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Hi all

After some advice. I purchased my eurail pass back in December. I read that they needed to activate it at the time of purchase (this wasn’t an option as my partner did not have his new passport yet), or at the station before our first journey.

My mobile pass is prompting me to ‘activate pass’, so I am a little confused with what it says re activation on the website.

I have added two journeys to our trip, but have not received a QR code as yet for our journeys. Is this because our passes have not been activated? I am so confused the more I read. I’d love some help.

Kind regards Danielle

The advice from the experienced travellers in the Community is to wait with activating the pass until just before boarding the first train of your travel. 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.


The only passes that need activation at a station are paper Eurail passes without a preset start date.

To get the QR code the pass must be activated, you must have connected the journey to the Trip that is connected to you pass, and you must activate the journey. 


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