purchase train ticket

Hi,
Yes, there is a charge, depending on the conditions of the ticket you buy.
It is still worth buying a ticket in advance. It is recommended to book a train at CDG airport no sooner than three hours after plane arrival, to be on the safe side re. queues and delays.

To offer an alternative, why not spend the nite in Paris and leave for Lyon the next day? We prefer to do this for long changes of location like this. Instead of being jetlagged & stressed at the start of your trip while you try to catch a train, or bored with a few hours to kill in a railroad station because you padded the time between scheduled landing and the train to allow for delays, you simply go into Paris and start exploring.

My philosophy has become airplanes get you where they say they will, generally on the day specified, but after that all bets are off. So unless we can get a reasonably priced walk-up ticket (such as the TER for which there is no advance purchase discount, nor reservations) we like to stay in the city we arrive. Then we can leave the next day, pretty certain we will make our deep-discount advance-purchase TGV train.

Agree with your suggestion, but since we arrive at noon, we should have time to get to our destination.

I feel like the arrival day is pretty much a waste due to jet lag so I may as well use it to get to the destination. This just goes to show that reasonable minds can differ.

I agree with JHK which is why we did what we did this trip. Two planes, two trains and a bus. Looong trip from Los Angeles to Provence.

Three days ago I said I’m never doing that again. Next time, we would spend arrival day in Paris and head out the next morning.

Here I am a week later having forgotten the stress and exhaustion of travel from California…. Thinking we did it right. 🤷‍♀️