Wisconsin Great Northern Railroad — Attraction in Town of Trego

This is a complete tourist trap. My wife and I were very excited to have an elegant and romantic getaway, we feel like this experience has been totally misrepresented. *The service was appalling. From our very arrival the tone was awkwardness and rudeness. Instantly upon arrival The Host had rushed us down the length of the four train to our dinner table, only to seat us at the wrong table of a couple that had a similar last name. the train was nothing special and was in disrepair. Any possible appeal for a train Enthusiast has been drained from this charade. You can do two things on this train, sit at your dinner table; or sit in the bar car which is lined with restaurant booths. The train probably only travels total of one mile from where you bored at, following the interstate highway the whole way; and never goes above 5 miles an hour. You can easily jog a faster Pace Than This Train. the dinner was deplorable. Their food comes directly from Sysco distributors and is served in a very slow and cold for courses. My wife got the steak with your eyes burn to a crisp. I got the stuffed chicken breast, which I'm pretty sure was stuffed with chopped shallots; but the server and cook were unable to. We had overheard a different couple ask the server what the side dish was(chopped parsnips and sweet potato), but the server said she did not know what it was and that it "looks disgusting though" and that she was "just being honest". One positive I can say is that I did not get food poisoning. At this point I could see the despair on nearly every patrons face, as they sat and slowly pushed their food around their plates. Many people muttering under their breath "this isn't what I expected". I noticed people started ordering more and more alcohol, perhaps trying to fog the memory of this event. Let me tell you it's not cheap, especially for being in Wisconsin. My wife and I had ordered 4 Leinenkugel's to the tune of $16, after we were told they were only $3 a piece. (keep in mind that Leinenkugel's is sold for $13 a case less than an hour south from this location). the sleeper car was nasty. Each room with single Twin matress bunk bed, so you CANT snuggle with your loved one. No difference between the first class and the regular sleeper cars except the wall paneling and the first class is connected to the Caboose. And depending on which Sleeper Car you are in, you are sharing one bathroom with 6 or more couples at a time. the motel package. Surprise!!! the motel is run by the same people that run the train!:-) the Country House Motel is your typical crappy roadside dirty Motel with one difference, some of the train maintenance employees live right out of the motel. We got the pleasure of waking up to one of the train maintenance workers filling oil on his rusty old Dodge pickup right outside of our front window. It was then I knew we had to make a beeline to the motel office an check out to get as far away from Spooner/Trego as possible, but not before I was stopped by the very same maintenance worker asking if he had seen me last night on the train? Best part of the trip was the beef sticks on sale at the Econo Foods in Spooner.

Please save yourself and...

We arrived 2hrs before our departure because we drove 5hrs to get to this destination. The staff in the train depot were very friendly. We did the bed and breakfast train ride which included dinner and also hot breakfast the next day. The room was very clean and size as expected, just a little smaller than a stateroom on a cruise ship. The bar tender was very social and knew how to make the cocktails really well! Alexander the waiter did an awesome job serving everyone and giving both the history on the area we were traveling through as well as some funny jokes. The food was very good! We received a 4 course dinner on our ride and could barely finish it because of the amount of food provided. We had their house specialty old-fashion cocktails (for cash/card price) but coffee, water, ice tea or lemonade were included with dinner. The train ride was about 2.5hrs round trip from the depot - there were people who did the dinner trip only, they exited the train about 30min after returning to the depot. Once we returned to the depot we sat in the lounge and had a couple more drinks before calling it a night. Others sat outside by the fire pit for awhile. The rooms had their own bathrooms with shower and there was plenty of hot water for both my husband and I to take longer showers without running out of any hot water. The next morning we chose to have the hot breakfast which was again a big plate of food that we could barely finish and it tasted great. We intend to do this trip again as we fully enjoyed ourselves and would highly recommend to anyone to give it a try! (As for the several 1 star comments that we read regarding this train ride, I'm not sure why they gave the rating that they did - the food tasted great! I had the tenderloin steak which was done perfectly to my liking, their chicken and wild rice soup was amazing, their cooked carrots were soft and tasted great - not mush - the dessert was amazing but I was so full I could only eat half of it! - fyi..this is the great northern WI which is heavily WOODED so the ride was through WOODS! If you don't want to look at nature then this might not be what you're expecting lol...also there's a guy who land has 90 acres of OLD CARS AND TRUCKS, a salvage yard which nature had now grown in and around...my husband has an old hotrod that he fixes up, so seeing all sorts of really really old vehicles hidden in the woods was a treat! Some have likely been there over 50yrs!...train company doesn't own the land so don't blame them because you didn't want to see...

Disclaimer: I sent an email to customer service before leaving this review but never heard back.

First of all, I planned a trip months ago to celebrate a special occasion while here. We arrived at the station early for our dinner train to check in and was told that the train was running late. Which didn’t really matter to us at the time. After we border into our private dining car, we were then told by our server that she unexpectedly had double the amount of tables than she normally would have. Also, we were told that IF we wanted drinks faster than she could bring them, we could walk down to the bar car and get them. However, about 15-20 people that had come on the train as added open car guests were all at the bar. We had to wait to get drinks until they all had been served since they were there first. (On a side note: the other smaller bar on the private dining section wasn’t open) Then we went back to our private dining room and waited patiently for the food to begin. We didn't even get bread until 45 minutes AFTER the train left the station. And each course to follow was very slow and unfortunately the main course was only lukewarm. (Not to mention that the conductor had to help serve the guests) It really was disappointing. Since the train was running late to leave the station, we had to quickly return to arrive back by 8pm. About 1/2 of the train ride was in the dark so not much to see. My issue is that they NEVER should have let us SO many last minute open dining car guests that they couldn’t handle without compromising the guests who had pre booked their tickets. Although the view of the colors (which unfortunately weren’t super vivid) was still cool to see, and it was a unique experience, I wouldn’t go back. Overall, I was extremely disappointed and sad that I a special occasion that I had planned was ruined.

I will say, that I am hoping they have rectified the situation so that others won't have the same disappointing...