I agree with the staff comment. My last three trips have been met with fairly rude and uninterested staff both in the lounge, and out. As a mode of a to b transport it still seems to work though it is now comically expensive. As an ‘experience’ which they seem to like to suggest it is which may be how they try to justify the price it has completely lost its way.
No hosts to show you at least to the carriage, people who have never been on it before simply wouldn’t have a clue where they were going anymore. Ask for a cup of tea (no food) at 0900 on the way towards fort William and get it at 0715 and get looked at rudely when you’re still in bed.
It’s just a general disappointment of late. It certainly no longer feels like they care.
As a semi-regular user of the Highland sleeper (around once a month on average), I thought I might share some of my views. I use either the Inverness section or the Fort William section (as far as Spean Bridge) for walking holidays/visiting friends on Skye and in the Lochalsh area, and love using the sleeper, particularly northbound, as it is such a fantastic experience waking up to the beautiful scenery on both the Highland Main Line and the West Highland Line, and very convenient for my travelling needs too (especially as the Inverness sleeper connects perfectly with the first Kyle train of the day). Admittedly, it is getting very pricey, particularly at peak travelling times such as Friday nights, although there are still some decent enough advance fares if you choose the quieter midweek services a couple of months ahead (I honestly don't find £99 first class single from Euston to Spean Bridge on Wednesday 10th April, with 16-25 railcard discount, to be *too* outrageous given the first class berth for the night, breakfast and distance involved). I am genuinely quite surprised by some of the comments on here about the attitude of the on-train staff, whom I have found (almost without exception) to be excellent on both these routes; whenever I've travelled, the Inverness and Fort William-based crews have given a fantastic welcome, been very helpful at times of disruption to the service and genuinely seemed to enjoy their work, and I don't think this has changed at all in the four years that I have been a regular user. I find that there are some really fantastic characters who work these routes, who enjoy sharing a good laugh with me and all the other travellers. Admittedly, everyone can have bad days at work, and I don't see them every day. I have no experience of the Lowland-based crews, nor do I travel often with the London-based staff, so there may well be attitude problems among those crews I never/rarely travel with. As for getting your tea two hours earlier than requested, this seems to be a very silly error on the crew's part, and not one which I can imagine the generally very attentive Fort William crew ever making; in my experience, they don't even start delivering coffee/breakfast to passengers doing the full journey to Fort William until about 08:30, unless they have specified an earlier time (or have requested it in the lounge car, in which case the latest time is 08:15 so that they have time to collect all the trays back in). I always ask to have my breakfast in the lounge car around 8am on this route, and so far this request has always been fulfilled. I wonder whether in your case, your host had mistaken your berth for that of a traveller getting off at an intermediate station like Crianlarich or Tyndrum (or wherever), hence their look of surprise when you were still asleep. The renumbering of the Mk3 berths from their original berth numbers (i.e. lower bunks odd numbers, upper bunks even numbers from 1-24) to individual room numbers 1-12, which happened earlier this year, can still cause confusion among staff- sometimes they have to think twice about where e.g. 'room 8' is. I have also heard that the current breakfast ordering system (where you have to fill out a card indicating your choice) is leading to some confused orders.
I personally much preferred the old check-in system where every two coaches had their own host, and you checked in with them, and gave your breakfast order to them, before you boarded. It was much easier (I thought) for passengers unfamiliar with the service to find their coach/berth in this way, and it did seem to be a more personal way of greeting passengers. It was also easier for the hosts too, I think, as they knew the face of everyone who was travelling in their carriages and had all the breakfast orders on one sheet. I think that the breakfast order cards cause more problems than they solve, especially as hosts now have to spend (in my experience) the first thirty minutes of each journey chasing passengers who've forgotten to fill it in/who haven't filled it in clearly etc. I didn't really understand the need for the new system, but I'm sure the management had their reasons. I wonder whether all these changes were *really* necessary, and whether it might not have been better to wait until the arrival of the new stock? I can well believe that some of the staff are stressed given the number of changes to their ways of working during the course of the past year, especially when many of these had remained fairly consistent since First Group days, and perhaps even earlier.