A Less Than Perfect Premium Ride - Miami to Orlando With Brightline!

Not being able to see out of the windows must be infuriating - it's one of the best things about the journey, and Brightline would have been fully aware of that when they stuck it all over the windows anyway.

One of the main selling points about traveling by rail is that you can see the countryside rather than fly over it. They need to remove that wrap from the windows because it takes away a main advantage of traveling by train that is that you could see the countryside.

Aventura station exists for the Aventura Mall, which is one of the biggest malls in the US with 2,800,000 square feet of total retail floor area. The station will have a pedestrian bridge to go across to the mall but in this video, they provide shuttle service. It's interesting how at one point in time, you could've gone all the way to Key West by train, there was once a route called the Havana Special that ran from NYC to Key West and had connecting ferry service to Havana. The Overseas Railroad is an engineering feat, not only for the fact it's 113 miles but while 40 miles of track was washed away by a 1935 hurricane, every bridge survived it! However, the then already bankrupt Florida East Coast Railway was financially unable to rebuild the destroyed sections and the roadbed and remaining bridges were sold to the State of Florida, which built the Overseas Highway to Key West. Many of the original bridges were replaced during the 1980s. The Overseas Highway (U.S. 1, which runs from Key West to Fort Kent, Maine) continues to provide a highway link to Key West. Many old concrete bridges of the Overseas Railroad remain in use as fishing piers and pedestrian paths called the Florida Keys Overseas Heritage Trail!

The fountain depicted on the train wrap at 6:14 is Lake Eola Park. The lake is actually a sinkhole that is over 7 meters deep. The creation of the park and its fountain was advocated by wealthy Orlando resident Jacob Summerlin in 1883 after he donated a large tract of land to establish such. He offered the land around the lake on the condition that it be beautified and turned into a park. His sons named it Lake Eola after Eola J Allen, the niece of John Howard Allen, second mayor of Orlando. A fountain was first installed there in 1912 at $10,000 (or nearly 324K in 2023 money), and the rest is history as it became the official symbol of the city and has since been replaced and repaired. That said, the views of the relaxation of not having to worry about driving is part of the experience of riding a train, and whenever advertisement wraps the windows of a bus or a train, it makes the passengers inside feel like an afterthought. It's dehumanizing. For buses, it makes riding the buses more difficult since you can't easily see your surroundings and tell where you are, even if it announces the stops, so it's especially bad for first timers.

I hate windows that are rapped too. It is especially bad as it gets dark. It makes it impossible see anything at night.

You don't often see vehicles going backwards on the highway like @17:18

I am hopeful for Brightline's success. I've seen several 'first-day' videos of the premium service. What will make or break them will be the standard service 6 months from now.

Well done, thank you. It is about time to have an opinion other than airlines, and high speed trains. Look at Europe, trains everywhere. 👍👍👍. 10-15-2023

I definitely get you completely about the window wrapping. Unrelated visibility wise thankfully, from a crew standpoint, but a minor gripe I have about working the Polar Express holiday train schedules on my road, is when we wrap both the cars and locomotives in Xmas lights, which I feel just turns our Alcos engines into somewhat of an eyesore and depreciates some of the natural beauty of them.

I took the Brightline train from Miami to Fort Lauderdale in late October, and a few days later from Fort Lauderdale to Orlando. Luckily neither train had livery covering the windows but to be honest, from my seat on the right side, which I chose thinking I'd get some nice ocean views... I didn't get any interesting views at all, the train travels too far from the sea and for the most part all I could see were parking lots and semi-abandoned warehouses. The stations at Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Orlando were pretty nice, and the one in Fort Lauderdale is right near the center of the city, which is very convenient, unlike the one in Orlando that's at the airport, far from the city. The trains were nice, but I found the seats to be a bit too hard for the long trip to Orlando.

I don't know what brightline was thinking covering the windows like that

I’m from the U.K.,And even I can’t stand the windows in that train. For goodness sake BrightLine get that wrap off and let us Brits see some Florida landmarks and the SUN.

Just a shot in the dark, but on the NEC if the if there's a problem with PTC (which explains the penalty stop) the train isn't allowed to go faster than 79 MPH in ABS territory regardless of the speed limit. "Speed restrictions" sounds less complicated than explaining the intricacies of railroad signaling for the average passenger. I don't know the rules down there so that's just a hunch.

I guess you could say the bloom is off this Bright Pink rose... judging by your trip experience.

We went to Orland and back.. yeah the windows need to be fixed.. but everything was amazing.. they just started. Give them some time.

I support the "private" running of Brightline and wanna hope it becomes a big success . The flat wheel is an employee forgetting to rellease a hand brake ( just next to the locomotive ) . Unacceptable . Wrap covered windows is enough to never use the train for me sadly .

Hey, Brightline, I want to look out the window on a train. Not a very Bright decision to partially cover them. I guess this is technically "high speed rail." According to UIC, 155 mph is the minimum for dedicated track, 124 mph for upgraded existing track. So part of this line is HSR, but it ain't no TGV, Eurostar, or Shinkansen.

From my UK perspective brightline frequency is woeful, London to Edinburgh which is a five-hour journey has about 71 trips a day

Thank you for your comprehensive and honest review. I hope you share your comments with Brightline management so serrvice will be improved before I take Premium Class round trip from Orlando to Miami and back on December 27.:face-fuchsia-wide-eyes:

Best guess is the train came across a WILD detector (Wheel Impact Load Detector) which would explain the E-Stop and then a speed restriction.