I had an amazing experience on my first Brightline trip from Orlando to Miami in the Premium category! From the moment I arrived at the premium lounge, I was greeted with a warm and professional smile by the staff, who ensured I felt comfortable and well taken care of at all times. The breakfast in the lounge was exceptional, with a delicious variety of fresh, high-quality options that truly exceeded my expectations. When boarding, I noticed the train’s immaculate cleanliness, which gave me great peace of mind. The seats were incredibly comfortable, making the nearly three-hour journey fly by. I was impressed by how quickly we arrived in Miami, all without sacrificing any comfort. The onboard staff's service was outstanding; always attentive and willing to help with a genuine smile. The combination of efficiency, comfort, and top-notch customer service made my trip a memorable experience. I will definitely recommend Brightline to all my friends and can’t wait for my next trip with them. Thank you, Brightline, for redefining the train travel experience! 🤗
Brightline proves that mass transportation can be efficient, convenient, comfortable, and clean. The experience is seamless from the stations to the lounges and trains. The service onboard is friendly and professional. Details matter: the seats are spotless and comfortable and the bathrooms are too. Above all the trains are on time. Highly recommend to anyone contemplating ways to get between Miami, Aventura, Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton, West Palm and Orlando. The Miami and West Palm stations are in the heart of bustling urban centers. Aventura, Fort Lauderdale and Boca are not as connected for walking so plan a ride share service to get anywhere from these stations.
How on earth can they expect to operate a business relying on this app? We were dropped off in WPB by friend and we told them we would take the Brightline back to Fort Lauderdale. Well, the app was uncooperative from the start. Signing up you have to type in all of the requisite personal information. Attempting to enter the state on the credit card info, you face a pre-filled field with “Alabama” in it. Nothing I did would allow me to type in “Florida”. Kept at it without any success. Reloaded the app….nothing. Finally I found hidden on the bottom a scroll that I had to manipulate to Florida. Why on earth do you have to type in everything, but then need to find the scroll to Florida?? Next I had entered all of the passenger info and attempted to pay. Now the app refused to do anything other than say “oops, something went wrong”. It did this until I finally gave up and took an Uber home for $140! This is the first and last time I will ever try to take the so-called “Brightline”….not so bright if you ask me!
This is one of the best designed travel’s apps I have seen. The experience of traveling on Brightline from Orlando to Miami is head and shoulders above any airline experience and any other railway I’ve been on. The app just adds to that. You can quickly (as in the app is responsive) and easily book, make changes to itineraries and pick an change seats. It’s even easy to add a trip that was booked by someone else (corp travel agency) and then I can make the changes I need. I will never drive or fly from Orlando to Miami again!
I love taking the brightline every day. It makes my commute easy and happy. The staff is amazing in the Aventura and WPB stations and the trains of course. Everyone is courteous, professional and well trained. I can tell the recruiters have a good eye bc everyone seems to like their job and treat us passengers w love and respect. I am very concerned with the elimination of the 40 ride monthly pass. I have been using it for 1 year and i accepted my job in WPB bc of this 40 ride monthly pass. The Brightline corporate office should be a little more supportive of us commuters since we are in the trains every day. Please don't eliminate this 40 ride monthly pass. Thank you! Jorge
I have been a happy Brightline commuter now for a year and a half and love it. The trains and service are great, and it sure beats being stuck in Broward and Dade County traffic. The new app took a little while to figure out but now I use it without any issues. Unfortunately Brightline is a victim of its own success and is now more crowded and expensive, but I will use as long as I can afford it 😉
Super easy to book tickets. Once you arrive at the station, you literally are checked through and at waiting area in less than 10 minutes. Snacks and beverages available. Accessing the train is easy. The seats are comfortable and riding is so relaxing. As I said, I will never drive to Orlando again.
Took Brightline for the first time and it was wonderful. The stations are clean and bright and very accessible. The staff were very helpful, the train left right on time and arrived a few minutes early. The train ride itself was very smooth and seats were super comfy. Better than making the drive from orlando to west palm. Just sat back and relaxed.
