C is for Changes (Supplemental)
I have a confession. The first four days of A-Z posts were written in advance, because we’re still on the Grand Tour. Yesterday, I realized the critical thing I missed when dealing with Amtrak is the need to be ready for changes. Because of that, those posts were written in anticipation of how things would go. Naturally, that means things changed from when I wrote and scheduled the posts and when they went live. I had an opportunity to edit the posts before they went live, but I decided to leave them as written to illustrate this post.
What happened yesterday to remind me of this? We were on the Southwest Chief on approach to Chicago. Physically, we were in Central Illinois. My cell phone rang. I answered and listened to an automated message from Amtrak informing me The City of New Orleans was cancelled with no alternatives.
Ummmm. Huh? The “Press 0 to talk to a person” didn’t work. I found their number and called. It didn’t take too many voice commands to get past their automated assistant “Julie” and talk to a real person. She was able to determine we couldn’t get past Memphis. She told me to talk it over with my companion and call back, and they’d set us up.
Mr. L and I decided to cancel the rest of the trip and catch the next available bedroom on the Texas Eagle and go home. He got on the phone to cancel the New Orleans hotel room and rental car. I got on the phone to Amtrak and arranged to change our reservation. The next available Texas Eagle with a bedroom was on April 2. They swapped reservations and refunded the difference to me.
Next, we had to find a place to spend two nights in Chicago. No problem.
We arrived in Chicago. We had checked luggage through to New Orleans, so we knew it wouldn’t come upon the baggage carousel. We waited until everything got checked out by the attendant and explained our situation. She sent us downstairs to the baggage area to look, but the guys said they didn’t have anything for NOLA, and we didn’t see our bags on the few baggage carts of luggage down there. They copied our claim checks and we wrote our phone numbers in case they came in the next day.
We met our friend as planned. She gave us a ride to our hotel, and since we were going to be in town an extra day, we arranged for dinner with her and her husband the next day. I got back on the phone with Amtrak to try to track down the luggage. The woman I reached was wonderful. Some of you may be thinking the same thing I was thinking — Los Angeles put our NOLA-bound luggage on the Sunset Limited (runs from LA to NOLA). This wonderful woman ran with that possiblity and called NOLA. She couldn’t rule it out, because the Sunday Sunset Limited wasn’t getting into NOLA until 9:30 that night. She gave me the phone number and suggested I call them after the train got in to see. Then she filed a lost luggage report which would alert all the stations along the route in case it turned up. Then we talked about the plan in case that didn’t work out. I hung up feeling very confident everything would work out.
Later that night, I called New Orleans, and our luggage was there. I briefly explained what happened and asked if they could put it on the next day’s west bound Sunset Limited with San Antonio as the destination. He gave me ticket numbers and assured me they had it covered.
We spent April 1 at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry then met friends for dinner. My husband and I both through Chicago turned out to be one of the best parts of our trip.
(For those of you who have been visiting and commenting, thank you. I’ll be visiting you and catching up with your postings next week. I’m looking forward to your topics.)
That’s a lot of changes, I love that you’ve not only dealt with it so logically but you’re able to write it in a way that I can follow!
I don’t know much about Amtrak so I loved your supplementary post 🙂
Good luck with the rest of the challenge (and trip)
Mars xx
Curling Stones for Lego People
I don’t do too well with last minute changes. Would this inhibit my traveling by Amtrack?
Smidgen Snippets & Bits
The changes wouldn’t inhibit you on Amtrak any more than traveling any other carrier would. With both itinerary changes, we had plenty of time to decide what to do. In the case of airlines, you rarely have the luxury of time, and too often the airlines will tell you what to do and you don’t have much say.
With Amtrak, we had almost 24 hours to adjust with the delay in Reno, and we had three options (probably more than that, but Amtrak offered us three options for our convenience). For the City of New Orleans cancellation, the Amtrak representative actually suggested we talk it over and call back when we decided what to do. We were able to decide quickly, but we had plenty of time (the real constraint was with cancelling our hotel and car rental reservations in New Orleans, but that worked out smoothly), because we didn’t need to decide for several hours at the earliest.
It’s all an adventure! I’m glad they found your baggage, anyway. In December, my sister and her husband were visiting relatives in Eastern Europe. They were there for 3 weeks including the cruise with my parents, and their suitcases didn’t arrive until the day before they were set to head home. Two weeks later, the case of wine they’d shipped that never did arrive showed up on their doorstep in Virginia. You never know what’s going to happen when you live to travel. 😀
Sounds quite complicated but like you were flexible and able to adapt to everything. I think that’s the best way to be in life, after all, most of the time when you need to deal with changes, they’re because of things outside of your control so you just need to roll with them.
Oooh, I have a nervous breakdown about making reservations in the first place, I’d be a nervous wreck! Maybe if you are used to travelling you get better at it. I winged the first three A-Zs I did, this year I have written more in advance – just because you can change entries at leisure to make them super-sparkly, and add stuff you forgot, or edit if you suddenly think they are too long etc. It also gives you more time to visit other blogs. As I write poem a day (I spent all March doing this!) it also means more time and space between writing and posting, so you can polish. Hope your travels continue well! ~Liz (Amazing Animals) http://www.lizbrownleepoet.com
Amtrak people were all wonderful. Everyone I talked to was tremendous. Despite the challenges, it was an overall positive experience.
Glad to hear you exhibited poise and command presence through this disappointment.
Did you ever find out why the train was cancelled with no hope of reschedule? That sounds dire.
Supposedly there was a hazardous material spill somewhere south of Memphis. I couldn’t track down any news reports, though, so I don’t have a good story.