Amtrak Superliner Roomette: A detailed guide

A detailed look at the Superliner Roomette sleeper compartment on Amtrak trains, including maps of routes, how much it costs, how it compares to other types of Amtrak rooms, and its features and amenities, or lack thereof.

0:00 Amtrak Superliner Roomette intro
0:28 What is an Amtrak Superliner Roomette?
2:14 Superliner Roomette vs. other rooms
3:37 Superliner Roomette amenities and details
4:56 Nighttime in the Superliner Roomette (beds and privacy)
7:02 Superliner Roomette prices (with examples)

A Superliner Roomette is a small private compartment with two seats and it converts into two beds at night. Only long-distance overnight trains offer any sleeping accommodations. Shorter day routes only offer seats. Superliner roomettes are available on Auto Train, California Zephyr, Capitol Limited, The City of New Orleans, Coast Starlight, Empire Builder, Southwest Chief, Sunset Limited, and Texas Eagle.

The Superliner Roomette is the smallest of Amtrak's sleeper accommodations, but also the cheapest, and you have a choice about the level you want to stay on. Plus, sitting in the roomette seat in the daytime and watching the scenery pass by is awesome. Seats face each other, so if you’re traveling as a pair you’ll get to argue about who gets which seat. If you’re traveling alone — and I’ve seen many solo passengers with a Superliner Roomette — well the world is yours.

There’s a small closet, good enough for two or maaaybe three coats or jackets. There’s also a little coat hook that you can pull down from the wall. In the daytime, sitting in the seats, your suitcases may fit on the floor beside your feet, or if especially small on the armrest beside you. Otherwise you can put your bags in the storage area on the lower level of your car.

Making the beds is simple. The two seats in the Superliner Roomette slide down and meet in the middle. On top of that, you place a thin mattress and a pillow and blanket, and there’s one bed. The top bed is just unlatched and pulled down horizontal, and it locks into place. It has the same mattress, pillow, and blanket. Your Amtrak car attendant, who has certainly already introduced him or herself, will be happy to do all the bed conversions for you. I personally like doing it myself. It’s like setting up a campsite.

To get up to the top bed there’s a step and the armrest to climb up. There’s a net on the open side to prevent you from rolling out at night. The space in the top bed is pretty tight, with no window and the ceiling right over you. It might feel a little claustrophobic to some, but this is where the gentle rhythm of the train at night comes in, to lull you off to sleep.

The door latches and you can draw the curtain across it at night to prevent people in the hallway from seeing in.

Both beds in the Superliner Roomette are two feet, four inches wide, or 72 centimeters. The bottom bed is longer — six feet, six inches, and the upper bed is six feet, two inches — 200 and 190 centimeters, respectively.

One of the key benefits for staying in a Superliner Roomette, or any sleeping accommodation, is that breakfast, and all your meals, are free. For as long as you’re on the train, you have your choice of whatever breakfasts, lunches, and dinners are on offer. As a lover of Amtrak food, I think of this as a major benefit of Amtrak sleeping accommodations. Passengers in coach seats have to pay extra for each meal. And all passengers, in a private room or not, have to pay for snacks from the cafe.

What does a Superliner Roomette cost? Well, it depends on the route, the days you’re traveling, and even the direction you’re going. Plus there are discounts for certain people but also add-ons you may want.

How it basically works is that you pay one price for the roomette itself, and then each of the one or two passengers pays a fare on top of that. And you are limited to two passengers in a Superliner Roomette. All the prices depend on the route.

There are some examples in the video of what the Superliner Roomette costs on different trains. For instance: California Zephyr from Chicago to San Francisco is $894, but only $547 going the other direction from San Francisco.

When you factor in the comfort of the bed over the coach seat, plus the free meals and the privacy, a Superliner Roomette can actually be a pretty good deal, especially if it’s split between two people. Just check the Amtrak website to get the real story for your trip’s prices.

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[TDWanderer]

*Have you ever ridden in an Amtrak sleeper compartment? What did you think?*

[mistiinseattle]

Roomettes between Seattle and Chicago now show over $1000 each way when booking 11 months out, for a senior rate. I am going coach lol. UPDATE: i just upgraded to a roomette and price was $300 more *each way* than I was offered when I originally booked this. My total round trip Chicago to Edmonds WA was now about $2200 so you can see how much things have gone up since this video. (And I have a senior rate.)

[Whatamidoinghere]

I took the Zephyr a couple of years ago with my 5 year old daughter from Chicago to Davis, California. The roomette was perfect for us and she was entertained with the scenery for the 2 days. Love the video!

[Schlarbiee]

Thank you for taking the time to film, edit and post this! Much enjoyed and appreciated 😁

[josephcampese]

@T1D Wanderer. You do Amtrak a great service by providing these videos. It's really something they should offer, considering their website is as clear as mud. Good job.