Suggestion, in the announcements you should mention what to do with the garbage we generate on board, napkins, glasses, cans, etc. Second, the parking ticket paid in advance did not seem to be recognized by the automated system. We will continue to inform and thank you infinitely for this dream come true!
Finally a public transportation experience that appears to reflect how things operate and executed as in Europe. It took some time, however this will eventually change the view for train rides in the US drastically. Kudos to the initiators and facilitators. And hooray for those using it.
The only thing I don’t like is that if you have to edit your trip and go back to the dates the prices appear to go up for the time slots previously selected. I have mTBI so I often forget or make the wrong selection if I double check before purchasing I sometimes end up with a higher rate than original. Other than that it’s helpful.
Enough said but I would like to add the app has improved from the previous version… which is good. Especially when the previous was involved in the data breach. So fingers crossed for this one!
Overall the app is the quickest/easiest way to book Brightline travel. I like that you can modify the trip easily through the app or add other riders. Main feedback is that customers receipts are not stored in the app or account online - only the trip history. Please bring back the receipts!!
Second to none! Always a great experience! Thank you for this lovely way to travel ...my daughter lives in Miami and I love that I'm no longer battling I-95 -- Brightline changed my life!
The title of this review says it all. The iPad version of this app is the same screen size as the iPhone version, which is annoying and rather hard to use.
Brightline in general does a bad job of providing timely updates. The app is an obvious solution. Now I need to look for an email with a link to the train status. It should be in the hamburger menu on all app screens.
The train get delayed most of the time For an hour. That’s terrible especially if you’re paying a high price for one seat. And they don’t even give you a discount for the delayed or 5 dollars back.
Parking confusion, and then lack of directional signage leading to and at Orlando terminal was frustrating. My first Brightline experience was not good.
Does this update seem better because the old app was so terrible? Yes. Is this new version of the app actually pretty good? Also yes. There are still some flaws, like if you want to change the guests on your trip you have to start over the entire flow. I also wasn’t able to add my past trips, which doesn’t really cost any functionality but it is a shame not being able to see them. It also noticeably lacks Apple Pay, but it sounds like that may be coming in a future update. Bottom line is: there’s plenty of room for improvement, but this app really is much better, and certainly benefits the entire Brightline experience. Props to Brightline for actually investing in a decent app, and of course props to the dev team for putting it together (and making it better🤞).
Enjoyed a day trip to Miami with a food tour in Little Havana. Having transportation ready in Miami made the trip a joy. The only downside was the customer service representative on the return in Miami. We were tired and wanted to return on an earlier train. The customer service gentleman told me that I would have to go online, cancel, and rebook. I told him that my phone was just about to die and asked if he could do it from the terminal. Not a chance- he said that we would just have to wait for our original booking. I wish that I got his name because he was so unpleasant. We were rescued by a security person at the scanner when we tried to get into the lounge. When he saw that we were early, we explained that we wanted to get on an earlier train but needed to plug in the phone so that we had power to make the change. His response was “no need, we can take care of it for you.” We quickly got on to a 1/4 full departing train. Problem solved.
I don’t even know where to begin describing how bad brightline’s software products are. Core processes (i.e. booking a trip) not working half of the time, trips and tickets disappearing / not showing in the app in the first place, absolutely unusable list of past trips, inability to turn on auto renew on pass, pass renewing at the wrong time and at the wrong price if you manage to turn on auto renew - it’s all there. Icing on the cake - pass prices went up significantly lately and it’s very hard to book a trip - everything is constantly sold out. My wife has been forced to use brightline for commuting on a daily basis for the past 4 months and the experience is all-around horrible. Well, except the trains themselves - they are kind of nice. But we are looking forward to the day we move closer to our jobs to never have to use the brightline software products again. As someone from the software development industry, it’s truly beyond me how can something of such low quality be approved to go to production. I’m not sure i’ve ever used software that’s THAT bad ever in my life. Fascinating.
