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How do I pay for the seat reservation fee after the tickets are added to my Eurail pass?

  • 16 January 2023
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BrendanDB
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Apart from the link Anna B provided, you can also reserve your seats via Eurail/interrail. A bit more expensive though, since they ask a handling fee per reservation: https://www.interrail.eu/en/book-reservations#/

A nice trip you’ve planned. A had a quick glance at it. Although for some trips I have some suggestions:

Don’t take the Thalys between Cologne and Brussels (when you come from Hamburg). It’s reservation fee is too expensive for a relatively short trip. Take the ICE (only optional reservations) instead or local trains (changing at Aachen and Welkenraedt).

Thalys between Brussels and Amsterdam is also bad value for money with their extortionate reservation fee. Best take the hourly intercity, without any need for reservations. It’s only half an hour slower. Or try to reserve a Eurostar from london directly to Amsterdam (they’re 2 a day if I’m not mistaken).

The route of the Bernina Express is also doable via hourly regional trains, without the need for any form of reservation. Which also means you can get off where you want, if you like a certain environment to take pictures.

Best reserve your train from Kings Cross to Edinburgh via LNER, again mentioned in the reservations link of @AnnaB, or GWR. Seat reservations in the UK are for free (except Eurostar)! Any amount of money that you pay, as a waste.

Spanish AVE’s you cannot reserve in advance, only at the station ticket offices. Best do those reservations on your first day in Spain, so that you’re carefree for the rest of your stay or have some time to provide alternatives, if a train should be fully booked.

 

bleusquirrel
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Userlevel 2
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Seat reservations are completely separate from your mobile pass in the app. And you should not activate the pass 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.

When you add the trains to your pass you didnt book in reality 

 

Reservations are complete seperate from the Pass and need a own booking if you share details we can advise where to book 

Thanks so much for your reply. When we decided to buy the 3 month continuous Global Pass, we thought we can save and book all our train rides on the Eurail Planner App, hence all the information in the spreadsheet is based on the train rides we selected and saved to the app. We thought we can just turn on the switch on “My trip” in advance as we wanted to book have everything well planned, all the train rides booked, accommodations booked, so we won't feel stressed and also stick to our itinerary. It sounds like the Eurail pass is way more complicated than we thought.

Below is our travel plan with details of each train ride, does that mean we need to book all the trains on the rail companies’ websites individually instead of booking through the rail planner app?

Another question is that we wanted to have all our accommodation booked as soon as possible to secure a cheaper price, but it has to be based on our train rides, would all the tickets be available three months before the travel date? 

Thank you :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seat reservations are completely separate from your mobile pass in the app. And you should not activate the pass 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.

Thank you so much for your answer Anna :)

I have already activated our passes as I thought I had to activate them to be able to plan the trip and save all the train rides under my pass and then book the tickets while they are available for sale (3 months before the travel date I suppose). As we have already booked our return flights to Australia, I know our travel dates would be from 15 April to 12 July, that’s why I thought I could activate the pass as we only planned to travel for three months. 

Should I deactivate our passes now or should I keep them activated?

I am worried if I deactivate the passes I won't be able to save the trips to our passes.

Below is the screenshot of my pass:

 

bleusquirrel
Rank
Userlevel 2
Badge +1

When you add the trains to your pass you didnt book in reality 

 

Reservations are complete seperate from the Pass and need a own booking if you share details we can advise where to book 

Thanks so much for your reply. When we decided to buy the 3 month continuous Global Pass, we thought we can save and book all our train rides on the Eurail Planner App, hence all the information in the spreadsheet is based on the train rides we selected and saved to the app. We thought we can just turn on the switch on “My trip” in advance as we wanted to book have everything well planned, all the train rides booked, accommodations booked, so we won't feel stressed and also stick to our itinerary. It sounds like the Eurail pass is way more complicated than we thought.

Below is our travel plan with details of each train ride, does that mean we need to book all the trains on the rail companies’ websites individually instead of booking through the rail planner app?

Another question is that we wanted to have all our accommodation booked as soon as possible to secure a cheaper price, but it has to be based on our train rides, would all the tickets be available three months before the travel date? 

Thank you :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +9

Seat reservations are completely separate from your mobile pass in the app. And you should not activate the pass 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.

Please note that I don't work for Interrail/Eurail and that I don't reply to personal messages.
seewulf
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +14

When you add the trains to your pass you didnt book in reality 

 

Reservations are complete seperate from the Pass and need a own booking if you share details we can advise where to book 

I´ am not working for Eurail or Interrail i just share my knowledge here. Please ask in the Community and not via private message as this is the fastest way to get an answer. I prefer English/German/ Czech for my answers. In case of Reservationquestions please share some details like Route, Date, Trainnumber as otherwise we can just provide general advices or answers

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