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Help with planning and seat reservations

  • 28 September 2022
  • 5 replies
  • 159 views
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Hello!! 
My fiancé and I purchased a eurail but were under the impression that you had to “add” a journey in order to book seat reservations. We are going to be traveling for 4 weeks and are still unsure of just how many places we would like to see. We just want to kind of wing it and make the most of where we end up. (We bought the 10 days over 2 month pass). HOWEVER, we went to add our train to Paris for tomorrow and it shows that no seat reservations are available. It does show that you can book seats at the train station. Are we just out of luck at this point?? We bought this pass because of the freedom to just choose random days to travel and not have to set an itinerary but I’m starting to think if we don’t have everything planned out right now that we won’t be going much of any where. 
 

Any advice and help would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks in advance!  

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Best answer by BrendanDB 28 September 2022, 12:09

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A
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Userlevel 7
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You can look for trains that don't require reservations by marking "no seat reservation" in the Railplanner. If you avoid travelling in Portugal, Spain and with the high speed trains in France and Sweden you can get around to many places without reservations. 

 

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, 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 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

Please note that I don't work for Interrail/Eurail and that I don't reply to personal messages.
A
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Userlevel 7
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You haven’t said where you are trying to get to Paris from so it is hard to give any detailed advice.

M
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Userlevel 7
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You probably without telling clearly mean this €* from LON-thats one of the major culprits-in fact once in Paris you can-but against the US nature of ´time is money´- use dozens&more of regional TER trains in the France to reach hundreds of hardly known places without the touristy burdens. But it seems each&every new one exactly just wants to use those superfast TGV etc trains-so change plans and be happy! BTW-ESpana is even worse.

BrendanDB
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Userlevel 7
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Could you add more details?

Your “jump on the go” can be very nice, but it doesn’t work on Eurostar. Trains can fully book out, since there’s only limited places for pass holders.

The first available Eurostar to Paris from London St. Pancras with a pass is Thursday 29 Sep 2022 at 20h (for now), then on Saturday 1st of October at 15:31. Please you need to be there well in advance for passport and security checks. You can check availability and book your reservations here: https://www.b-europe.com/EN/Booking/Pass#TravelWish

OR! You might want to check if you can get to Lille by Eurostar (didn’t check that in aforementioned website). From Lille you can get easily to Paris as well.

You might want to check if you can travel to Dover and then go as a foot passenger from Dover to Calais with the ferry. Prices are fairly decent usually. It also has very nice views on the White Cliffs btw. Plenty of ferries during the day normally. From Calais you can get to Paris without reservations with TER trains (involves some train changing though) or if you’re lucky you can still book a TGV to Paris.

Travelling on the go is more difficult in France and Spain, since reservations for High Speed trains are mandatory and they only have a limited number of places for pass holders. Unless you want to travel by regional trains (TER) in France entirely, we usually recommend a bit of an itinerary, especially on long distance high speed trains. Weekends and holidays can be busy and fully booked a couple of weeks in advance on popular TGV lines.

The rest of Europe is much better suited for “on the go” way of travelling, but the national train operators in France, Spain (and sometimes Italy) can make it hard for such adventures.

 

Y
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Userlevel 7
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Very few providers put limits on pass holder reservations. SNCF have a 2 tier fee system - 10 euros until pass quota filled then 20 euro until train full.

German ICE trains are optional but worth it at busy times and routes - check likely activity on bahn.com.

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