Today we took the four hour Verde Canyon Railroad trip from Clarkdale. My husband had booked the trip because he thought it was something I might enjoy. I might have actually enjoyed the trip except for several issues mostly dealing with their COVID precautions. As the title states there was some good so we'll start there.
Good: My husband booked us first class tickets which meant snacks, more comfortable seating and less people in our car. The snacks are prepackaged in this time of coronavirus but were actually quite good with strawberries, grapes, crackers, a couple different cheeses and meats. There were also cake or brownie bites. It was fairly tasty and certainly a generous snack. The seating was also comfortable, what they describe as "livingroom style". The cars are quite well decorated and pleasing to the eye. There is also a full bar in the car as well as a restroom.
Also good was some of the scenery along the way. Some was quite pretty as the train winds along the Verde River.
Bad: The sound system is poor and we were barely able to make out most of the narration, especially with loud people around. Occasionally the employees would state something like "there's the Budweiser frogs" pointing out a rock formation that in their opinion might resemble the frogs from the old commercial. I'd rather have facts and besides what they said was elephant rock more closely resembled a Desert Bighorn Sheep.
The Exceedingly Ugly:
As I stated, the bulk of the problems are due to their health and safety regarding Covid. Their website states 1) everyone, passengers and employees, are required to wear masks inside the depot, museum and onboard the train. 3) Seating is spaced to allow social distancing onboard the train.
First of all, of the 24 passengers in our car only 6 wore masks continuously ( ourselves included), a few occasionally wore their masks and most took them off after they were first seated and never put them on again unless perhaps they grudgingly put them on when going to the restroom and some didn't even do that. Most everyone knows that on a plane for instance, one is required to constantly wear a mask unless eating or drinking. It wouldn't be so bad if the railroad actually cut the capacity by 50% and assigned seats that were socially distanced but there was a table for 2 directly behind me and another directly behind my husband. Maybe a couple of feet separated them from us. Additionally the people behind me were part of a group of six, with 4 seated across from them. They were all maskless and just talking up a storm and laughing across the aisle. They were also apparently anti-mask and I heard comments like " its no worse than the flu", "if I get it, I get it" and " if it's my time, it's my time". I just wanted to scream fine but why do you want to take me with you!
I thought we might be able to appeal to the staff but they also kept pulling their masks down to talk to passengers and to point out fake rock formations. We felt trapped, I did go out to the outside observation car but virtually no one out there was masked and they were all squeezed together by the rail.
Until the company can actually arrange seating meeting social distance guidelines and train their staff to enforce the company's own policy of requiring masks for employees and passengers aboard their trains, I cannot recommend this trip to anyone.
Odpowiedź od gospodarza
Nov 2020
We appreciate, and respect your review. We would add to this, for anyone reading it and considering to ride Verde Canyon Railroad, the following. We have very specific protocol standards that all of our employees follows. They can be found on the home page of our website. There is unfortunately NO WAY we can enforce the mask wearing requirement on another human being. We strongly suggest it repeatedly - at the moment of arrival, any time someone is not wearing their mask and through our own example. We daily make cancellations and provide refunds to anyone that expresses they will not wear the mask, or that they are concerned once they arrive. While we welcome everyone to come and take our train ride, we absolutely respect and encourage anyone who has the slightest concern to simply not do it.