Amtrak review: DC to Banff - Itinerary by Amtrak Vacations

Amtrak Vacations – The Booking Experience

First, it’s useful to recognize how best to organize travel on Amtrak. To this point, I’ve probably booked more than 100 rail trips over the past 40 years. My wife and our three children made repeated trips from Kansas City to Chicago, Chicago to Denver, Chicago to New Orleans, Fairbanks to Mt. Denali, and from D.C. to my family home in southern Connecticut. For the longer trips, we’d book sleeper cars and treat ourselves to first class dining and accommodation services, most notably on Amtrak’s storied City of New Orleans.

Now that I’m retired and travel alone, I wanted to push the Amtrak limits in a coast-to-coast trip from Washington, D.C.’s Union Station to the Canadian northwest, ending in Jasper, then Banff, and then Calgary. So, I started sniffing around the internet for opportunities on Amtrak, favoring segments in a private sleeping car.

Up to now I have booked all my Amtrak trips the way I booked all of my polar expeditions (including four Arctic expeditions and two Antarctic expeditions, all on Quark Expeditions): I would deal exclusively and directly with the operator Quark and its travel consultants.

For the cross-country trip on Amtrak, however, I looked at all of the moving parts and decided to respond to the invitation I received after I submitted an inquiry into cross-country Amtrak trips. Those moving parts included figuring out which trains would travel to my intended destinations, identifying hotels that could accommodate me on my way, and booking excursions available to rail passengers along my route.

Within an hour of sending my inquiry I got a response from Amtrak Vacations and its representative, Kevin Guadagnoli. Amtrak Vacations is not the same as Amtrak: working with Railbookers, a travel agency that specializes in creating customizable train vacation packages, Amtrak Vacations makes its mark by offering experienced advisors who have direct booking access to rail travel throughout North America (so it includes both U.S. and Canadian rail services).

According to its website, Amtrak Vacations is Amtrak’s national tour operator. It reports it has access to rates and availability you won’t find anywhere else, making it possible to plan the “perfect train vacation from any of the 500+ Amtrak stations across North America.” Its website notes three of its world-famous routes: The California Zephyr (connecting Chicago with the San Francisco Bay area), the Coast Starlight (traveling along the Pacific Coast daily from Seattle to Los Angeles), and Amtrak’s Empire Builder (connecting Chicago with Glacier National Park, Portland, and Seattle).

Kevin was a great listener: he was low-key, patient, empathetic, and exceptionally well-versed in what can be a confusing Venn-diagram of services and lodgings that work in conjunction with the steel rails. I figured I was asking a lot; and I recognize now that I seriously underestimated the complexity of options available to rail travelers. Kevin made the itinerary-building part of this trip seamless, probably because he was working tirelessly behind the scenes to assemble the trip I had in mind.

Once we established the goal of my trip (my being in Canada for the first week of July), we spent about an hour on the phone connecting a series of dots: I asked for a sleeper accommodation throughout the trip; done. Kevin knew schedules and partners – this became important because the trip included nights off the train – so we needed hotel options – and local excursions that the trip would allow for.

It’s clear from the results that Kevin knew what he was doing. He had some particular challenges that I was clueless about, most notably the fact that Seattle and Vancouver both were host cities for the 2026 World Cup. This likely drove up the cost of accommodations – indeed, in one instance a perfect hotel would work but only if I was able to stay for two nights. Kevin got the okay from me to make this change, and within a day he built an itinerary unlike any other, calling it The Canadian Rockies by Rail - June 2026.
The itinerary was custom-built around my goals. I would depart Washington D.C.’s Union Station at 4 p.m. on Sunday, June 28, 2026, in a roomette bound for Chicago’s Union Station. The train would arrive in Seattle on July 1, and head to Vancouver, B.C. (on a coach seat) departing at 1800 and arriving at 2200. There Kevin booked me a room at the Fairmont Waterfront and scored a 48-hour hop-on hop-off tour bus that I could use for the two days I will be staying in Vancouver.

From Vancouver the sleeper car will take me to Jasper, where I will spend July 4 and 5 at the Crimson Jasper. I’ll be taking the Icefields Parkway Discovery Tour from Jasper to Banff and spend the next two nights at the Hotel Canoe & Suites, where I’ll take a Mountains, Lakes & Waterfalls tour in and around Banff. On the last day of my itinerary, I’ll board a one-way shuttle from Banff, ending at the Marriott on site at the Calgary Airport.

I studied travel insurance options (typically I’ll insure my trips with Crum & Forster’s Travel Insured International) and elected to take Kevin’s recommendation for trip coverage through TripMate, underwritten by General Global Assistance ($1,089). Including this coverage, the total invoice for all travel, including rail, insurance, lodging, and excursions, was $12,234.85.
Practice points: Shortly after I paid for the trip, I received an email from the Railbooker’s transfer point person, who needed to know where I would be staying at the end of the rail trip – in Calgary. I booked the hotel (31,000 Marriott Bonvoy points) and my return flight on United from Calgary to D.C. (first class cabin, 17,000 miles plus $661.49). With that detail nailed down, I’m ready to board at the end of June.

My thanks to Amtrak Vacations, Kevin Guadagnoli, Railbooker’s transfer-point person, and Amtrak!