A Great Way to Travel...? AMTRAK Coast Starlight ROOMETTE Los Angeles to San Jose
Hi there and welcome to Los Angeles. I stayed near LAX last night because of course I did- so I had a bit of a drive to get to Los Angeles Union Station this morning, which is where my Amtrak Coast Starlight train service was leaving from. The ride took around 40 minutes and cost $45. Los Angeles Union Station is known to be the Last Great Rail Station built in the US, finished in 1939, before the long and steady decline of rail ridership in the US began. The station is a mix of Spanish Colonial Revival, Art Deco and Mission Revival and frankly couldn’t look more early 20th Century California if it tried.
Before we head inside and have a look around, let me welcome any of you that may be new to the channel, my name is Kevin. I’m here to give you a self-funded and honest look at some of the best- and some of the not so best- airlines and hotels in the world, which I’ve been bringing to you full time for the past four years. Check out my hundreds of videos, scan the QR code or click the link in the description to learn more about the channel. First though, let’s head inside. The station was designed by the father and son team of John and Donald Parkinson who were also the designers of Los Angeles City Hall and a number of other buildings in the region. Different areas of the station have been restored over the past ten years, most notably the main hall ceiling which completed work in 2022.
Now a days, the station with its 110,000 daily passengers is the 13th busiest in the country and the 5th busiest for Amtrak. Amtrak has five primary services which start or end in Los Angeles. First the only shorter distance Surfliner which goes up and down the California Coast. For the long distance sleeper services there are four choices. The Sunset Limited
connects LA and New Orleans- and the Southwest Chief and Texas Eagle both connect LA with Chicago, the latter passing through Chicago. Then we have the service I am taking today, the Coast Starlight which runs up the west coast to Seattle. If you follow the channel, you may be rightfully thinking, why didn’t you just take one of the services from Chicago, where you just were to either here or San Francisco. Well, that was originally the plan. I was considering the Southwest Chief to LA or the California Zephyr to just outside of San Francisco. The reason I didn’t
was honestly a combination of price and simply not knowing if it’s an experience that I would enjoy. For a Roomette, the same type of room I’ll have today, those two trains were each two night long and ranged form $950-$1400. Three days and two nights is a long time to spend on any mode of transport especially if you’re not sure how you’ll feel about it.
Luckily, there are a couple of fantastic day trips throughout Amtrak’s system and that is why I settled on booking a Roomette from LA to San Francisco. If I loved it, there would always be opportunities to do longer services in the future. (In the end, I was quite happy with my choice). There are four primary categories of accommodation on the train. Coach, just a seat. Then Roomettes which I had which are a private space that can accommodate up to two people in it’s glamorous 23 square feet of space. Then you have the Bedrooms which are
larger and have their own en suite bathrooms. Finally, the largest are the Family Rooms, which are cool because they span the width of the train so you will always get the best view, but oddly enough, they do not have en suite bathrooms. Any of the sleeper accommodations include access to the Los Angeles Country State Penitentiary… oh I’m sorry did I say Penitentiary? I mean the Amtrak First Class Metropolitan Lounge that is just disguised as a jail. The lounge is, lounge like. If you visited an American Admirals club in the 90s, you’ve got a pretty good idea. There were packaged snacks available and we were given a copy of the
menus for on board the train here as well. There was also a briefing about our journey led by staff in the lounge and with that briefing, a very odd service trend began. I won’t say everyone, but definitely a majority of Amtrak staff that I encountered had a very odd vibe. They were all salty and constantly referring to the good old days and how Amtrak used to be better, etc etc. Sometimes it was subtle and sometimes it was a lecture about how things were. Just
very off putting, especially when in the lounge, lots of people excited to get on board and begin their journey which they may have paid thousands of dollars for. Once advance boarding was called, we were escorted to the boarding track. There were buggies available if you’d like, they made it sound like we’d be walking to Las Vegas… in reality it was a five minute walk. We watched a few trains pass through, the tail end of a police chase, time pass by, you know- normal weekday morning stuff.
Here is our Viewliner coming into the station now, looking all extra tall and awkward. For sleeper services, Amtrak has two primary types of trains. The Viewliners you see here are run throughout the country and are double decker with accommodations on both levels. The Superliners are single level and only run east of Chicago. One thing that was a bit stressful leading up
until you step on board, especially for a trip like this one where most of the good views are on one side of the train is that your room or roomette will be randomly assigned to you. From what I have read, you could call after making your reservation and request a specific room or level, but whether or not you’d be accommodated is not a sure thing. But the problem with this is, you have no idea which direction- so to speak- the train is oriented in until you get on board. When I made my booking I was assigned car 1403, room 3. So, I knew I was on the upper level, which I was happy about. But only once I stepped on board did I know I was on the good side.
As far as an overnight train goes, these roomettes do have a lot of features that I do genuinely enjoy. I like the central aisle layout. The seats themselves are comfortable and plenty wide. For one person or one person and a child, I think there’s plenty of room. It’s when you add a second adult that I think some might find it tight. It’s not that the room itself is too small, it’s that there’s literally no where to store your carry on except just in your floorspace.
My backpack was able to BARELY fit under the seat, my rolling bag, no way. You can check in bags and there are luggage storage areas on board for carry ons but if you are like me and like to keep your things with you, this is the reality. Each seat has an outlet and reading light and there are semi useful climate controls in each room. Note that there is not any Wifi. There are two things I don’t love about the rooms and the experience, but only one of them is a deal breaker for me and that is not having a lock on the door. You can lock your door from the inside, that’s not a problem. With the curtains closed you’ll have total privacy. But when you leave your room you need to lock it with prayers because there’s no other way.
