I first heard about Amtrak’s Zephyr train from someone I met at family camp last summer. After getting to know our family over the course of several hikes, she felt confident that our three kids would love taking this scenic train ride that extends from Chicago, Illinois to Emeryville, a city in California’s Bay Area, a distance that spans ~2,400 miles and would take no less than 52 hours. 

It sounded like such a unique trip, and I immediately put it on our family’s travel bucket list, but I also knew it did not sound like something Tim would be interested in. Being stuck on a train for 3 days and 2 nights (when we could have easily reached our destination in 4 hours via airplane) would not be my husband’s idea of a fun vacation. 

Now fast forward to last fall when I was starting to plan our family’s school break trips. It so happened that Tim’s work schedule was going to prevent him from joining us for Neko’s spring break over the first week of April this year, so it seemed like the perfect time to slot in this trip. Just me and 3 kids on a train for 52 hours …

When people asked me what we were doing for spring break, I excitedly shared our travel plans, which was often met with bewildered stares and trepidation-filled comments, like, “Wow, that’s going to be a long time on a train with kids.”

Oh yes, I know that is a long time, and I felt the same wariness. I could easily imagine the description of our adventure being “Murder on the California [Non] Express” (spoiler: the mom did it) with the kids asking, “How much longer?” exactly 15 minutes into our trip and the same question being asked at 15 minute intervals over 52 hours and my initial patience turning into dread and then anger and our crew of 4 devolving into COMPLETE AND UTTER MELTDOWN MODE WHILE WE ARE STUCK ON A TRAIN WITH 50 HOURS TO GO.

So yes I wasn’t oblivious to the possibility that our vacation could turn out to be a total disaster.

But my doubts were overruled by my greater sense that this could be one of the best trips I ever take with my kids. Charlie was on the cusp of turning 5, Bowie was almost 7, and Neko was 4 months shy of turning 9. They’re all at an age where traveling with them is more fun than a chore. I know that not too far in the future, they will prefer to hang out with their friends (and electronic devices if we ever let them own one) over each other and their parents. For now, they still view the world with pure earnestness and would see living on a train for 3 days as an adventure. They enjoy each other’s company (most of the time) and can still be entertained by good ol’ fashioned non-screen activities. The time felt just right for this trip. If anything, I was trapping them on a train to have them to myself for 3 uninterrupted days while I still could.

Since this was something I had never done before, I did a lot of internet research to plan and prepare. I’ll share the answers to most of the questions I had below and of course a recap of our actual time on the train. 

How is the train laid out?

The California Zephyr is made up of Amtrak’s double decker Superliner train cars.

There are usually 2 to 3 coach cars for coach seating and another 2 to 3 cars with 3 different types of sleeping accommodations: roomettes, bedrooms, and family bedrooms. 

Between the coach cars and the sleeper cars are two cars with communal space. There is an observation / lounge car that features windows extending up to the ceiling for grand views during your ride. Anyone can visit the lounge car and choose between seats that face the windows or booths with tables that can seat groups of 4. The lower level of the lounge car also has a small cafe where you can buy drinks and snacks (like candy bars, chips, Cup ‘o Noodles), a few additional booth tables, and a restroom. 

Next to the lounge car is the dining car, which houses 18 tables that can seat 4 people each. If you’re not in a group of 4, you will be seated with others to maximize seating. While this may make some people nervous, think of dining with strangers as part of the charm of train travel.

There are also luggage cars for checked luggage and of course engines to power it all. 

If you want to get a visual tour of the train, I highly recommend this video. There are many YouTube videos sharing people’s experiences on the Zephyr and the quality really varies. This one is not too long and well shot. I watched it with the kids while we were still in California to give them a sense of what the train would be like.

What is the Zephyr’s route?

Although the termini of the Zephyr is Chicago and Emeryville, you can of course get on / off at any of the 35 stops along the way. Several of the stops allow for fresh-air breaks, so you can get off the train and stretch your legs. Some stops are quite long so you could even take a short walk, which is what I did when we pulled into Denver. 