App still not working properly— cannot change seats
I had high hopes for the new app because the prior version was awful during my last trip in February. I Checked my pre-existing reservation for Orlando in September and saw that I had been assigned backward facing seats for both legs of the trip. (With the prior app you couldn’t tell which way your seats were facing until you boarded the train). So I followed the instructions on the website about how to change seats and it said it could only be done on the app. However the app won’t let you change your seats and when i click on modify reservation and change seats it tells me there are no trains running the dates I selected. Even though I have an existing reservation for those dates. So I drove to the station today to see if they could change the seats for me. Nope. While the employees are lovely and want to be helpful they could not assist me because the app was not working. They did take my information and I hope someone gets back to me. For the amount of money Brightline charges there should not be these repeated technological challenges with booking.
When it first released back when the train launched, the app worked just fine. Ever since they reopened the train last month, this app is almost the opposite of fine. Went back to my app, and now all of my info has vanished. As one person stated, if you pick the seat next to the window on the seat map, it will instead place you near the middle. Should you try to edit your trip, it will place it onto the cart as if you were making another purchase. Thankfully it didn’t double charge me. I booked a trip during a BOGO offer, and never got my free trip. Spoke to Customer Service, and was going to give me credit, which I’ve yet to receive. This is a list of some of the issues that I’ve been facing since the app returned. Hmm, I had to remake my Brightline account when the app reopened here. That seemed strange as I never deleted it. When the app does work, it was decent. I’m giving only the Brightline app 3 out of 5 stars. The train itself is amazing!
i’m going to be honest… i’d never thought i’d write a review, but with each update, brightline continues to decline in quality. how are you going to charge $629 a month for a premium pass and no longer include “complimentary rides.” if anyone is reading this, don’t be fooled because it’s not 100% complimentary depending on when you book. for us south florida folks that know this traffic very well, brightline will now only allow you a $10 uber voucher in a short time frame window on the day of your trip, so you CANNOT book the uber days in advance to avoid booking during surge pricing. this would make the most sense since the voucher is only $10 and no uber in miami or ftl is going to be that cheap if you booked during peak hours. you will have to pay the rest out of pocket so good luck trying to get the so called “complimentary ride” if you book during peak surge pricing. esp with the amount of money the premium trips already cost. the extras were the only thing to differentiate it from the smart trips. do better brightline. yall can afford it.
This app is so poorly designed that you have to believe they actually paid somebody to figure out how to make it more difficult than it had to be to use. The app itself actually would work really well, except it is obvious the developer has never even tried the app. It forgets everything you do every time you try to do anything, if you leave one page to the next you have to start over on anything you were doing at any time. The calendar function is terrible as it always gives you the wrong time for your calendar entries of when you’re train riders, it never remembers any of your information and you’ll be lucky if it actually selects the train the first time without you having to go through reenrollment 4 to 5 times. I have used the app 12 times in 24 hours to book 4 train trips. Terrible. I love the train but I know that it will probably go out of business if they’re dumb enough to keep using these app developers.
I was excited for the new app but that all has gone away when commuter passes disappeared, I had to buy a new one. Then all of a sudden the pass that disappeared, reappeared and I was charged for a duplicate pass in one month. I am still trying to resolve this but there is no customer service to talk to. The app use to track how many rides you have taken and that gave a sense of pride and loyalty, this function is now gone. The old app had a bank for any credits that were given. I had $15 in credits that are now gone and non recoverable. Be careful with looking at the direction of the arrows for how the train is going because a backwards facing seat might actually be a front facing seat. So far this app cost me $217 for a duplicate commuter pass + $17 ticket that was accidentally charged when my pass had a “hiccup with the app” and $15 in lost credit that was in my “bank”. So in total I am down an extra $249 in excess fees this month in malfunctions of the app. I love the Brightline but this app needs serious help and is a failure so far.
