Hi everyone! We are Roger and Sherry planning our first interail journey. We have activated our mobile global passes within the app and we are trying to get used to the eurail app by using our global passes. We have navigated quite well planning different trains and routes where we have to a point used a travel day as requested and downloaded tickets but we can’t reserve specific seats or sleepers. Grateful for any information on what we are doing wrong.
+7Best not activate the pas or travel days before travelling. You never know you have to change your planning a bit, due to an illness or something uneforseen, and you don’t want to risk losing travel days (as you can’t get them back once you reach the day from 0:00 CET). No problem to de-activate the pass or travel days before reaching that day though!
To get the terminology right: The pass = your ticket. Reservations are completely seperate from that and come in the form of a (printable) pdf that needs to be shown together with a valid ticket.
To help you furhter, which connections by nighttrain are you trying to book? Without details (route, date, comfort preference,...) it’s difficult to help :)
Hi Brendan not actually booking a pass just yet but learning the process needed to enable us to do that on the Eurail app.Happy with everything but just need to know how to book a reservation with Eurail app - understand that I can book direct with train operator if needed.
+7You cannot book reservations via the app, you only register your trains there. See it just as the digital version of the paper pass, where you filled out lines by pen on paper, for each train you take. That doesn’t mean you reserved the train. It just enables Interrail/Eurail to devide the money fairly over the companies.
A general guide is found here:
https://www.interrail.eu/en/plan-your-trip/reservations
Getting reservations are a bit tricky. You can book them here on the website:
https://www.interrail.eu/en/book-reservations#/ but usually not reccommended, as it costs 2 EUR per ticket.
Please read this extensive, community made guide to find other ways of reserving.
The information in there is a bit overwhelming at first, that’s why I asked for which trains you planned to take. It’s easier to help on a case basis :)
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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