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I am brand new to Eurail and I am trying to plan for our vacation in Europe this summer.

I have purchased mobile Global Flexi Eurail passes for both myself and my husband from the Eurail.com site.  The passes are the 15 travel days in two month passes and we opted to buy 1st class passes. I then downloaded the Rail Planner app to my iPhone, which is running iOS 15.  I have loaded both Global passes onto my phone and connected both of them to a trip. I have not activated the passes yet because the first day of our train travel is still to be determined.

In each trip I have created several journeys and saved them to the trips associated with each of the Global passes.  

When I tap on the My Trip icon for a pass, the journeys all show up.   But when I tap on a particular journey in the trip,  I don’t get an option to “add the trip” to the pass.  What I do get is a detail of the description of the train trip for the journey and and button that says “Search again”.

In the list of journeys, none of the journeys have the slider button that is shown in image of what should appear when you are ready to add the ticket to the pass (the image is at https://www.eurail.com/content/dam/mobile-pass/iPhone%2011%20-%20Step%206%20Add%20your%20Journey.adaptive.767.1587396431123.png )

And as a result, there is also no “Tap to Show ticket” items anywhere that I can find in the Rail Planner app.  In addition, there is also nothing that indicates how many travel days I’ve used up with the journeys in My Trip.

What am I doing wrong?  Is it just that the pass needs to be activated before the journeys in My Trip can be attached to the pass?

Indeed, the pass needs to be activated before you can add journeys to My Pass. Activating also means selecting the first travel day. After that, the app warns you whenever it needs to activate a new travel day.

The best though is not to activate the pass or a travel day before you're certain you're going to use it. Because if you change plans, and forget to cancel your travel day (possible before it starts), then you lose it.

Thank you for clarifying this.  It was not at all clear to me even though I read all the documentation.

Is it worth clarifying the difference (hopefully in plain speak) between booking reservations and creating travel tickets on your pass?

For many high speed and long distance trains you will need both a reservation plus a ticket. If a reservation is not mandatory you can simply board the train with an activated journey ticket on your pass before boarding.

Unlike booking a normal travel ticket, which usually creates the reservation at the same time, Interrail doesn’t as there are additional variable costs for reservations.

My understanding is that as long as you have a valid pass linked to a trip, but not necessarily activated, you can book (and pay for) a reservation for many trains well in advance of your journey - necessary for trains such as Eurostar which has limited seats available for pass holders. Note they are often not refundable.

You then print out the reservation before travelling, or the confirmation print out if bought at a ticket office, and show it (with your Interrail ticket) as needed for your journey. 

Your reservation is not a ticket for the journey, which is held separately in your pass once activated.

 

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