Adirondack Railroad — Attraction in City of Utica

Very nice scenic and beautiful train ride marred by terrible organization. We took a train and boat tour from Utica to Thendara and everything was great, except departure organization. Train is great - old looking and spacious with comfortable seats and standing carriage for sightseeing and looking outside. Boat ride is scenic and relaxing. Many train employees are volunteers and do not have answers to basic questions, like when does the train arrive or leave. They are doing terrific job with being polite and professional, but it would be better to supply them with more information. Website says train leaves @ 4:45, but everyone else says 4PM. Town shuttle stops running before 4PM and last pickup is timed exactly for 4PM train departure. Not that you need a shuttle at all, because it is only 30-minute walk from town to the station. Might be even faster, if shops are avoided. Unfortunately, you are not sure what time train leaves and whether you have enough time to make it back. Train left at 4:45 sharp and we ended up spending 45 minutes waiting inside the train. Train employees do not know for sure what time train is scheduled to leave. There is a hotel with bar/restaurant right across the train station, but there is no way of telling if you have time for a dinner or a drink. You get a feeling they are trying to make you dine on soda drinks and snacks served by restaurant car. Besides this single hiccup, everything was great. However, sitting for 45 minutes in stationary carriage does scar an otherwise,...

It's a train ride. Not sure what exactly the purpose of this is when you can just take a roundtrip on many real trains in the region. I could see the appeal if you lived somewhere without rail service and this was more of a novelty. However, luckily we live in upstate New York where, while not perfect, opportunities for train travel are in no short supply. The route is less interesting than your average Amtrak ride. The food was subpar (pictured meat and cheese board) and for tea we were provided a pre-packaged tea bag (like at a hotel) with lukewarm water.

It's about one hour to Remsen station which has literally nothing to do once there. Upon arrival, you are handed 2 marshmallows and graham crackers with a sell-by date of 2020 and ushered to an empty field with sad looking fire pits. Aside from this, you are just stuck waiting for over an hour to head back.

The staff was pleasant but I find it hard to justify the cost. The kids in attendance seemed bored and I can't blame them. Can't think of any reason to not just take an Amtrak ride. Food is far better and you could have a...

We paid almost $150.00 for the 2 of us to take the train from Utica to Thendara. Total waste of money!!!!!! We should have asked for a refund! The food was so skimpy. Maybe worth $2.00 per person at best. The temperature outside was very very warm and it was so incredibly HOT in the train. NO AIR-CONDITIONING! Apparently it was not working?? They started handing out paper plates for the passengers to use as fans!!!! The bathrooms should have had multiple violations from the board of health. No running water. They had gallon jugs of water to use to flush the toilets. No water or soap to wash your hands. And they were absolutely disgusting! There were at least 200 people on the train. If each of them paid what we paid, they made about $15000.00! Where is all the money going? Certainly not in the maintenance of the train! Total rip off! We enjoyed the company of the people we were with BUT....we should have saved our money and done something else! I do want to shout out tho to the volunteers. They were working very short handed and they worked so so hard to...