Amtrack

Do you mean a short trip (two hours or so) or a long, overnight trip? I think you need to consider the destination -- train travel is great but doing it solely for the train trip might not work; you need to have a destination in mind where the kids will have fun or see relatives or whatever. We use it, we love trains, but with small kids you need to know....

If overnight: you would need for sure to get a "sleeper compartment." This could be a big adventure for the kids, though if they are kids who have a terrible time falling asleep anywhere other than their own beds, or if noise bothers them, you don't want to do this. If they're pretty tough travellers and don't mind the constant loud "chuk-chuk" of the train over the tracks, get a sleeping compartment with two bunks; you and the little one take the lower and the six year old takes the upper. You can sit in this compartment during the day then pull down the beds at night. If you do not get a sleeper, you and the kids will have to sleep all night sitting up in the coach seats; they do not recline, and anyone and everyone can have conversations etc. around you. Sleeper compartments can be expensive depending on the route.

If it's a short "day trip," then coach seats are just fine. On some routes you must have a specific, reserved seat; on other routes you don't have reserved seats and must take whatever seats are available when you get on board -- which could well mean that you and the kids won't get three seats together, which I'm sure you'd want. Amtrak can tell you what the deal is on reserved or non-reserved seats on the route you want.

I have to be honest and say that the bathrooms on Amtrak can be fine at the start of a trip but a real mess soon after that.If your kids are fussy about bathrooms you could have an issue. Some trips, it's messy, others it's not. I would not let that stop you! But I thought you should know.

The food cars are either a "cafe car" with snacks (not good, very limited, runs out of things) or on some trains, a restaurant car with full meals, but the meals dont' offer much choice and I'd imagine there's little for kids specifically. I would not depend on their food service at all and would plan to picnic, though the kids would like a walk to the cafe car for a small snack, just for a change.

Bring LOTS FOR THEM TO DO besides look out the windows. Of course that's the point, the scenery, and they will like that, but at their ages it will not hold them for very long! I took a four-hour ride some years ago where a mom with two kids had brought absolutely nothing for them to occupy themselves and it was a nightmare for her and the other passengers -- she never produced so much as one toy or a deck or cards.

We take Amtrak to get from D.C. to N.Y. which is about three hours plus and it's terrific fun, but my daughter's done it at older ages -- seven, nine, 10. And we have stayed at the destination a few days before taking the train back home. DO take you kids by train; it's a great way to travel. Just think through the timing, destination and routes first. Amtrak will be able to help you --they have always had great phone service! Talk to a real person, not the automated reservations voice. Have fun.

Yes, we've used it.
Much better than an airline! No security, no fuss!

I believe that they do have a food car, but it's not very good. I'd suggest bringing your own.

We would use it again in a heartbeat! (short trips)

Well, you can catch Amtrak in Newton and a few other Kansas towns and either go West towards California or East to Chicago and change there to go just about anywhere you want to go. The thing I say to people traveling is to draw out the measurements of the beds in then cabins and then decide if it's for you. The rooms sound good but the beds are terribly small. For a larger person they may be too small and a handicap room might be a better choice.

If you get on at Newton it is the middle of the night and it's just not worth the effort to do the beds and stuff. A few hours later in the very early afternoon you are getting off in Chicago and then can do a sleeper cabin if you are going...say to Florida, that will take some time. Then you can really use the time in the sleepers.

If you go to the Amtrak website and do room searches they give some videos of the different rooms and you can see how tight it really is. Of course it is a good way to travel, no one has to drive and everyone can sit and visit. They can get up and move to different areas too.

I think the biggest deal is to bring some snacks that will keep you hydrated. It is pretty dry on the trains and if you have grapes, oranges, and other foods that have lots of hydration to them you'll fell much better.

My husband took Amtrak from Dallas to Chicago. He said the restrooms/showers were really dirty.

How long will the trip be? Are you talking 4 hours or 24 hours.

Most Amtraks have a snack car. Longer trips will have a dining car. BUt I would bring my own snacks for sure.

I'd think that kids will get bored after a while. There is really nothing to see from a train except stations and flat land. Unless it's a specialized train route.

And I personally would go nuts on a long train ride with two bored kids.

Hi T.,

I traveled on Amtrack from Philadelphia to Jacksonville...it was a looooooong trip. They do serve meals in the dining car, but not sure what meals are included with what packages, etc.

I had the same idea about the scenery, but depending where you go, you really don't see much. The tracks are usually bordered with trees, etc, so it is neat to see everything flying by at high speed, but I am not sure how much you would really see.

Now for a 6 and 3 year old, it may be a blast - they may not need super sites to enjoy it. Trains are amazing to little ones...

