Overall, I have to say that I would recommend looking into an Amtrak vacation. Their packages include train tickets, hotel rooms, rental car, and even a few activities.
Train Experience: We feel that maybe having one of the roommettes or a sleeper car would have been a better option just to allow us a little more comfort since we are not seasoned rail heads. However, the coach seats are pretty spacious and offer plenty of leg room. They also have outlets at each seat to charge your electronics, so no worries about your cell phone or laptop dying when you have a longer ride. The WiFi wasn't that great though, and I wasn't able to do too much on my laptop off of the Amtrak WiFi.
We also learned by watching other rail heads how to make better use of the luggage policy. Each passenger is allowed two carry-on's and one personal item. The sizing is different from airport sizing though, so my personal item I use on planes counted as a carry-on for the train. However, the Amtrak Reddit threads and other passengers that we saw, used one of those carry-on's as an ice chest. Reddit recommended freezing bottles of water to use as ice to keep cold items cool for the trip. Next time, we plan to go that route and have more than just a bag of snacks.
The food was not that bad, to be honest. My cheese tray and the egg bites were my favorites. Considering that you are confined to items that can be heated in a microwave and you are basically a captive audience, the pricing was also not terrible
Hotels: Our hotel experiences were hit or miss, to be honest. We opted for the 5 star hotels, and when we got to Atlanta, we were not impressed. The hotel itself was very nice, however, we were surprised that the room only had double beds. When you've stayed at a 2 star and had queen beds, you tend to expect a little more from a 5 star. The location also wasn't super close to anything except the rental car place, which was a bonus. Also, the reservation only included breakfast for 2 of us, and trust me the buffet, while impressive was not worth $35 a person.
Our hotel in Nashville was downtown so there was plenty around us. We also had a suite, so we had more space and bigger beds. Our hotel in Pigeon Forge also had queen beds and was a decent sized room. Our only issue with that one was that it wasn't on the trolley route for Pigeon Forge, which isn't a huge issue.
Rental Car: We had a great rental car experience, and the staff at the Avis on Courtland in Atlanta are amazing! I will say that I haven't driven anything as large as the van we got, so I had some issues parking at first, but by the end of the trip I had the hang of driving it.
Experiences: The two experiences that Amtrak booked for us were both solid. We had tickets to the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville and a Jeep tour through the Smokey Mountains in Pigeon Forge. Highlight recommend both.
Overall, Amtrak did a great job on our trip. We're already planning to do another one, but this time we may not do a trip with a 13 hour train ride.
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