of us.