Sept 9-10, 2006

The journey to Disney World

Its 8 am and I entered my local subway stop on my way to NY's Penn Station. The Amtrak train I am leaving on doesn’t leave till after 11, but its best to be early, and since I am paying for a sleeper upgrade, I can hang out in the Club Acela room while I wait. They have complimentary beverages and snacks.

I made it to Penn Station in plenty of time, 9 am for a 11:08 departure, so I powered up my laptop, found they have free wifi, sent out some emails while waiting. Also started to watch The Warriors on DVD.

One thing that startled me a little, NYPD entered the room and I thought they were going to inspect peoples luggage, but just wanted to make sure all the luggage people had, had their name on it, and if not, they had luggage tags to give them. Not only did mine have my name and address on the piece itself, but also the tag that Disney supplies.

The announced what track to go to a little before 11, but didn’t say go to east or west entrance. So I followed everyone to the west gate, where we all stood waiting. Meanwhile I notice that the east gate is manned and no one is over there, so I walk over, and after a quick ticket check, I was on the way down the escalator for the waiting train.

Again, like on my last trip, I had room number 1. I guess because I booked so early. I get the first room. The porter for the car starts to tell me how and where things are, but I told him I rode this before, so I know everything about the roomette. I just ask what time do they serve lunch. Told me about 12:30

I prepared my journey by getting a route map from Amtrak's website. Then by inputting each strop along the way, and knowing the train number I am on, I was able to construct a time table for my trip. I mark down the times, and notice we pretty much run on schedule throughout my trip down to Orlando

Just like last time, I got a roomette sleeper room. My two pieces of luggage are with me in the room, one chair has my big piece and the backpack sits on top of the covered bowl, when I am not using it.

Since it is close to lunch when I boarded, I don’t start setting up my laptop or DVD player till after lunch.

I have lunch while passing through Philadelphia. I know I am here when I see the hot air balloon by their zoo which is right next to the station. I have the usual Cheeseburger with potato chips, diet Pepsi (they don’t serve coke J ). And for dessert, they have what they call a 'mud pie', which is chocolate cake with some whip cream on it. Since this is a moving train that hits bumps, they don’t have any deep oil fryers, so no French fries are offered, nor anything that requires any deep frying.

The person who boards at Philly and is assigned the room opposite me, tells me her son who lives in Orlando, paid for her train trip down. She looks over the room, and simply says, what a rip-off.

I now setup my laptop, and DVD player. I finish watching the warriors on my laptop. Send some more emails just using my cell phone. For those who read them, you have to excuse the typos, I have this little keyboard accessory for the cell phone which allows me to type words reasonably fast. But only 3 or 4 words appear on the cell phone display at one time, and I am concentrating on pressing the right keys, which most of the time I did, but sometimes typos crept through, which I didn’t notice or take the time to correct if I did.

The gps for the laptop works intermittently, but it shows me what I already knew from my last trip, we are hitting speeds of slightly over 100 mph with electric powered locomotive before we hit Washington DC where we will switch over to diesel power for remainder of trip. The tracks north of Washington are in better condition, there are no single track sections, like in the deep south, and I think electric power locomotives have more power over their diesel cousins. Also the tracks in the south are at ground level, with crossing gates, so all those factors mean most of the trip, we will be lucky doing 60 to 70 mph, most of the time 30 to 40.

In the smaller stations, passengers must disembark and board the train fast, as the most time we stay still in some stations is 3 minutes. In Washington however, we will be sitting there for about 20 minutes while the electric locomotive disconnects from our train, moves away and allows a diesel locomotive to attach and connect to our train.

We pull into Washington station at 2:35, a little early. Pulled out after 3 pm , right on schedule. On my last trip, I remember not seeing anything that I could recognize This trip, I now see the top of the Capital, Smithsonian, and Washington and Jefferson Memorials. Don’t know how I could have missed the Washington memorial last time as it is very easy to spot.

We left Richmond about 5:30, we should have left at 5:17, but 10 minutes is nothing, still have plenty of distance to cover and plenty of time to make it up.

I had a 6:30 reservation for dinner in the dinning car. Last year, they only took reservations for dinner, but this year, they also did it for lunch too. Breakfast, I probably be the first one in. I had salad. I didn’t like any of the dressings they had available, so I mixed some of my own out of mayo and ketchup. For the main entrée, I had the special, chicken fried steak with mash potatoes and rice. For dessert, the mud pie again. I remember last trip, they had better desserts then this.