I dealt with it by carrying a sling around with me on the train for this day trip, but if this was 2 or three nights and I wanted to spend a lot of time in the observation cars and what not, I simply wouldn’t be comfortable. That’s just me. You’ve seen on my channel both European and Japanese sleeper trains have ways to lock your doors- why we can’t have them in the US- where arguably it’s needed more than the other places- is beyond me. We left the station a few minutes behind schedule and headed for our first stop in Glendale. Amtrak doesn’t actually goto San Francisco, but rather Emeryville. If you book to San Fran you will
have a bus connection included. Between LA and Emeryville there are 11 stops on the 470 mile or 756km ride. The full Coast Starlight journey is around 35 hours, covering 1377 miles or 2216km. Soon after getting settled in, the car attendant will come around and take reservation times for any meals that are included with your car on that day. My ride today included Lunch and Dinner which both require reservations. You can also order and have the food brought to your room if you’d prefer that. For both lunch and dinner I chose the earliest times
simply in the hope that there would be less people dining at those times. After leaving LA, the views truly just get more interesting as you go until you get your first views of the Pacific near Ventura. If you’re enjoying the video and would like to support the channel there are many ways you can do so. A quick like on the video and subscribe helps videos with the algorithm. You could join my Youtube Memberships to get early access to some
videos and access to all of my Community Posts or you could check out my Patreon where I post the most and can help out if you have travel related questions. Whatever you do, thanks for doing it. Amtrak, a combination of America and Track, was formed in 1971 to consolidate multiple passenger rail services into a single system. On average they have around 20 million passengers per year and are frankly in this perpetual state of will it survive or not? Their fastest trains are along the Northeast Corridor and the rest of the service in the country are regional or sleeper services. Having an early lunch will ensure that you can be back in your room or in the observation car for the most beautiful coastal views which start around Santa Barbara.
Unless you are traveling as a group of four, you will be just about guaranteed to be sat with other people during meal services. I lucked out and ended up sharing both of my meals with the same couple who just by chance also flew in from Chicago the day prior but were heading up to Seattle. Here’s the menu. For sleeper services, all is included. If you’re in Coach, Lunch is $25 and dinner is $45. Lunch is a main dish and a dessert and dinner is the same plus an appetizer. Both meals include soft drinks. At dinner, one alcoholic drink is included. Breakfast is also available but doesn’t require reservations. I had the Grilled Patty Melt which came with Kettle Chips along with the White Chocolate Blueberry Cobbler Cheesecake for dessert. There are healthy-ish options available for each meal,
but it’s not a cornucopia of fresh vibrant food. It is all tasty, if not a bit heavy. The Patty Melt I’d give a 7.8/10 and the cheesecake a 6/10- the latter tasted a bit artificial to me. After lunch I enjoyed the coastal views and had a peak at the observation cars which are first come first served. Under the observation car is a snack car where anyone can buy snacks, but note, it did feel like the snack car was on a break more than it was actually operating. If I were you, I’d bring your
snacks with you, especially if traveling in Coach. After passing Guadalupe, the train turns inland and soon will have the first extended stop in San Luis Obispo which lasts for around 10-15 minutes. Stay close. The trains are fully non-smoking so this would be your first smoke break.
I wanted to see what the bed situation would be like so I set them up myself. My attendant could have certainly done it, but considering he was one of the saltier ones, I chose to avoid the eye roll considering I was just on a day trip. Both the lower and upper birth are 6.5 feet or 2m long, though the lower birth is quite a bit wide and has more headroom. The lower birth is 67cm or 26.5 inches wide and the
upper birth is 53cm or 21 inches wide. So, in aircraft terms, the upper birth is a decent business class bed and the bottom is a decent first class bed- both width wise. There are restrooms on both the upper and lower level, but the showers are below which towels are provided for. Once you turn inland, you are in the fertile central valley and begin to see some vineyards and pass through Salinas Valley, which is known as the salad bowl of the world. I actually ended up getting off the train in San Jose. The train is meant to arrive in Emeryville at 21:31. I had a 01:30 flight scheduled from
SFO which would have made that easy to catch. But a couple weeks before my flight American retimed it to 23:59, so getting off in San Jose around an hour earlier than Emeryville gave me piece of mind to make it on time. We passed through some unexpected oil fields? I think? Someone correct me please. Then it was dinner time. Dressed up with table cloths and all, I started with the mixed green salad with baby brie. Very basic, but fresh, 7.5/10. For the main I had the Amtrak signature flat
iron steak served with rustic mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables and a port wine sauce. The vegetables were gross but the potatoes and steak were decent, for being on a train. Overall a 7/10. For desert, the chocolate spoon cake with chocolate ganache puddling. I don’t think it’s a spoon cake, besides that fact that it’s a cake served with a spoon, but it was surprisingly good. 8.6/10. After that, I headed back to my room and
just enjoyed the sunset before pulling into San Jose, 2 hours after dinner. In general, I did really enjoy the trip as a day trip and would seriously consider doing other day trips in a Roomette. The scenery was beautiful, the accommodation was comfortable and the food was decent, but multi night overnights? I’m not too sure about that. It’s kind of like being on
a cruise but imagine you only had access to your oceanview cabin and a restaurant. I can understand why some love it as an option to see the country, but if that was my goal, I’d much rather rent a car and drive with the freedom to stop and explore places along the way. But that’s just me. So, I do really hope you enjoyed this trip report today. If you did, please be sure to click the like button and subscribe for two new videos each week. I’ll see you next time on American to Cabo via Dallas in First and Business. As always, thanks for watching until the end.
2025-03-17 12:00
