Rail pass vs. individual tickets

Hi Felicia welcome back to the Helpline. I was thinking of you the other day and wondering if you had had the trip yet. I thought we went through all the train stuff before. have you waited too long to get the cheap Italian fares of €9 per segment? If you use the fast trains with passes you will need mandatory seat reservations on the segments: frutigen (Spiez) to Milan milan to Florence
florence to venice venice to salzburg but not required salzburg to munich. If you had used SMART or SMART 2 and MINI they would come with reservations included. Are the girls still excited? Did you have any drop out? Do you still have some meeting you part-way?

I only see 2 downsides to point-to-point tickets. First, you have to go through the process of buying each individual fare. That isn't all that tough if you are only buying them for one or two trips, but if you are buying them for several legs on a journey, you need to be organized to make sure you bought them all, printed all the correct tickets, and that you keep up with them all while traveling. A tangent to this is the number of seats you are buying. If you are only buying for yourself and a spouse (and maybe a child or 2) it is a lot less to keep up with than buying for a large group of girls (presuming that you will be the one buying all the tickets and keeping up with all them as you go through the trip). Second, you have to be at the train station on the specific day at the specific time or you miss your train and have to buy new tickets. Of course you do the same thing with plane tickets, so this isn't really all that different. But you are correct that you don't have the flexibility of time. The downside to the Rail Pass is the expense. Unless you use all the days, you are likely to not get your money's worth. Additionally, if you are on the routes that Nigel described above, and you have to get seat reservations, then these have the same flexibility issues that point-to-point tickets have. You also have to go through the hassle of getting all those reservations, at which point you might as well have bought point-to-point tickets to begin with. So if most of your legs are these types of trains, your only upside here is the reduced amount of tickets you are keeping up with, and even that might be lost if you have to keep up with all those seat reservations.

Frutigen-Milan: You will connect in either Spiez or Brig. The standard 2nd class fare is 80.00 CHF. If you book now on the Swiss Rail site, you may still be able to get a discount fare of 44.00 CHF. Milan-Florence: The standard 2nd class fare on high-speed EuroStar Italia trains is €53.00. Booked well in advance on the Trenitalia site, Mini fares can be as low as €9.00. I'm sure it's too late to get the cheapest Mini fare, but you may be able to get tickets for €19.00, €29.00, or €39.00. It all depends upon how many Mini fare tickets have been sold for a particular departure date and time. Florence-Venice: The standard 2nd class fare on ES trains is €43.00. Again, booking in advance will get you a Mini fare. Venice-Salzburg: By booking now on the Austrian Rail site you can get a discount fare as low as €29.00 for a highway bus operated by Austrian Rail from Venice to Villach and a train from there to Salzburg. The number of discount fare tickets is limited so you may not be able to get the €29.00 fare for everyone. The standard 2nd class fare is €56.20. Salzburg-Munich: A single Bayern-Ticket (€29.00) is good for 2-5 people traveling together anywhere in Bavaria, including the border station in Salzburg. It is limited to regional trains and is good after 09:00 on weekdays and anytime on weekends. It will also cover your local transportation (S-Bahn, U-Bahn, and buses), the rest of the day after you get to Munich. Buy as many as you need at the German Rail office at the station in Salzburg. If you have railpasses, you'll only pay a few euro for seat reservations from Spiez or Brig to Milan and for Venice to Salzburg. You'll pay €10.00 for each reservation for Milan-Florence and Florence-Venice. You can buy those reservations at the stations as you go.

Nigel, I know I may be losing my window to get the best train deals. You and so many others have given me such great council. I get on the sites and panic that I am not doing it correctly. My computer skills are not great. my dearest friends call me techotard. I am hoping to get enough figured out this weekend to just do the best I can and hope for the best. It does seem wasteful to buy the rail pass when we will need reservations for most of our trips anyway. The italian train site is complicated.
Can you tell me the cost per ticket from milan to florence. I think Lola found a train that leaves 1400??ish and arrives florence 1600ish?? that would give us a 3 hour lay over in milan to see the Duomo. Just need to figure out how to buy that for 9 people and make the commitment.

According to my calculations for a certain routing, the entire trip - Frutigen to Milan to Florence, Florence to Venice, Venice to Salzburg, and Salzburg to Munich - will cost $237 per adult, a little less for the 15 yo. A 4 country rail pass would cost $462/p for the four adults, $354/p for the five girls. That doesn't include compulsory reservations for two legs in Italy. That's using the German EC from Venice to Rosenheim with connections from there to Salzburg. German Rail gives her the opportunity to purchase one ticket for all 9 people at one time, so there is no problem with purchasing the first discount ticket for 5 people and having the last 4 at a higher price (or even not available).