You can choose to travel east to west or west to east or of course, do both and make it a round trip. We met many people on the train who had taken the Zephyr multiple times; I especially loved meeting a group of women who were old friends and traveled often on the Zephyr together.

I’m not sure how frequently the schedule changes, but if you take it east to west, it’ll depart from Chicago at 2PM and arrive in Emeryville 2 days later ~5PM. If you take it west to east, it’ll depart from Emeryville at ~8AM and arrive in Chicago 2 days later at ~3PM. Amtrak times the route so that you enjoy the most beautiful scenery on the second day. This is when the train runs through Colorado, and you’ll watch the train climb through the Colorado Rockies and alongside the Colorado River.

We considered taking the train out to Chicago and possibly making a stop in Lincoln or Omaha for a day or two before reaching Chicago. Unfortunately, the arrival time in Lincoln was 3 in the morning and 5 AM for Omaha, and dragging 3 kids off the train in the middle of the night in a city we weren’t familiar with just did not sound like a good idea. Plus that meant getting back on the train during those early hours to make it to Chicago, so I nixed our aspirations for additional midwest exploration.

I have no real good reason for it but I ultimately decided to take the train east to west. Originally I bought tickets to stop for a day in Denver to visit my in-laws. The train arrived at a better time, around 7:30 in the morning. It was a hedge for if the trip was going horribly, at least we could break the train portion up but then I thought about lugging kids and luggage on/off a train twice by myself and decided we would just bite the bullet and go straight from start to finish. 

What accommodations are on the Zephyr?

With coach seating and 3 types of sleeper accommodations, there are 4 types of tickets for the Zephyr. 

Coach

These are the cars filled with the seats you typically see aboard most shorter distance Amtrak trains. There are 4 seats per row, separated by an aisle, so everyone is either in an aisle seat or a window seat. They have way more legroom than airplane seats and recline pretty far back but definitely not enough to transform into a fully flat bed. Most of the seats are upstairs but there are a few on the lower level. All restrooms for the coach cars are located on the lower level.

Sleeper accommodations

To get a sense of how the sleeper car is laid out, here is a diagram. As you can see among the 3 types of sleeper accommodations, there are significant differences in amount of space and amenities included.

• Roomettes: Each roomette is enclosed and has 2 wide-ish chairs that face each other. It reminded me of a larger telephone booth, so they are not roomy. Although it can accommodate two people, because it is enclosed, it does feel like it could be quite claustrophobic for two people to share for a long time. In the evening, an attendant can recline the two chairs to create a bed and then flip down basically a deep shelf to create a top bunk that one climbs up with a ladder. While a roomette advertises itself as accommodating 2 people, I usually saw it being occupied by only 1, especially if it was a senior citizen. It would require quite a bit of mobility to make it up to that top bunk so if you’re traveling with just 1 kid, a roomette would work. Roomettes do not have private bathrooms.

• Bedrooms: Unlike roomettes, bedrooms span most of the width of the train car with the aisle / hallway outside of the bedroom (they’re basically the width of 2 roomettes). There is a sofa and a chair that face each other. Each bedroom has a small vanity / sink area and a private bathroom with a handheld shower head over the toilet. They are the only accommodations with in-room bathrooms; all the others rely on shared bathrooms. At night, the sofa becomes a twin-size-ish bed and like the roomette, there is a deep shelf that can come down to create a top bunk. Some adjacent bedrooms have a sliding door between them and you can request to open it to create a bedroom suite, going back and forth between 2 bedrooms, similar to adjacent hotel rooms with a door between them. According to the site, each bedroom can accommodate 2 people though we could have easily had all 3 kids in 1 bedroom, at least at this age. It would be different when they’re no longer little kid-sized. 

