There are few better ways travel than taking a train. I love driving, but tit can be difficult to enjoy the scenery. I love flying, but being cramped in an economy seat for more than a couple hours gets old. You can get the best of both worlds with the train. And right now, Amtrak is offering a great deal on train travel for this spring through their USA Rail Pass Sale
Details of the $299 USA Rail Pass Sale
The USA Rail Pass is a fixed-cost pass that lets you ride up to 10 Amtrak segments within a 30-day period. This brings the cost down to just $30 per segment if you’re able to maximize the pass! Given some of the routes you’re able to ride with the USA Rail Pass, it’s quite a deal.
A segment is defined as boarding and disembarking any of their trains, so anytime you would normally book a connecting ticket, it would use multiple segments (e.g. Kalamazoo to Denver, connecting in Chicago would require two segments).
An example of the savings: a ticket on the California Zephyr from Denver to Sacramento on January 26, 2023 costs $141 at time of writing. This would qualify as one USA rail pass segment, effectively costing just $30. Even if you don’t maximize the pass and only book a few long-haul segments, it could still be worth it.
Amtrak is offering their $299 USA Rail Pass Sale between January 10-20, 2023. So you have a few more days to take advantage of this offer if you think it is something you can use. It’s regularly priced at $499, so this is a 40% discount.
Amtrak’s Rail Pass Terms and Conditions
- The USA Rail Pass is not a ticket—it is used to obtain all tickets for travel.
- USA Rail Pass holders must reserve and ticket each trip on Amtrak.com, the Amtrak app or with an Amtrak agent prior to traveling.
- The pass validity period is 120 days following the date of purchase.
- The pass expires 30 days after the completion of the first segment.
- USA Rail Pass is good for coach travel only. Upgrades to business class or private room accommodations are not permitted.
- Once the first travel segment is reserved, you must complete your travel within the selected travel duration of the pass. The travel duration period begins on the first date of travel, not the date on which the reservation was made.
- USA Rail Pass is not valid for travel on Auto Train, Acela, Thruway bus connections (7000-7999 series), and any segments within Canada. It is valid on all Amtrak trains, including their long cross-country routes.
- Travel is restricted to four one-way trips between two cities, and to all cities in between, over the same route.
- An unused pass fully refundable if requested within pass validity period (120 days) and no segments have been booked.
- If a pass holder has booked travel, pass is also fully refundable up to 48 hours prior to the scheduled departure of the first booked segment.
- If a refund is requested within 48 hours of scheduled departure of the first booked segment, the pass will be refunded, less a 25% cancelation fee.
- Pass is completely non-refundable following the scheduled departure of the first booked segment.
- Changes and cancelations to segments are allowed within the applicable validity periods.
- Pass has no remaining value following the validity period—even if no segments have been booked or used.
- USA Rail Pass is non-transferable.
Final Thoughts
The downside is that you can’t upgrade any of your travel with the pass. Given that my interest in primarily in overnight trains, this isn’t ideal. I’d also want to bring the kids, and multiple long days and night of coach travel isn’t appealing. But it might be possible to work it into a larger trip where we fly some sections that would require overnight coach train travel. For overnight train travel, I definitely prefer Amtrak sleeper accommodations.