According to my schedule, I am somewhere on or near the Virginia, North Carolina border. On the way back from dinner, met a mother traveling with her daughter who couldn’t believe the size of her roomette. Evidently, before she boarded this train, she was on another and had the family size room. When the porter showed her this room, kept thinking this was a mistake, and questioned everyone who passed her, she really thought she was being cheated.

The porter asked me what time he should make up the upper bunk bed, told him, don’t worry, I will, not sure what time I will be going to bed. Watching South Park on my DVD player, and Alf on my laptop, depending on my mood.

I used notepad on my laptop to type emails, then copy and paste to a web mail form to send some updates via my laptop. I do this because I never know when I will have a good signal or not. This sometimes means I will send two emails saying the same thing, as I loose a signal after I sent it, but before I get a acknowledgement.

Its 9:15 and we just stopped in Raleigh, North Carolina. Like I thought, we made up the lost time.

I made numerous attempts to get online for Saturday nights chat room on TMFL website, actually was able to send a couple of messages before giving up and going to sleep. Or at least laying down with all my electronics turned off and just watch the country side go by.

Kind of a funny comment. I think I like to sleep with my head facing the trains forward motion, but the way the beds are setup, you have to sleep with your feet facing the front of the train. Thinking about it now, I guess its kind of a safety think, if the train stops short, your feet can take more stress without injury of hitting the wall then your head can.

Living in New York City most of my life, I know you can pretty much get any type of food you want, any time of the night. I notice as we travel through lots of small town main streets, how quiet they are, no night life.

I fall asleep and wake up after 5 am. I guess I slept through the stop at Savannah, Georgia and the next stop is Jacksonville, Florida. I don’t know how we are doing time wise, but breakfast isn’t served till 6:30 am. I fall back asleep and wake up again about 6:45, get dressed, pack up my electronics and head to the dinner car.

I get into the dinner car just as we are pulling into Jacksonville at 6:55, so we are running very early, but the workers on the train are afraid to say it, so as not to jinx as we still have several more hours to go. Had breakfast with a nice gentleman who is under doctors orders not to fly and this is the first time taking the train.

I should have mentioned this before. Even if there are tables available, they will not sit a single at a table, but will invite one or two people to sit with you. If you are a couple, if you are the first ones there, they may let you sit across from each other, but more likely will ask you to sit on one side of the table so they can sit others at the same table. Since I take my backpack and place it next to me, I will only be sitting next to my backpack.

Breakfast is a simple egg dish mixed with cheese and sausage links served with potatoes. No dessert is offered for breakfast. They did offer some pieces of fruit first, but I declined it.

As the sun was coming up, I notice it is starting to rain. But off in the distance, I can see the sky is clearing, so hopefully it isn’t once I arrive in Orlando. Pretty soon, I see a site that this New Yorker hardly sees, a rainbow J

The stop before Orlando is Winter Park, so once we are pulling out of there, it is about 15 to 20 minutes to Orlando. I pack up and am ready to leave. Last trip, right before entering Orlando station, we pass by what I found out was Church St station. If you are not familiar with this, it is not a working train station, but a retail night life kind of place. Some people told me it's very seedy, so don’t go there. When we pass it, we pass a old steam engine passenger train, so this trip, I am ready with camera to take photos of it. But we pass it so fast without any warning, I don’t get any decent photos of it. Oh well, maybe on the return trip.

I get off at Orlando and start walking towards the parking lot to look for my ride to Pop Century hotel. I reserved Bob from Sunray to get me from the train station to Orlando. Amtrak had us coming in a little late, while we actually made it in a little early, so Bob was just pulling in and we recognized each other from last year.

Since the 9/11 anniversary was tomorrow, we chatted and told me that this time of year, he does a couple more pickups then normally would. He also shows me the welcome to Disney world signs on the highway and tells me some people ask him to pull over so they can photograph the sign. He politely tells them, this is a major highway and he can't.

People have asked me, why travel by train, so let me give you my reasons. I like model and real trains. I carry allot of electronics with me (Walking Radio Shack Terrie? J ) which includes a semi large rechargeable battery I take with me to the theme parks to help power my camcorder. I don’t think I could board a plane anymore with this. So this just makes boarding a plane a hassle. Did I mention I like trains? J I am sure if you looked at my photos, you see lots of things that looks boring to you, but not to me J

20 minutes later, I am checking into Pop Century. I love the sign on the way in that asks 'are we there yet?' yep, I think I am J