A 4-courty pas would definitely be overkill. But I am beginning to think Felicia could avoid a lot of the stress she is feeling now by buying a 3-day Italy pass ($192 for the adults, saver price, and $183 for the youths). Yes, this will cost them a bit more for their Italy travel than the mini fares (which appear to be running 29 to 39 euros per journey leg for their time of travel). And they will still need to pay for reservations, but they could do that upon arrival in Italy and not on the internet. The pass would cover Milan to Florence, Florence to Venice, and Venice to Innsbruck on the Eurocity 86 that departs Venice at 13:34 and arrives Innsbruck at 18:32. This train can be booked on Trenitalia at passholder prices (7 euro each) but Felicia could do that in Italy instead. From Innsbruck onward it would be by discount tickets which hopefully people will advise Felicia on. It seems to me she is trying very hard to get the best prices for her group, but she should not have to do all the work herself, and should not feel responsible for getting the absolute rock-bottom price at great cost to her in terms of mental stress. Trenitalia is hard to figure out, and even harder to buy tickets on the website, so I understand her fears of not doing everything right. Just a thought.

Lola read my concerns exactly. Plus, I'm not sure how to buy the tickets. If we get the 3 day Italy pass, does it cover all our days in Italy? We travel from milan to florence on tues june 12 and stay in florence 2 nites and travel from florence to venice thurs june 14 and stay 2 nites and travel to salzburg sat. june 16. does the 3 day pass mean travel on any 3 days or 3 consecutive days? do I want to know how much extra this will cost us? I know you are right that I am worrying too much about rock bottom prices. hard to find balance in being a good steward of time vs money and working with my techo limitations. thanks for all the help and concern from everyone. I think this is the last big trip hurdle. the rest should be fun and exciting to plan

The Italy pass is any three days within a two-month period. You can read about using it on the Italy page of the Railpass section on this website. How much more would it cost? I came up with an estimate. For the adults, the pass covers 3 days of travel at 48 euros each ($192 divided by 3 and converted to euros). The prices you could get, buying tickets today for your travel time in June, are Milan to florence, 29 euro; Florence to Venice 39 euro, and Venice to Innsbruck, 50,60 euro (I had to use an earlier date in June to get that one). So ticket price total is 118 euros, including reservations. The adult pass, in euros, is around 145 euros (at $1.32) and to that you have to add 27 euros in reservation fees, for a total of 172 euros. The total pass price for the girls would be slightly less, 165 euros. So using passes for Italy will cost 47 to 54 euros extra, per person. I think if the other parents are unhappy with that they should help you figure out how to buy the tickets on Trenitalia. I know you want to do your best for the group, but this is not a good task for a technophobe, and not fair for the others to make you responsible for it.

By booking online with the Bahn, you can get one ticket on the EC from Venice to Rosenheim and a connection to Salzburg for all 9 people for €520,20. That's €57,80/p. And on day 3 the rail pass would only get you to Brennero; you would still have to pay for Brennero to Salzburg. For Brennero to Salzburg, the Bahn wants another €32, in advance, online (for the trip, that would be on top of the cost of the rail pass day). Milan to Florence is €53 full fare, net €43 if you figure €10 extra for a mandatory reservation with a rail pass. By the same logic, Florence to Venice is net €33 (€43 full fare). Using full fares, the two Italian legs (€53 + €43)= €96. Add Venice to Salzburg (€58). That's €154 ($203), Milan to Salzburg with p-p. And that's not using Mini Fares. With a rail pass you would still have to stand in line to buy reservations; might as well buy tickets. Take the rail pass, average $187/p, add €20 (2 reservations) + €32 at least, Brennero to Salzburg. That's about $256/p. And, to get the €32 from Brennero to Salzburg, you would have to book online, so you might as well book it as Venice to Salzburg instead. Using a rail pass costs more, and I don't see any convenience.

Lee, I'm not sure about this, but Trenitalia shows the passholder price from Venice to Innsbruck as simply 7 euro. They don't distinguish between Italy pass or multi-country pas, or pro-rate the Austrian portion of the trip. So I't not clear from them how far the pass covered. Unfortunately Trenitalia does not appear to have a map like the Swiss synoptic map whoing pass coverage. But I agree with your math that shows there is no advantage to a pass and they might just as well buy full-price tickets in Italy if they don't buy in advance to get the minifares (which at this point are not much of a discount, at least from Florence to Venice where the minis I saw were 39 euros versus base fare of 43.

"Trenitalia shows the passholder price from Venice to Innsbruck as simply 7 euro." Sounds about right. The border between Italy and Austria is at Brennero, and the 2cl fare between Brennero and Innsbruck is €7,20, so they've just added on the fare for the last 37 km outside Italy. Funny (maybe) story: I went from Innsbruck to Fortezza, Italy, via Brenner Pass in 2009. The ticket counter line in Innsbruck was long, and the only ticket the machine in Innsbruck would sell me was one-way to Brennero. I got to Brennero and bought a round trip ticket to Fortezza. When I got back to Brennero, the Italian automat didn't sell tickets to Austria and I couldn't find an Austrian automat. An Italian worker said they would sell me the ticket on the train. It was a long train and a short ride. I expected the conductor to come by, but he never did.