• Family bedroom: Family bedrooms are located in the bottom levels of sleeper cars and can accommodate 4 people. Each sleeper car has just 1 family bedroom, so they sell out quickly. Similar to bedrooms, they also have a couch and chair that face each other, but it looks like both the couch and chair recline to create an L-shaped bed at night for 2 people to sleep in and then 2 upper bunks that can be flipped down. These rooms are wider than a regular bedroom since they span the full width of the train but are not as deep as a bedroom. Unlike regular bedrooms, it does not have its own in-room bathroom. We never saw this room but did meet a family of 4 staying in the family bedroom. They did mention it was a tight squeeze and definitely would not have been doable if their kids were fully grown. 

For a visual comparison of a coach seat, roomette, and bedroom, I found this YouTube video to be the most helpful.

To see a family bedroom layout, check out this video.

How much do Zephyr tickets cost?

The cost between coach and sleeper accommodations are definitely significant but if you don’t mind the lack of privacy and are a good sleeper, I thought the coach seats looked just fine. Plus, everyone has access to the lounge car, where you can enjoy expansive views from either side of the train, eat a meal at a table, and just stretch out. 

A ticket in sleeper accommodations does include meals in the dining car and also access to the lounge at Union Station in Chicago. The lounge had lots of good snacks, but you would definitely need to eat a lot of snacks to make up for the price between a sleeper and coach ticket. 

Prices do vary by season so to give you a sense of cost (as of May, 2024), here is a comparison table for a few different dates that I plugged into the Amtrak site. These are all traveling from Chicago to Emeryville, but I imagine going the other direction should be fairly comparable in price. 

While I considered 2 roomettes or a family bedroom for the four of us, I ultimately splurged and chose two adjoining bedrooms. Having our own private bathroom was important to me and I wanted us to be on the upper level of the train, and bedrooms were the only option that checked both those boxes. Two bedrooms cost us $4,788, so this was not a cheap trip. We clearly could have spent a lot less with coach seats or still less by choosing 2 roomettes or the family bedroom but when you have a 4 year old who still has frequent accidents (so sorry to call you out Charlie), I basically paid a huge premium to not clean up pee in the aisle of an Amtrak. 

I was especially happy to have our own bathroom by the last day of the trip. Several of the shared bathrooms were no longer in service due to people trying to flush items that do not belong in fragile piping! 

With such a wide range of ticket prices, hopefully one works for your travel budget.

What did I pack for the train ride?

I struggled packing for this trip. Since we first had 3 days in Chicago where the forecast was rain and snow, we needed to pack lots of bulky warm-weather clothes and rain boots. We wouldn’t need those on the train so those items got packaged up in our 2 carry-on-sized rollaboards, which were each stored away on the luggage rack in our bedroom. However, if we had brought more luggage, they would have needed to be checked or if you weren’t worried about theft, just left in the luggage storage area on the lower level of your train car. The bedrooms have very limited storage space.

All the items we needed for the train trip - 2 changes of day clothes, bedtime clothes, and toiletries - were packed up into my favorite packing cubes and placed into a light duffle that we could easily access while on the train. I am always worried about being cold so I packed mostly warm clothes but the train was definitely not cold, and we would have been fine in just light tops and bottoms. One day Charlie got so warm in the lounge car, which basically becomes a greenhouse during the day with all of the windows, that I just let her go topless.

Before the trip I had splurged on a pair of Birkenstock clogs. I had been eyeing them for a while, and they were the perfect train shoe - easy to slip on for walking around on the train and then off for lounging in our bedroom.

I also of course stuffed a whole backpack full of activities to keep the kids entertained. I actually ended up with more than I needed but in this case overpacking on the activities seemed like a better outcome than not having enough. 

Here’s what I packed in our activities bag:

• Card games: Port Royal, UNO, and Eye Found It (this one was new and therefore novel and enjoyed by all the kids)

• Activity books: Highlights’ Jumbo Book of Hidden Pictures, Brain Games Puzzles for Kids, and Crossword Puzzles for Kids

• Neko’s Kindle that we loaded with the next book from the Keeper of the Lost Cities series, which she cannot put down once she starts

• An iPad with new picture books, borrowed on the Libby App, for Bowie and Charlie

• Arts and crafts: good ol’ fashioned pipe cleaners; sketchbooks, coloring books and markers; and an easier and harder paint by sticker books

• Other items: travel chess, travel tangram

o one wants to deal with hangry kids so I did purchase some snacks in Chicago but we actually didn’t really need them. The meals on the train were more than filling, and because we weren’t getting a lot of physical activity, the kids and I were less hungry than usual. 

