Want to know what it’s like to take the Amtrak Auto Train to Florida? Here’s my experience and tips on transporting a car and riding the Auto Train in a Superliner Bedroom.

Auto Train from Washington DC to Florida

My parents will be in Tampa, Florida for the next few months and we had two options for their car from New York: I drive it down or take it down on Amtrak’s Auto Train. If you read the title of the post, you know what we chose.

We decided that my sister and I would take the Auto Train and my parents would fly down the next day. (Why have all of us suffer on when only two of us can?)

Here’s how it works: You drive your car to the Auto Train station in Lorton, Virginia, which is right by Washington DC, and the train takes you and your car down to Sanford, Florida, right by Orlando.

You have to get to the station by 2:30PM since that’s the cutoff time for getting your car on the train. Because my mother loves to get to airports and such HOURS before departure, she made my sister and I leave New York at an ungodly hour and we got to the station at 11AM. Yes, that’s right, 11AM.

Because we were there so early, we had to wait in our car (sitting in a short line of cars filled with other early birds) for the booth to open at 11:30AM to let cars in.

Once we drove up to the booth, a magnetic number was placed on the driver’s side door and we were told to drive up to a marked lane.

Turn off the engine, leave the keys in the ignition, roll down the passenger side window, grab a maximum of two carry-ons per person for the train ride, and leave your car right there.

The Auto Train drivers will load up the car onto the train.

Go inside the station and pick up your tickets at the check-in counter. You get your boarding pass with your seat or room number and pick a time for dinner. You get to pick 5PM, 7PM, or 9PM. A perk of getting there 3.5 hours early (!) is getting to pick the dinner time first. We went with 7PM.

You can opt to pay extra for a bedroom instead of a seat, which we did. For two people, our options were to get a Superliner Roomette (two seats that convert to beds) or a Superliner Bedroom (a sofa that converts to a bed and a berth that folds down from above plus the crucial private bathroom) and we chose the latter.

The ride on the Auto Train to Florida is about 16-18 hours so I have no idea how people just riding in the seats are able to handle it.

Ok, so you know how I mentioned you have to get to the station by 2:30PM? Well, you don’t even leave the station until 4PM. OMG. SO. MUCH. TIME. WAITING.

At 2:30PM, an announcement was made to start boarding. Since we were in a bedroom, we got to board first.

The Auto Train Superliner Bedroom

Let me give you a tour of the room. Look to your right, you see a two seater sofa. Look to your left, a sink and seat behind it by the window.

The sink juts out and tucked around the corner from it is the bathroom complete with a shower.

TOUR OVER.

A note about the bathroom: The toilet flushes like the ones on the plane using very little water and a ton of suction.

They have instructions for the shower and that it’s best to take one sitting on the toilet since there’s no room to stand comfortably. Uh, PASS on the shower.

The room is TINY. They say it can accommodate up to three people (!) but I don’t see how that’s possible without ending in a murder-suicide.

My enthusiasm level dropped each hour I was on the train.

There is a little coffee and ice station in the middle of the train where I drank three cups of coffee within 3 hours. (This will come to haunt me when I’m trying to sleep at 2AM.)

We were starving by the time we boarded so we ate our packed lunch on the train after the 5 seconds it took us to settle in. I took a nap with the lull of the train putting me to sleep right away.

Before I knew it, it was dinnertime! Remember the two pink tickets? We took those with us to the dining car when they made the announcement for the 7PM dinner.

By the way, since the door to our room only locks from the inside, I had to take my laptop and camera with me to dinner.

Dining on the Auto Train

If you hate people like I do, dining on the train may prove to be a little difficult.

After handing in your tickets, they seat you at a table WITH OTHER PEOPLE. Since it was just the two of us, they sat us side by side and seated two strangers across from us.

On the table was a pitcher of water and another with unsweetened iced tea. Because I just had three cups of coffee earlier, I thought it would be a wonderful idea to fill my body up with more caffeine by chugging the iced tea.

We had a few entree items to choose from: Braised Beef Short Rib, Baked Sea Bass, Chicken Stew, or a lasagna. Everyone starts with a small salad and a dinner roll. I ate it all.

I got the short rib and wow, it was surprisingly good.

I really like my side dish of sour cream which I ate with some baked potato. It was a lot of food and I was able to eat only half of everything.

(All the plates are plastic by the way.)

Time for dessert! Choice of tiramisu, Jell-o, vanilla ice cream, or New York Style Cheesecake. I got the cheesecake with a strawberry topping. It was delicious.

Dinner and breakfast are included in the price so we weren’t sure how tipping worked so we left $5 on the table.

Sleeping in a Sleeper Car on the Auto Train

Now back to our sardine can. Keith, our sleeper car attendant, stopped in at our requested time of 9PM to make our beds.

