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Hi, I’m trying to book a reservation for two journeys that we absolutely want to be on a specific train and be able to sit with our traveling companions.  I’ve gone to the Seat Reservations tab on eurail.com, and searched/selected the train(s) I want. The site (correctly) states that reservations are not required, but can be purchased anyway. The Total Amount is shown as USD $0 and the Add to Cart button is greyed out (presumably because there is no balance shown).

When I select a different journey (as a test) that requires reservations, even if not for all legs, it has a “Show Prices/Hide Prices” twistie that allows me to select a reservation (see example below), but the desired journey above does not show this.  Am I doing something incorrectly? 

It looks like I can make a reservation on the Deutsche Bahn site.  Should I just do that instead?

For the Swiss part of the travel there's absolutely no need to make a reservation. No one ever makes reservations in Switzerland except for the panoramic coaches on the scenic routes.

For the other part of the trip you can check on bahn.com if the train is expected to be full or not. 

It is cheaper to make any possible reservation at bahn.com as you don't have to pay the extra fee of 2 EUR that Eurail charges per person and train. 

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, 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. Very helpful. Since this travel is more than a month out, it did not show the demand for the dates I selected, but adjusting the date to a few weeks earlier, I was able to determine that the demand is low for the particular trains I am interested in.  I will check again once we are within 28 days, but yes, it looks like you are correct, a reservation is probably not warranted.  Thank you again!

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