I also packed a spare tote bag that traveled with us when we went into the dining and lounge cars so we could easily port our activities, snacks, water bottles, and any valuables around with us.

The one thing I didn’t pack that I wish I had was a physical map of the US. It would have been a great tool to give the kids a small geography lesson as we traveled through 7 different states. 

I also wished I had packed more cash so that I could better tip the two dining car attendants and our train car attendant.

Boarding & initial impressions

We left Chicago on a Wednesday after 3 fun days of exploring. Our train was scheduled to leave at 2PM, and we arrived an hour before our departure time. Union Station is a large train station and by the time we walked to where we needed to go, we had about 45 minutes until departure. With sleeper accommodations, we were given access to Amtrak’s first class lounge, which offered an assortment of kid-approved snacks. One of the employees made sure to send the kids off with many bags of gummy bears, which of course they were thrilled about.

I often make life harder on myself than I need to, but for once, I chose ease and used Amtrak’s Red Cap baggage service to drive us and our luggage from the lounge to the train track, which would have been a 10 minute walk with kids and luggage. Our driver even took pity on me traveling alone with 3 kids and carried all of our luggage up to our bedroom. (I promise this is not a commercial for Amtrak.)

I knew it was not going to be a spacious bedroom, but I will admit my first impression upon seeing our bedroom was, “Well this is small.” However, the kids were absolutely charmed by our 2 rooms and immediately started to unpack their packing cubes and settle into their moving home. They loved discovering the 6” wide “closet,” which could accommodate no more than 2 jackets.

They asked if they could go explore, and I said yes but 1 minute later, they were returned to me by our attendant saying kids are not allowed to be on their own on the train. I was not thrilled to hear that and hoped they would ease up on that restriction later on in our ride – I wanted the kids to be able to carve out some adventure for themselves without my supervision at all times.

After I did a little bit of unpacking and settling in, we all went together and walked through the entire train. To get from one train car to the next, you press or kick a big button to open the doors between the cars and Charlie was initially very scared to traverse these 2 feet between shaking train cars (and also just trying to balance while walking on a moving train) but by the evening, she was assuredly kicking open the doors.

Since they weren’t allowed to roam around without my supervision, they got rid of me by declaring one of the bedrooms theirs, and I was to stay out (so much for trying to trap them on a train to hang out with me). They worked on their paint by sticker books, played endless rounds of UNO, and sculpted creations with pipe cleaners. Meanwhile next door, I read Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods” on my Kindle and enjoyed the scenery out of my window. Stretching out on the sofa that I had all to myself, I no longer felt like the bedroom was too small.

Even though the first part of the trip was through the flat midwest, I found the simplicity of this landscape to be peaceful and quietly beautiful. I was surprised by how often the train ran right next to backyards. I saw kids playing on their swing sets and felt like a voyeur being able to look into people’s homes from the perch of my moving bedroom. 

Eating on the Zephyr

Shortly after our departure, there was an announcement for all sleeper car riders to return to our seats because a dining car attendant would be walking through to take dinner reservations. Sleeper accommodations, while very expensive, do include all breakfasts, lunches, and dinners in the dining car. Dinners require reservations but breakfasts and lunches were first come, first serve.

Coach ticket holders could also eat in the dining car. They just needed to pay a la carte for their meals, which were $45 for a 3-course dinner, $25 for lunches, and $20 for breakfasts (again all prices as of April, 2024).

When we walked into the dining car for our first dinner, I really felt like we were walking into a restaurant. Each table was adorned with a white table cloth, a vase holding a single red rose, a bread basket and utensils wrapped up in white cloth napkins.