The top berth was folded down to reveal a bed with straps you hook to the ceiling so you don’t roll off the bed and die.

A little ladder hooks to the side of the berth so you can climb up to your bed and you can pretend you’re living in a dollhouse.

The bottom bunk is slightly roomier but once the beds are made, there’s only about 6 inches of space between the sink and the bed.

Maybe it was all that caffeine or maybe it was the 3 hour nap I took earlier, or maybe it was that the whole bed felt a little gross but I didn’t sleep too well. Sleeping in the bed reminded me of sleeping in hostels where you can’t really get too comfortable because it feels, for a lack of a better word, icky.

PRO TIP: Bring a small blanket since the thin sheets and the scratchy blanket they provide are not enough to keep you warm even though we had the room temperature set to high.

They do make a stop at around 11:30PM somewhere to change conductors and to refuel.

I heard a passenger say they got off the train during that stop to get some fresh air and to stretch their legs for a few minutes so I guess that’s an option but I would be terrified that the train would leave without me.

Arriving in Florida

Breakfast is served in the same dining cars from 6-8AM. They make announcements and you just show up and get seated. No need for tickets and no set dining time.

You get a packaged crumb cake (bleh), banana, cereal, milk, warm bagels with cream cheese. I had some orange juice but it was basically orange colored sugar water so I switched to coffee. I had a bagel with cream cheese and overall, the breakfast was eh. We left a $2 tip on the table.

While we were at breakfast, Keith came to our room and remade the room so the beds were tucked away. We were scheduled to arrive at 9AM, but arrived 30 minutes early at 8:30AM instead. Yay!

We gathered our things and made our way off the train when they made the deboarding announcement. We tipped Keith $10 when we got off the train.

Ok, ready for this HUGE PRO TIP? (Get ready, this paragraph is mostly all caps.) MAKE SURE YOUR CAR IS ONE OF THE LAST TO LOAD by loading your car in closer to the 2:30PM cutoff time at Lorton, Virginia. It’s first in, last out. PEOPLE, it’s FIRST IN, LAST OUT.

UPDATE: Apparently, first in, first out is not always the rule according to the comments below by others that have taken the Auto Train. 

Since we were one of the first 15 cars, we waited AN HOUR AND 30 MINUTES for our car.

1 HOUR and 30 MINUTES!!

There were 142 cars on our train. We had to wait for 130 cars to unload before we got ours. Learn from my mistake.

A kid waiting near me said to his mom after the hour mark, “Well, that’s what you get for getting here early.” My sister and I repeated those same words for the next few hours.

Amtrak Auto Train Tips

• Don’t get there too early since it’s last in, first out. So if your car is one of the first ones to load, get ready to be one of the last ones to get the car back after you reach your destination. 
• Bring a blanket. I get cold easily and the scratchy thin blankets they provide do nothing to keep you warm. We were traveling in July and I was freezing in the room. You can adjust the temperature in the room but it didn’t get really warm.
• Bring a pillow if you think you’ll need one to sleep better.
• Bring ear plugs since it get pretty noisy at night from the sound of the train chugging and jostling along the tracks.
• Don’t forget to tip the servers in the dining car and your sleeping car attendant.
• Travel time is about 16-18 hours long so be prepared for long hours of sitting around.
• The room came with two bottles of water but we brought extra and I was glad we did.
• Don’t bring too many carry-ons since there’s VERY little space to store anything in the room.

The cost for entire trip for two people in a Superliner Bedroom and a vehicle was $742.00 one-way.

Update: We took the Auto Train back up to Washington D.C. from Florida in April 2017 and the cost was higher for the same room and car at $963.00 (one-way).

Using a Walker or Wheelchair on the Auto Train

The train ride is a bumpy one, jerking you around as you walk down the narrow hallways so it would be best for those using walkers to stay in the room unless absolutely necessary.

The hallways are narrow so a walker wouldn’t fit through them anyway.

When making a reservation, make sure you get a room or a set on the lower level and to let them know you’re traveling with a walker or a wheelchair. 

There are wheelchair accessible rooms which are bigger than the standard rooms.

I believe meals can be served in the room so you won’t have to break a neck trying to get to the dining car but make sure that is arranged beforehand so there aren’t any surprises.

Questions You May Have

Auto Train from Washington DC to Florida Schedule

11:30AM
Auto Train starts accepting cars into the station to be boarded.

2:30PM 
The absolute cutoff time a car can be on the Auto Train. They won’t take any cars after this time. This is also the time they allow passengers onboard the train. You’ll have to wait in the waiting area until this time after you drop off your car to be loaded.

4:00PM
The time the Auto Train leaves for Florida.

8AM – 10AM
Approximate arrival time to the Auto Train station in Florida.

Happy travels!