I bought my pass a month ago and just recently activated it to start traveling. However when I went to reserve my seats on my planned journey there weren’t any available. I am trying to get from London St Pancras → Schiphol Airport, NL on July 14, 2022. Can I reserve a seat in person in London? Can I get on the train without a seat assignment and risk standing? Please help worried I won’t actually be able to use the eurorail pass.
Best answer by Al_G
View originalNo. Not a chance, Eurostar is fully booked right through to the weekend, even then there are no passholder fares available. Standing is not allowed, if you turn up at St. Pancras you will be refused. You have left it far too late.
And have been caught out by the boom in travel this summer-after 2 yrs of covid-home isolations.
ALT: fly (EasyJet is the preferred low-cost airline)-expect horrendous long waits at all airports to pass security-much longer as the 45 mins flite. Check google for more airlines
BUS: FLIX and maybe BlaBla-takes much longer, uses ferry to cross channel.
The traditional way-train to Dover, ferry across, train onward is not possible as for now to foot-pax.
There is also the option of StenaLine doing a ferry overnite Harwich-Hoek van Holland-they did offer even through tickets, but this may have been cancelled now. Use metro from HvH till Schiedam-pay for ticket at machine. Trains from S´dam a plenty.
If you haven't started to travel you should deactivate your pass ASAP. Otherwise the validity of your pass will start tomorrow and you risk loosing travel day without being able to travel. Please read more 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 ticket in addition to the fee for the seat reservation.
Activation of pass
During the activation process, when you choose the start day of the validity of the pass, the first day of the validity period is automatically made a travel day, even if you don't enter a journey, the advice is therefore not to activate the pass before the first travel day as you only can deactivate the pass before 00.00 on the day the validity starts. If your travel plans change in the last moment you will loose travel days if you have activated the pass in advance.
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, 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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