On our first night, we ordered the steak, the salmon, and two grilled cheeses and both the steak and the salmon were better than most hotel wedding meals I’ve had. They were tender and flavorful, and I was pleasantly surprised. Between four people, we got to sample almost everything on the menu over 3 days, and everything was pretty good. I’m not sure how often the menus change, but these were the selections during our trip.

Over the 6 meals we spent in the dining car, we got to know our 2 dining car attendants. One of them had been working the Zephyr line since 1989. The other, Carrol, is the woman I want to be when I grow up. She was a no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is type of lady, and my kids were so scared of her. She did not like them playing games at meals because it would mess with the efficiency of her expertly run dining room, so every time I saw her walking towards our table, I would whisper, “Carrol is coming,” and they would frantically clean up whatever game they had started to play.

Passing time on the Zephyr

Our meals in the dining car punctuated our days. We would alternate from hanging out in our 2 bedrooms to hanging out in the lounge car during the hours between meals. I found that the time passed by so quickly. We rotated through our various activities and chatted with others on the train. I indulged in a short nap each afternoon while the kids watched an episode of Dr. Seuss Baking Challenge.

Of all the items I brought onto the train, our two paint by sticker books definitely got the most use, and we even shared some of the sheets with other passengers on the train when we saw them eyeing our creations. That would have been an activity that I would never do at home, worrying that I had other things on my to-do list that needed my attention. But train time felt totally different. I felt no pull towards productivity. There was no wi-fi and often there wasn’t even reception, so I mostly had my phone on airplane mode. It felt like a return to a simpler, slower time, and I was completely on board (pun intended) for all the rounds of games and quiet art projects.

I did worry that we wouldn’t be able to get a seat in the lounge car during some of the more scenic passes, but that wasn’t the case at all. We had a front row seat through all the most beautiful parts of the Colorado Rockies, Utah, and Tahoe. I always made sure we weren’t occupying these communal seats for too long so others could get a turn but there was only one time when the lounge car was completely full. We spent most of our time at the tables where we could spread out our games and art while still taking in the scenery outside. Some of my favorite photos and videos from the trip are ones that I took of the kids casually playing a game at the table with stunning landscapes of America speeding by in the background. 

Sleeping on the Zephyr

When bedtime rolled around, we asked the attendant in our train car to come by and help us turn our sofa into a bed. I tried very hard to do it myself but after I broke out into a sweat, I accepted that I was going to need some assistance. He helped us get sheets and pillows from the upper bunk and folded down the sofa to create a bed that was somewhere between a twin and full-sized mattress. We decided to forgo the top bunks so Neko and Charlie shared a bed and I shared one with Bowie in the other bedroom. 

We brushed our teeth at the sink in our bathroom. We read books, I made sure the kids peed, and then we closed the blackout-ish curtains and the door to our rooms. Despite the small space, Bowie and I did our evening stretching routine on our bed before we declared it lights out. It was a cozy fit but the movement of the train aided in my sleep despite Bowie’s limbs smacking me awake multiple times.

In the mornings, our attendant came around to help us turn our bedroom back into a space where we could resume all of our daytime activities. 

My final thoughts

Our ride on the Zephyr was truly a unique trip. I would call it once-in-a-lifetime except that all of us agreed that we would love to do another long-distance train trip together. It wasn’t until the end of our trip when we were getting delayed by track bottlenecks that we felt a bit anxious to get off the train. We ended up getting into Emeryville an hour and a half later than expected, but for 52 hours we were completely content to be traveling via locomotive together.

I loved being in train mode with the kids. I had no daily demands, I had nowhere else to go, and so I just got to delight in this special time of family togetherness. Since the kids were happy to spend time alone without me, I even had time to recharge and stepped off the train feeling energized by pride – I did it! I checked off an item on our family’s travel bucket list while giving our family this experience to deeply connect. Hopefully my kids will remember this trip for a long time. I know I will.

Questions about the Zephyr or our trip? Hit reply if you’re on email or leave a comment (a login link will be sent to your email - sorry it’s such a pain!).

Read previous post: My One Travel Essential