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I am trying to reserve train from Paris to London on 26th December but there are no reservation available

  • 12 December 2022
  • 6 replies
  • 212 views

Hi, I did not know about how to book reservations and I just added Paris to London train for 26th December to my pass. But now it is showing that reservation not available and its unavailable for 24th, 25th and 26th December for any time. Is it because the Eurostar train is sold out or is it that the train is not operated on these dates. are there any alternatives for me? Plese help. 

Also when I added the train to my pass it gave me a QR code. Will I be able to get any help at the station itself with that QR? or maybe board the train without reservation and just the QR code.

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Best answer by AnnaB 12 December 2022, 21:33

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6 replies

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There are no seats on any of these dates. The first day with seats is the 27th with prices from £209. No passholder fares available. Your only option is to fly if you can find a flight or try to book a coach with flixbus. You cannot board a Eurostar without a reservation. There is airport style security.

Userlevel 7
Badge +9

There is a limited number of pass holder seats on the Eurostar and on popular departures and during high season those sell out weeks, and sometimes months in advance.

The best place to see the availability of passholder seats and make reservations on the Eurostar is 

https://www.b-europe.com/EN/Booking/Pass#TravelWish

Press "later trains" and eventually you will find the next available connection. 

 

If you have a mobile pass you need to generate a Pass Cover Number in order to make the reservation at b-europe. You do that here in the PCN generator:

https://community.eurail.com/news-and-announcements-39/pass-cover-number-generator-is-live-5653

Userlevel 7
Badge +9

The advice from the experienced travellers in the Community is to never activate the pass in advance and also never to create the QR code until the day you will travel. So it is best if you deactivate your travel days and also deactivate your pass.

Please read more about this 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, 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.

Userlevel 7
Badge +7

Eurostar has been thwarting a lot of travellers their plans last weeks. Do you plan to visit other places than Paris? You might be able to work around it. For example, if visiting Amsterdam (or another place in the Netherlands) is on your list, you can get there by ship and then continue to Paris by train.

If you choose for buses, best look at something like Flixbus, Eurolines, Blabla car Bus,... Some of these tzke the Eurotunnel, others the ferries. Quite some options. But these are not included in the pass. Most of these leave at Victoria (coach) station in London, which is quite central luckily. 

Userlevel 7
Badge +5

EUROLines does not exist anymore since even pre-covid.

These BUSes are always labelled as COACH in /en/ style. Currently only BlaBla and FLIX are the main ones, they mostly use the ferry, but occasionally sometimes even on the Chunnel train.

There are also a very limited nr of such Bus/Coaches direct (=not non stop, but no change) ON to POland and some other east_EUR countries, aimed at the 1000s of workers from there in GB-though their nr is dwindling. These are mostly booked via special channels, often fb=failbook. One of these (but I dk if it reaches GB, is EuroBUS).

The only workable ALT is via the very classic, but by now also rather cumbersome way of train-walk/bus-ferry-bus-train other side, most ferries do not offer that anymore-far too much trouble for mostly also troublesome pax.

This company STOLE from me.  They sell you passes that are completely useless but you wont find that out until AFTER you get the pass. My elderly mother accidentally got use global passes. I realized within minutes that the passes she bought us are completely useless and try to return them within minutes. THIS HORRIBLE company emailed me saying the KNOW that there are ZERO trains we can use and that the KNOW their website doesnt explain that prior to purchase and yet they STILL refuse to give a full refund for these worthless passes.

I will be suing this.

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