Took trip to Heat game from Fort Lauderdale. All employees were friendly and helpful and trip was on time. I made a reservation for a ride from arena to station and was advised by my ride to the arena they canceled trips from arena to train. No biggie and we walked. There was a group sitting behind us that was overly obnoxious and dropping f bombs the entire way back. The attendant kept reminding them there were kids on the train but they didn’t seem to care. My nine year old was reminded of some words he’s not allowed to repeat. I know security will only increase costs but you will lose some customers at certain times if this is the norm. I do want to repeat that all the staff was overly helpful and courteous which is not easy to find down here. This won’t keep us from going again. I rated a 3 since it was average trip on expectations with some needs for improvement. Thanks
Says it all, I paid for tickets and they never gave them to me. When I tried reaching out to get a refund or the tickets I was entitled to they were unreachable and had their phone system set up to outright lie and say they were closed. The only way I was able to reach anyone was through a hidden phone number that my local sheriffs office provided me. When I called they lied and said they were not Brightline and had nothing to do with the train system even though their robotic teller clearly said they were Brightline. I tried reaching out through their chat system only to get a generic response that they were happy to help me and then ignored me completely afterwards. My emails were also all ignored. I tried reaching them through Facebook and twitter and had all my messages left on read and was never responded to. These people are fraudsters and crooks don’t buy your tickets online they will outright rob you without a hint of shame and your only recourse will be a lawsuit against them.
I’ve been using Brightline several times a week since they opened. I’ll start by saying that the staff that work the trains and the stations are fantastic. Courteous and always willing to help. Last time they updated the app, I lost my trip pass because of a “change of management.” Front desk told me to contact customer service because they’re not authorized to make any changes in that regard. Customer service told me there was nothing they could do because the 10 trips included in the price were to be used within 30 days now, as opposed to the prior 90 day window. Today, they rolled out a new update for the premium pass. Instead of including uber or other transportation to and from the station (5 mile radius), you get a 10 dollar coupon for uber. So it only serves you for a stone’s throw. When I went to use it on my return trip, turns out my coupon had expired even though I went to use it as I was arriving to the station. Opening the app to check the return trip ticket details, the app would just crash. The front desk at my arriving station saved the day calling me an uber. Every update they roll out makes it more expensive and cumbersome for the consumer. This isn’t a transportation service, it’s a cash grab. Guess I’ll go back to driving.
As a massive Brightline supporter and long time fan I want nothing more than for the first private bullet train in the USA to succeed, but as an app developer and software engineer this app is absolute trash. It straight up doesn’t work. Forget UI/UX design, the basic features of creating a account, finding a train, adding a ticket to your cart, purchasing it, and accessing it to ride the train only works a small percentage of the time. You could make a absolute potato of an app, but if it did these couple things on a basic level at least it would be usable. You’re seriously better off just going on the website, looking up the times, and showing up and buying a ticket because clearly no one is using the app to buy one in its current state. This is a multibillion dollar company, and I’ve seen intro SWE boot camp “hello world” apps that are better than this
Horrible update to the app and unbelievably bad customer service
The original Brightline app was mediocre, however, the update has made the app almost unusable. After the initial update, I was unable to use the Brightline credit on my app to purchase a train pass. After calling their customer support team, the representative charged my credit card (rather than applying the Brightline credit). In an attempt to reverse the credit charge, they then double charge my credit card - totaling an additional $400 charge. In an attempt to resolve the issue, I called the customer support line. During this call, the representative advised that they were unable to support at their level, and that needed to open a ticket online. I opened a ticket online and over the course of months had to send multiple follow up emails as their customer service was largely unresponsive. Despite this ticket being open and escalated months ago, the customer support team has still failed to resolve this issue. In person, the Brightline trains have been an overall enjoyable experience, however, I am extremely pointed with that untimely and disorganized response received from their customer support team, as well as Brightline’s inability to resolve this issue.
Brightline is already the best way to get around South Florida and our app makes it even easier. Book a ride, customize your trip and keep your tickets handy. - Book train travel to get to and from Miami, Aventura, Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton, West Palm Beach and soon Orlando. - Seamlessly reserve Uber rides to and from our stations. - Purchase passes and save. - Save seat preferences and companion traveler profiles. - Upgrade to PREMIUM for more space, more snacks and more sips. - Manage your itinerary and make changes easily if plans change. - Keep your train tickets, parking pass, and ride reservations all in one place. - Explore our stations and discover new food and beverage options. - Enjoy a completely touch-free experience with just a scan of your phone. Welcome to Brightline.