[robertflynn]

Very informative video, great job. This is the best video I have seen explaining the roomette. Thank You!

[pic]

Your video was awesome! Thank you for explaining the differences in the Amtrak sleeper rooms! They need to put your video on their website!😁

[SilverGreeneye]

Thank you! I’ll be riding the Empire Builder soon, and you’ve helped me feel better about my choice and what I’m getting into.

[emturtle]

My girlfriend and I are going to take out first trip to Washington on the Empire Builder. This is the best video I have seen so far explaining the roomette accommodations.

[oceanlover]

Such a thorough and well presented vlog! I’m looking forward to my first roomette experience in a couple months on the Coast Starlight, San Diego to Oregon. Thanks for posting!
✌🏻🙂✌🏻

[misslapid]

Enjoyed watching two of your videos so far!
I’ve been living in the USA for about 36 years now and it’s been my dream to ride in a sleeper train. Your videos answered a lot of my questions and I hope to fulfill my dream as soon as this pandemic is under control.

[tayzonday]

Nice video! I was looking for more clarification on how bathing and showering works!

[williamhill]

Great video, the Crescent Superliner Roomette has its own toilet, which is a great thing when you are an old man and have to pee a lot!

[zenaaubrey]

Watching this during the pandemic. And lawd knows I need a get-a-way. Ain't been really anywhere since March 2020. I'm about to go bonkers. Looking into a long but beautiful train vacation rite 🌝🏞️🌁🥞🥣☕🚝🗻🛤️🧳

[trainliker]

A luggage suggestion: It can really help to PLAN to take luggage that will stow well. You can find references online to the exact dimensions of roomette areas you can use. Mainly, this is a fairly wide step next to one of the seats for climbing up to the upper berth, under the seats, and a thin closet or, if no closet, hangers on the wall in the same area. A medium size roll along style suitcase can sit vertically on that step next to the seat. The space under the seats is wide and deep, but not very high. I use a sports type duffel bag in addition to the roll along. I can take some things out of the duffel and hang them up and then crush the duffel flatter and slide it under the seat. You can take out loose items, like extra shoes and slide them under the other seat. In this way, NONE of your luggage or loose items competes with you for the living area. it stays nice and open and airy. You can observe people in other compartments show look like they are sitting in the middle of a garbage dump. Your trip will be more enjoyable if you avoid that situation.

[jojodelta]

Amtrak is abysmal, to say the least. In desperate need of retrofitting. Especially in this pandemic, the seemingly 30(?) yr old "dusty" drapes and grimy fixtures are just gross. I feel very bad indeed for anyone over the recommended weight who needs to use the public facilities. You may as well use a shoehorn to get in and out of there if that's the case. Stay away from the desert!

[tephanieburnett]

Thanks for the clear and detailed information.

[Dusan]

I had to write comment. So informative. Thank you.

[NozomuYume]

The climate control instructions in the room are terrible and do not explain it well at all, so your confusion is understandable.
The air coming into the room is set at the master temperature of the carriage. It's the same throughout the whole car. The lever on the vent controls a louver to allow more or less air through. The "temperature" dial does nothing to change this. The dial rather controls a separate space heater in the wall! The reason it seems to do nothing is because it takes a while to warm the coil up, and the warm air from it comes from the vents below the windows.
So basically you control the temperature of the room through a combination of setting the vent to the level of air you want at the car temperature, and the warm air coming from the window vent controlled by the dial.
Note that the dial controls only a heater, so the coldest you can make the room is whatever temperature the vent air is. If the vent air is too warm, you can ask the attendant to turn it down a bit, but they don't like to do that because if other people complain the car is too cold, the attendant then has to explain to all of them how the non-intuitive dial control works.
In the daytime on a warm day the hall air is often cooler than the room air. If your room is on the sun-facing side of the train and it gets too hot you can cool the room off a bit by covering up the windows with white sheets.

[youtuuba]

As a person with a number of popular AMTRAK videos, I want to say "good job" on this one. About the only thing I would add is that the sleeper room rates differ dramatically not just MONTHS apart, but also DAYS apart. On most of my trips, I just call AMTRAK reservations and tell them which train I want to go on, and about when I want to depart...I usually can create some time flexibility when travelling, and they are happy to quickly run through prices....maybe my first choice departure date would result in an $1100 room charge, but moving departure a day forward drops it to $800, or moving departure backwards by two days drops it to $600. And usually, AMTRAK charges less when the train's sleepers are still mostly unreserved, and they increase the prices as the sleeper car gets fuller....supply and demand. But weekend travel, or travel close to major holidays, tends to bump up the price, so the daily price variations are sometime not intuitive.