I bought a 7 day Global pass with Eurail. I bought several required seat reservations for my trip. Do these required seat reservation take a day off of my 7 day Global Pass?
TIA
Answer
Does a seat reservation use a day off of my Global Pass?
Best answer by Al_G
For ALL travel you need a valid ticket.
A pass day is a ticket for anywhere passes are accepted.
If a reservation is mandatory on a particular train you also need one of those.
In most cases a seat reservation is a small cost, €10 or less, some are free. These are not valid for travel without a ticket.
Even the expensive passholder reservations such as Eurostar at €30+, these are still far cheaper than a regular ticket which can be €200+.
What
Buying seat reservations doesn't use travel days per se as they are completely separate from the pass
However on the day you'll need to show a valid pass (day activated) which is your ticket + the required seat reservation (show both for controls)
All days (00.00-23.59 CE(S)T) when you board a train, no matter if you have a reservation or not, will use a travel day.
For ALL travel you need a valid ticket.
A pass day is a ticket for anywhere passes are accepted.
If a reservation is mandatory on a particular train you also need one of those.
In most cases a seat reservation is a small cost, €10 or less, some are free. These are not valid for travel without a ticket.
Even the expensive passholder reservations such as Eurostar at €30+, these are still far cheaper than a regular ticket which can be €200+.
What
Thank you, that does clear it up. Do I need to have purchased my Eurrail pass before buying reservations? Or can I go ahead and buy the discounted reservation and will just have to present Eurrail pass at time of travel?
If you avoid making reservations through the Interrail/Eurail website you can make almost all reservations without having bought the pass. Please read more about that below.
Here is some useful information from the experienced travellers in the Community regarding both planning, reservations and activation of pass and travel days.
Planning
The rail planner is normally not up to date, as it only is updated once a month, so to be sure of the time table you better check the timetable and availability on the websites of the national railways. The bigger national railways, like DB (Germany) SBB (Switzerland) and ÖBB (Austria) cover several countries.
Reservations
The advice from the experienced travellers in the community is to use other ways to make reservations than the Interrail/Eurail website. You can look at the guide in the link:
https://community.eurail.com/train-connections-reservations-47/how-to-get-reservations-105
If you, after having looked at the guide, have questions about how to make specific reservation, please give your travel details (departure date, time and route) preferably in a new topic, and you will get advice.
Please note that Interrail/Eurail charges an extra fee of 2 EUR per person and train in addition to the fee for the seat reservation.
Activation of pass
During the activation process you choose the start day of the validity of the pass. Once the validity has started it can't be changed even if you haven't travelled. The advice is therefore to wait with activating the pass and starting the validity until the first day of your travel as you only can deactivate the pass no later than 23.59 CET on the day before the validity starts. If your travel plans change in the last moment you can't deactivate the pass and change the validity.
It can be wise to make a test and activate the pass with a start date well in the future and then deactivate the pass immediately, just to see that everything works.
Activation of travel day
The advice from the experienced travellers in the community is also never to activate a travel day, that is connect a journey to your pass and create the ticket (QR code), until just before boarding the train, otherwise you might loose a travel day if your travel plans change in a late stage You can't delete a travel day in the past. A travel day can only be deleted until 23.59 CET the day before the travel day.
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