Discount cards for train travel in France are half price through 11/29/21 (funny enough they have a "Black Friday" sale)!
Wish we would've had this available when we took the high speed train in early September this year. Pondering another trip to France, since their vaccine requirements are more rigorous, we felt very safe traveling there.
Here's the link:
Black Friday sales are very popular in France. Everyone seems to have adopted the Friday after Thanksgiving as a big marketing day, with sales everywhere, even though there is no Thanksgiving Day in France.
We are planning a trip to Amsterdam, Paris and Múnich late Dec 2021 and early Jan. 2022. With all the recent changes it may be rearranged to 100% France! In any case would you buy one of the discount cards for each person traveling in our party?
If you travel together, only one out of two need the card. On oui SNCF, you pick a carte avantage fare for the cardholder, and "accompagnant carte avantage" (unsure of English term) for the other person. You need to purchase the discount card before the ticket. And if you are aged 28-59 inclusive, discounts only apply on round-trip tickets over a weekend (or at least over a Saturday or a Sunday).
If one of the 2 people is 65 is there a discount for both of them? How long does the card last? One year from purchase or just for the calendar year? Does the round trip requirement still apply?
the site says the card must be activated within 5 months of purchase and once activated lasts one year. So if purchased in the last week of November 2021 you could wait as long as mid-April 2022 to activate it and then have it last through mid-April of 2023.
Very tempting, but I haven't made any concrete plans (or even cookie-dough plans) yet so I don't know what to think...
There is a separate card for “seniors” — that is, 60 and up. It is also on sale for the same price.
I yield to no one in my love of bargains. What's not to like about a (nearly) 50%-off deal? However, a card purchased on sale is no bargain if one ends up not traveling to France within the validity period. The risk is only 25 euros, but the potential savings are only 24 euros, so...
I don't know the answer to this question: Can one activate the card remotely, or can that only be done at a French rail station? If activation must be done on-site, that would be an extra risk; there might be travel restrictions or other issues requiring a traveler to postpone a trip originally planned for early-spring 2022.
I used the Carte Advantage Senior in 2017 and 2019 and loved it, but there's a lot of uncertainty afoot.
@Trob - you would need to buy one discount card for each passenger. They have different discount cards for 3 different ages. Once you purchase the discount card you would get 30% off all train rates for one year. Here's a link for pricing: https://en.oui.sncf/en/train/train-discount-card
I am having a little difficulty interpreting the discount. It seems like round-trips are preferred? Is anyone else seeing that? I'm not sure the 30% ticket discount is available for all tickets.
I have definitely gotten discounts on one-way tickets, but there may be some timing restrictions. You can enter a discount card on the SNCF website and see how that affects ticket prices under different conditions: https://en.oui.sncf/en/
The card is activated when you make your first purchase. Usually, it's 45€. You create an SNCF account where your virtual card and tickets are stored.
One-way ticket discounts are only available for 60+ and 27 or younger.
Thanks, balso. I was already over 60 back in 2016 and didn't realize that restrictive rule existed for non-senior adults. That's certainly a potential issue affecting the usefulness of the card for the typical tourist.
Thanks for answering my questions. Now I have more. I thought I had read that if one person had the senior card it would include a travel companion. Now I’m not seeing that. One of us is 60+ and one is 59. We will be traveling one way except for the shortest of day trips. Coming from Germany to Strasbourg, Colmar - Lyon, Lyon - Nice, Nice - Carcassonne, Carcassonne - Montpellier, Montpellier - Paris and Paris - Amsterdam (Haarlem). If we both need cards it looks like one way trips for adults under 60 are restricted to weekends unless you are traveling with a child. Am I reading that correctly?
Hi Andrea - We are in France at the moment and have been traveling extensively on SNCF with our discount cards (in our case we have the senior cards). As far as I can tell there are no restrictions time-wise on using the card - we've used them for many one-way trips on both weekends and week days. Every once in a while a certain ticket will not yield a discount but that has been rare (I suspect it has to do with demand). We have more than made up the costs of the card with the discounts we've received.
@Andrea, your reading is the correct one!
@Sharon, the fact that some tickets didn't yield discounts has little to to with demand. Either they were discounted already, or they were regional train tickets in a region that does not recognize the nationwide SNCF discount cards (Centre-Val de Loire is the one that springs to mind).
FYI I bought the senior pass yesterday, the transaction went through and I printed the confirmation screen. Which is good because the email never arrived. Ah well, might have wasted 25 Euro.
@phred -- I had trouble logging in to my SNCF account and my other SNCF account most of the day today from my phone and from more than one browser on more than one computer, so I suspected it was trouble on their end,
and sure enough tonight when I open the app on my phone it is running just fine, and knows me (or the version of me that i made up in the settings) well.
I'm holding off on buying the Carte Avantage at the sale price until the last minute so that I can potentially activate it as late as possible (still don't have plans in mind, but this will nudge me to get started)
I do want to point out that the app has alerts regarding covid and if you click on them you get some pretty lengthy info and details not just about the situation on various lines in France but also adjacent countries as well. Interesting stuff.
I tried to buy the discount card today. When I try to enter my US address, there is no option for the United States. I see almost every other country. What is up?
United States is not United States in French.
Etas Unis is and I think they also have had it under a different letter, I think Domaine Etas Unis or Territoire Etas Unis.
Search slowly through the pull down.
I’m having the same trouble finding the U.S. at all. I’ve scrolled through slowly several times.
It doesn’t make sense to get an adult card that isn’t a senior card, as it can only be used on weekends the best I can tell. At least one of us would get a discount with the senior card. If I can complete the transaction anyway.
There is a choice to pick 'Other Countries' in the list if you don't have or want to use a French address and can't find one for the USA.
It annoys me that the app made me pick an activation date now -- the process wouldn't proceed to payment unless I entered a date, and I'm totally guessing at this point (omicron point you might say) so I picked March 15th.
Success! I chose the ‘Other Countries’ option and it worked. I hope the process to book tickets is easy and that we will actually save money.
