Rocky Mountaineer, Vancouver

Awesome, you must try and do it if you can. Train amazing, food out of this world, views just took your breath away. Staff and guides did a great job, considering it was the first run of the year and lots of new staff to Train. A special shout out to Jason who is a true asset to the Rocky Mountaineer.

What an absolutely spectacular venue to host a wedding function. I attended my cousin’s wedding reception here over the weekend and I was blown away. The venue allows for ample space for outdoor cocktail hour and an immensely large space for indoor set up. The washrooms are conveniently located and the staff did a tremendous job in ensuring guests were taken care of. ✅✅✅✅✅

Bucket list experience, travelling through the breathtaking Canadian scenery. First class service from experienced professionals. Food and drink excellent. A must do.

This was a hard review to write. There were parts of our tour we absolutely loved, and others that were lacking tremendously. Overall, before going into the train experience, the views you will have just by being on the railway and seeing the natural beauty of BC and Alberta are breathtaking. You also get to experience things like the Spiral Tunnels that you won’t have by driving. So that alone makes the train worth doing once in your lifetime. So starting with the likes. First off, the train cars themselves where you will be spending your day are well apportioned, well designed and quite comfortable to spend a day on the rails. The food on the train is also,amazing, especially given you are on a train. I’d recommend then Soufle for breakfast and the Port Chop for lunch. The snacks throughout the trip that are provided are also amazing. The hotels they have partnered with, including in Kamloops are all great. And given that they move your luggage between hotels and organise the tours in each city (like Jasper, Banff, etc.) it is an easy vacation. Now for the dislikes/misses. I would say a lot of your experience on the train comes down to the train hosts. First off, in Gold Leaf, despite their commitment to four hosts per train, that wasn’t the case, likely due to challenges in staffing. And on one legs of our trip, from Vancouver to Jasper, the hosts were all with Rocky Mountaineer for 3 months or less so the quality of the stories suffered, as did the quality of the drinks. On the Banff to Vancouver route we had a host with 11 years of experience, and you could taste the difference but also there was way more stories that were on point. Another obvious miss was in Vancouver on the bus from the hotel to the train. They had a host on the bus who seemed like they should know the details of Vancouver, but pointed our numerous things incorrectly (easy to tell when you live here) but also whom didn’t seem to know how to use a microphone. Finally in Banff they had one agent doing check ins for the return trip. But there was over 100 people to check in so most of that evening was wasted in line when they offer “online checkin” (which the agent told us wasn’t valid for reasons unknown). A few changes I would make doing it again is add extra days in Jasper and Lake Louise. Being there for only one night doesn’t seem like enough time. It will also give you time to recharge as the train and tour buses almost every day can be draining and just having a day to rest here and there are beneficial. Also, make sure to bring your own snacks (as hunger can strike at odd times like on a bus) and be ready for the unexpected. Our train got delayed in Boston Bar due to a police incident ahead and we spent many hours just waiting in the train. They keep the food and drink coming but the communications seemed a little lacking. Especially when they said the train manager had to walk a couple of kilometres into town to get info. I would expect they would have a satellite phone on board in case of emergencies.

What a great trip! Learned so much after having been a veteran mountain western Canada traveller. Lots of neat facts and trivia and history mentioned along the way. The hosts are great about filling in gaps and adding “colour” of stories and historical events that happened along the way. Good that is served is of very high quality and presentation is very good. Service on trip is excellent! The people were a huge part of making the trip even a better experience. Well worth the cost. We travelled from Vancouver to Kamloops to Banff then shuttled up the IceFields to Lake Louise had lunch over looking the spellbinding lake views. Like out of a travel magazine! Louise was still frozen but there is never a bad day to be there. Worked our way up to Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge and had a great meal. Like I mean great! And then returned on a slightly different route from Jasper on the Rocky Mountaineer to Kamloops to Vancouver. A different perspective from Kamloops to Vancouver as we were on different train tracks on the return journey. Overall exceeded expectations!