Our Culinary Institute of America car service takes students, visiting families and restaurant guests between the Hyde Park campus and the airports, the train stations and home. It is booked ahead, door to door, with someone at the wheel who knows which building you are heading to. Three kinds of travelers call us most: a new student arriving with a term’s worth of luggage and a knife kit, a family flying in for graduation, and a couple who booked dinner on campus and would rather not drive home afterward.
The main campus is on Route 9 along the Hudson, between the City of Poughkeepsie and the center of Hyde Park in Dutchess County, and the Culinary Institute of America’s New York campus describes a riverside campus with student-run restaurants open to guests. Before we assign a vehicle, we ask four practical questions. Where is the passenger coming from? How many bags? Which building or entrance do we pull up to? Should we wait, or come back later?
Move-in, holiday breaks and the end of a term are the busy moments, and a culinary student’s luggage can include a knife kit and uniforms as well as suitcases. One student with bags fits in a sedan. When a parent and siblings come along to help carry boxes, a Chevrolet Suburban keeps up to six people and their boxes in one vehicle.
A student coming from outside the region has three practical ways in:
The same booking works in reverse when the term ends: we collect the student at the residence hall and head straight to the terminal. Parents who are handing an eighteen-year-old to a stranger usually ask who that stranger is. Every chauffeur we send has passed a background check, is subject to random drug tests, and completed a month of training followed by two weeks as a ride-along with senior drivers before working solo. Families with a second child at another school nearby can arrange both moves through our college transportation in one schedule.
Graduation tends to bring relatives on different flights, staying at different hotels, who all need to be in the same seats at the same time. Most Culinary Institute of America transportation for a commencement weekend can be handled in one of two sensible ways.
The first is a set of separate pickups, each timed to its own flight. Every flight is tracked, so an aunt landing from overseas gets up to an hour of free waiting, and a cousin on a domestic flight gets half an hour.
The second is one vehicle for the whole day. Say a family of eleven wants to go from their hotel to the ceremony, then to a celebration lunch, then back to the hotel. Eleven people and their bags fit in one Mercedes-Benz Sprinter (up to 14 passengers), and when you book it through our hourly service, every stop in that plan is included.
The college runs restaurants that are open to the public, among them the American Bounty Restaurant, The Bocuse Restaurant, Ristorante Caterina de’ Medici and the Apple Pie Bakery Café. If a birthday, an anniversary or a dinner for a newly graduated chef includes wine, that is reason enough to leave your own car at home.
We handle these evenings in one of two ways. You can book a drop-off with a pickup at an agreed time, which suits a dinner with a predictable length. Or you can keep the chauffeur by the hour, which suits a longer evening with a stop for drinks or dessert elsewhere. When the dinner is the main event of a birthday or anniversary celebration, tell us at booking so we can match the vehicle to the size of the party.
The college grounds are large, and “the CIA” is not a precise address. A Culinary Institute of America car service booking works best when you tell us the building, the restaurant or the residence hall, so we can plan the pickup there. Be at the agreed entrance at the scheduled time, and if no vehicle is in sight, phone dispatch immediately rather than walking off to look for it; that call avoids a no-show charge.
Visiting families who book a hotel nearby are covered too. We serve the rest of Hyde Park and Poughkeepsie, east to Pleasant Valley, and the other towns of Dutchess County.
Yes. Unless you choose otherwise, the student is met at the curb: an automated message with the chauffeur’s contact details arrives after landing, the student phones once through immigration and baggage claim, and the vehicle reaches the pickup lane 5 to 10 minutes later. For a first-time arrival who does not know the terminal, you can add an inside meet with a name sign for an extra fee.
Poughkeepsie is the usual choice, because both Metro-North’s Hudson Line and Amtrak stop there and it sits just south of the college. Amtrak also stops at Rhinecliff, north of Hyde Park, an option worth comparing when you choose the train. Once we have the train number and the station, we plan the meet around that arrival.
As soon as the ceremony date is confirmed. Every graduating class has families who want vehicles at the same hours, and a Sprinter or van needs at least two days of notice in any case, so booking early is the safer plan.
Yes, as long as we know about every stop and the luggage at booking. Stops that are not discussed in advance cost extra on a point-to-point booking, while hourly service includes them.
Send us the date, the pickup address or flight, the building on campus and the number of travelers through our online reservations. For a graduation group or a day with several vehicles, the quote request form lets you lay out the whole schedule. Our phone line, (877) 811-8400, is answered day and night.
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