I think if the trip is not an extremely long one, they would have a great time. For them, it would be much more exciting than it was to me as a 30 something...lol.

Give it a try,
L.

We took our almost 4 YO and 18 mo old to St. Louis from KC over 4th of July. My first suggestion is to choose the station that is the last one in town, depending on where you are going. For the woman below who said that Union Station was expensive to park at, she's exactly right. We left from Lee's Summit because it was the last stop in town, it was free to park, and it cut 45 minutes off the trip.

Your kids are old enough that you probably won't have issues with sleeping, but ours wouldn't nap so it didn't work out as well as we would have liked. We will probably wait a few years before we do it again.

The price for tickets is really reasonable, especially with gas being so expensive.

The scenery was a bit of a disappointment. We also thought it would be a fun way to see some of the countryside, but most of the tracks were overgrown with brush. Occasionally you could see farms and rivers, and as we got closer to the depots, the foliage cleared out, but in general, there wasn't much to see.

We didn't spend any money on food which is nice. The toughest part was that we had to bring car seats and an umbrella stroller for when we got to STL, and the little one isn't potty trained yet so we had a lot of extra "baby" stuff to pack. Since I had to take the girls to find seats, my poor DH was stuck chucking all our stuff on by himself - 3 backpacks, 2 rolling carryons, 2 car seats, 1 stroller and 1 cooler.

The one thing that was stressful was that once we got there, there were signs up saying no more trains were running because of the flooding. Luckily, things turned out fine; they moved us to the evening departure (there are only 2 a day for that route), but it was disconcerting for a bit.

Overall, I would say it's a good, fairly inexpensive choice with kids who are the age of yours or older.

We took out two kids (2 & 4) from Kansas City to St Louis this summer and it was a GREAT experience!
We got on at Union Station which is a little difficult bc 1. parking is $10 a day, 2. you have to walk a long way with all your luggage and kids, up and down stairs, 3. You have to make two stops in Independence and Lee's Summit before you even get out of KC. It would be much easier if you have a friend or family member drop you off in Lee's Summit so you don't have to leave a car and you save at least 45 minutes.
You can bring whatever you can carry onto the train with you. No one helps you and you don't check luggage so make sure you can carry it all. With that said you can bring snacks and coolers if you want. There is a dining car where you can get hot dogs, sandwiches, chips, drinks and even alcohol if you want. But even better, just bring you own! Also remember to bring different activities for the kids. Our phones and ipad were great, books, coloring books, games, etc. Although that train itself it fun for the kids they will get a little bored.
The seats are pretty roomy, better than an airplane. You can get up and walk around all you want. The seats recline too. There are luggage areas at the back of each car for big things and you have an area above your seat for stuff you want to get to.
Our trip so St Louis was a perfect distance for us. It took about 5 hours but seemed to go fast. We made it a all about trains weekend. My two year old son is obsessed with trains at the moment, I'm sure most are. Once in St Louis we did the Museum of Transportation which is all about trains, the Zoo which is awesome and FREE. You do have to pay to ride the train though, but it is worth it and you can see a lot of the zoo from the train. Last we went to Grants Farm, again FREE. You ride a "train bus" as my son called it, through a wildlife park and see tons of animals up close. Once you get to the park area it is like a small zoo where you walk around. While there you get two free glasses of beer bc it is owned by the Budweiser family, also a nice perk. It was a great park!
Overall a fantastic weekend for my family and we decided we need to do it every summer.
I forgot to mention my husbands mother lives there so she picked us up and had a booster seat so we only had a take one car seat and didn't have to worry about a car which was nice and easy.
Have fun! Any other questions just ask. It was our first time too so we didn't know how to do it either but I is fun bc it is a new adventure!

We've traveled on Amtrak from Kansas City to Hermann, Missouri. You can buy food on the train or bring your own. This is a short trip so we just got seats. Longer trips you can purchase sleeping compartments. You can get up and walk from car to car and stretch your legs. For your age children, you'll want to bring games and things for them to do.

Traveling with Amtrak is great with kids. You can take a cooler with snacks & drinks or they have a dining car. The nice part is there's lots of room in your seat area & you can get up & walk around as much as you need to. We took my son on the train to Chicago when he was 2 or 3 & he still talks about it. My mom & I recently made the same trip again on our own & it was very relaxing.

Yes!! I don't know how far you are going but we went from KC to Chicago (about 7-8 hours) and LOVED IT! You can take all your own snacks, but they also have meals and snacks available for purchase. We were amazed at the leg room and loved the "scenic" car where we went to play games and enjoy the scenery. It was also much cheaper than flying. Have fun!