Iskra
Established Member
I’ve travelled on 4 or 5 Italian Night trains now, usually in a solo cabin. I’ve always found them reliable, good value and comfortable so far.
Currently however, I’m on the Siracusa-Milano Central Intercity Notte that departed yesterday. I thought I’d treat myself to an Excelsior cabin, to give it a try- which came in at more than double what I paid for ICN Milano-Taranto and my connecting IC service two weeks ago in a solo compartment.
First of all, the train was 40mins late arriving. I understand that night trains aren’t the most punctual and especially ones that go on ferries, but this particular service seems to be very delay prone, I’ve been tracking it over the last week and on one journey it was 400+ minutes late, and I’ve observed it very late on a number of occasions previously. It doesn’t matter to me as I’ve got a lot of buffer time at Milano. Is this poor punctuality causing essential maintenance time to be missed I wonder?
About an hour before the train was due, I got an email saying the air conditioning wasn’t working in my carriage, and allowing me to cancel my journey or offering a 25% refund if I continued with my journey.
I then board and initial impressions of the cabin are positive; having your own toilet is useful, there’s a comfy day-seat and table which will also be useful to me on my journey and there’s a small bottle of Prosecco on the table, which is a nice touch. But the problems soon start appearing the moment you try and use anything…
Obviously due to the air con fault, the cabin is very warm. Unfortunately, the window can’t be used at the same time as having the blind down, because it’s a tipper/hopper window. Next, the blind is jammed and the long plastic-handle covered in oil, presumably from excessive engineering lubricant in order to get it to work. The blind is jammed, just below the level of the window, meaning neither the window nor the blind can be used. I spend some time wrestling with the blind in the extreme heat, and as I give up we pull into a station, where by some form of divine intervention the aircon kicks into life. It’s not at its best, so I go to adjust it and I can’t because the dial is missing. Anyway, the cabin did eventually cool down throughout the night but it took a couple of hours to get to a normal temperature. So I was just left with no privacy and occasional invasive levels of external lighting, although on a positive I did get some stunning moon-views and the sunrise too.
Luckily, there’s a shower for the morning so I can get cleaned up… …well, firstly no towel is available, secondly there’s no shower curtain so the entire room gets wet, thirdly the pressure isn’t sufficient to have a meaningful shower, fourthly there’s no hot water and finally, the entire shower panel door is loose and swings open uncontrollably exposing electrical wiring behind while you’re attempting to shower. To top it all off, the bin cupboard under the sink also doesn’t close, so that attacks you from the opposite side as you try hold the shower panel shut and clean yourself. The bathroom door handle is also loose and it’s a struggle to close it properly.
I can’t really fault the staff, the attendant has given me a free additional and much-needed espresso this morning which has helped, but the additional breakfast option for excelsior customers only of some form of Sicilian Brioche also hasn’t materialised.
So basically, this is a premium priced product that doesn’t work and is in a poor state of repair, my advice to you all is to not bother paying for Excelsior cabin, and to save the money and just get a standard cabin where there’s a lot less to go wrong and if things do go wrong you’ve got a decent value fare anyway.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Just to add that in hindsight, I should probably have taken the full refund and re-booked on the overnight Frecciarossa from Reggio Calabria to Milano Centrale in one of the better classes of travel; if you can get the Executive class on that it is a great cabin and the journey is much faster than the Intercity Notte.
Currently however, I’m on the Siracusa-Milano Central Intercity Notte that departed yesterday. I thought I’d treat myself to an Excelsior cabin, to give it a try- which came in at more than double what I paid for ICN Milano-Taranto and my connecting IC service two weeks ago in a solo compartment.
First of all, the train was 40mins late arriving. I understand that night trains aren’t the most punctual and especially ones that go on ferries, but this particular service seems to be very delay prone, I’ve been tracking it over the last week and on one journey it was 400+ minutes late, and I’ve observed it very late on a number of occasions previously. It doesn’t matter to me as I’ve got a lot of buffer time at Milano. Is this poor punctuality causing essential maintenance time to be missed I wonder?
About an hour before the train was due, I got an email saying the air conditioning wasn’t working in my carriage, and allowing me to cancel my journey or offering a 25% refund if I continued with my journey.
I then board and initial impressions of the cabin are positive; having your own toilet is useful, there’s a comfy day-seat and table which will also be useful to me on my journey and there’s a small bottle of Prosecco on the table, which is a nice touch. But the problems soon start appearing the moment you try and use anything…
Obviously due to the air con fault, the cabin is very warm. Unfortunately, the window can’t be used at the same time as having the blind down, because it’s a tipper/hopper window. Next, the blind is jammed and the long plastic-handle covered in oil, presumably from excessive engineering lubricant in order to get it to work. The blind is jammed, just below the level of the window, meaning neither the window nor the blind can be used. I spend some time wrestling with the blind in the extreme heat, and as I give up we pull into a station, where by some form of divine intervention the aircon kicks into life. It’s not at its best, so I go to adjust it and I can’t because the dial is missing. Anyway, the cabin did eventually cool down throughout the night but it took a couple of hours to get to a normal temperature. So I was just left with no privacy and occasional invasive levels of external lighting, although on a positive I did get some stunning moon-views and the sunrise too.
Luckily, there’s a shower for the morning so I can get cleaned up… …well, firstly no towel is available, secondly there’s no shower curtain so the entire room gets wet, thirdly the pressure isn’t sufficient to have a meaningful shower, fourthly there’s no hot water and finally, the entire shower panel door is loose and swings open uncontrollably exposing electrical wiring behind while you’re attempting to shower. To top it all off, the bin cupboard under the sink also doesn’t close, so that attacks you from the opposite side as you try hold the shower panel shut and clean yourself. The bathroom door handle is also loose and it’s a struggle to close it properly.
I can’t really fault the staff, the attendant has given me a free additional and much-needed espresso this morning which has helped, but the additional breakfast option for excelsior customers only of some form of Sicilian Brioche also hasn’t materialised.
So basically, this is a premium priced product that doesn’t work and is in a poor state of repair, my advice to you all is to not bother paying for Excelsior cabin, and to save the money and just get a standard cabin where there’s a lot less to go wrong and if things do go wrong you’ve got a decent value fare anyway.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Just to add that in hindsight, I should probably have taken the full refund and re-booked on the overnight Frecciarossa from Reggio Calabria to Milano Centrale in one of the better classes of travel; if you can get the Executive class on that it is a great cabin and the journey is much faster than the Intercity Notte.
