Is Eurail Plus worth it?

Are you buying a Eurail Pass or buying individual tickets through Eurail? There are only a few diehards and rookie travelers who still get Eurail Passes.

Maybe you could moderate your slightly snarky tone? Perhaps you can email Rick and ask why he goes to so much trouble helping travelers decide whether Eurail passes are more economical than individual tickets.

I didn't ask for snark, I asked for people's experiences. Try again.

Sorry if i sounded rude. Rick gets commissions on Eurail Passes from the links he has on his website. I don't mind he makes money, and if he quit selling them he would probably have to lay off an employee or 2. But he is hardly a dispassionate advisor on this subject. Its just my opinion. Take it for what it is worth.

And peoples experience is that Eurail passes are only good for convenience and not to save money especially in Italy. Not sure what the Plus is. For most eurail tickets holders, especially in France and Italy require a seat reservation for each leg at an additional cost. So Plus might be useful in France where the number of tickets available to pass holders is limited. Unless you are traveling during Christmas, getting a seat reservation is never a problem -- too many trains. With a rail pass you don't have to plan as far in advance as you would need if taking advantage of pre-purchase, deep discount tickets. Sorry if you think this sounds sneaky but when you ask a question you should be prepared to accept any answer. And Sam was accurate.

Not any answer. Only polite ones.

The PP asked a valid question, whose answer would enable a more accurate response to your original question. As to some perceived snark- I saw it more as a fairly realistic observation, given the limited practical value of the Eurail pass for most travellers, vs current ticket pricing options in many western European train lines. So, to repeat, and assuming you have already researched the value of the pass on your trip vs individual tickets on the various train lines, will you have a pass or tickets bought through Eurail?

I just priced going from Interlaken to Rennes: $325. And that's just one trip.

We will traveling through Italy, some of which will be on the Eurail pass, some not, and taking the Bernina into Switzerland. The pass we are looking at is $608 (adult) and $548 (senior).

We did the math and the Eurail price is about the same for individual tickets for the places we know so far we will go.

I don't know where to look for these deep discounts everyone keeps talking about.

Benefits of a Eurail Plus

It sounds like you are paying a premium for the "Plus" in order to get a slightly better refund if you decide to cancel.

FWIW, I used a 2 month Eurail youth pass more than 40 years ago. There were no reservation fees, except for the sleepers. Even back then, some well-traveled friends advised me that I could probably do it cheaper by buying individual tickets. But I loved the flexibility and not having to line up to buy tickets with different currency (no internet, no EU, no credit card; only had traveller's cheques). And all I have are fond memories of hopping on and off a train whenever I felt liked it, sometimes several times in a day. Good luck with your trip.

It looks to me like plus makes your pass refundable. I suppose that if after buying your pass you are not able to obtain reservations for your desired trains you would be able to get your money back for your pass. In my experience the only place it may be hard to get reservations is the high speed trains in France as they limit the amount of seats available to passholders.

The big advantage a pass gives you is flexibility. If you intend to take mostly trips that require a reservation in advance then maybe just pre purchasing point to point tickets might be best for you.

I find the best sight for figuring out which trains require a reservation is the DB website. It will have an (R) next to the train# if a reservation is required.

THanks for this answer! What is the DB website?

CJean I don't know if I will individual tickets or Eurail pass. That's why I'm asking.

I'm wondering where/how people are getting these "deep discounts". When i price our trips, the price comes out to the same.

https://www.seat61.com/how-to-use-a-eurail-pass.htm#railpass-or-point-to-point-tickets

The website also gives you a lot of info on European train operators and how to get discounts

Man in seat 61 does definietly have a LOT of really good info.

DB website. https://int.bahn.de/en

qq -- thanks so much for that link. It's exactly what I was looking for!

Snark isn't information. It's tone. I've been on this site for weeks and many, many kind and thoughtful people have answered my questions and provided me with very helpful information. I've also been pleasantly surprised at the lack of sly little pejoratives, self-satisfied smugness, and the one-up-manship found on so many other sites. Hope it stays that way.

Lots of us are 1st timers. Snark isn't information. It's tone. Be nice.

"March and early April" sounds like Easter/spring break. A lot of the discounted tickets for that time period may already have been sold.

Thanks, acraven -- we went with the Eurail, as we wanted the flexibility.

Thanks for all the info!

isn31c I've said what I have to say. Since Sam already apologized, we're all Ok, and I look forward to hearing more good info from him.

One may continue to look at my concern as an issue of information, when its an issue of tone, as I've now explained 4 times on this thread. Not everyone understands the difference, I guess. I'm exhausted by the internet nastiness and just don't want to hear anything that even smacks of it. I know I'm not alone.

If it isn't too much bother, when you get back from the trip let us know how using the pass worked out.

As you have seen it is not universally loved and a report based on a current experience could help others in making an informed decision on what to choose.

The Eurail Pass is for people who just buy a return ticket to Europe, an Eurail Pass, and then once here just make everything up as you go. Its value is its flexibility.
It is also good value for last minute trips. Eg. I often by an InterRail (the Eurail equivalent for residents) when I have a loat minute trip to Germany, as that often ends up cheaper.

However if you want to nail down all your trips months in advance you will find out that the pass is not that convenient. Getting the necessary reservations in France, Spain and Italy is complicated. And it adds to the price. Booking ticket+reservation directly from the railways is often a lot easier than getting a Eurail reservation.
And if you book in advance you can get good discounts.

So i you were planning on travelling wherever your whims take you and mostly just getting the reservations at the station the pass is for you.

I just priced going from Interlaken to Rennes: $325. And that's just
one trip.

Where have you priced that? If I look at a date in April on www.sbb.ch I see prices start at around 120,-

I don't know where to look for these deep discounts everyone keeps
talking about.

Usually on the sites of the railways themselves. But maybe tells us a bit more about your plans, and we can help you get the best deals.

To give you an idea of the kind of issues you can run in to:

• Last summer my sister, who lives in Australia, was travelling through Europe, with husband and three kids, and had bought Eurail Passes. (I was to late to talk her out of it). They travelled through Italy, then wanted to visit me in Switzerland on the way to Belgium.

• When they tried to book the seats for the EC from Milano to Spiez they could not. It was impossible. Currently because of frequent engineering works on the line bookings on that route often only open a few weeks ahead of travel. And it was not possible to get this done before they arrived in Europe.

• When they arrived Trenitalia had finalised the schedule of the Simplon ECs for that month, and decided to make them start in Garibaldi in stead of Centrale. Not a big issue if you are starting in Milan. My sister went to the station in Venice to make here reservations, only to find out that the station could not help her. (Yes, really). In the end we discovered that there was a special family ticket she could buy for the Milano - Domodossola part, which was cheaper than 5 Eurail reservations would have been. Then north of Domodossola she use the Eurail Pass.

• We then later made reservations for the whole family for their trip to Belgium through Germany, just at the station in Wengen. That went fine.

So the pass works well in countries to the North and East of the Latin-Germanic Europe border, but not so good to the West and South of that line.

Getting reservations for France for example is not easy either. For example we did originally want to put my sister and her family on a Srasbourg - Brussels TGV, but the Eurail contingent was already sold out.

That said: I have travelled with a pass on numerous occasions. One year we did a long trip from Switzerland to Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and back, all with a pass, and apart from the night train of the first leg, everything was just reserved at the station. My most recent trip was to Normandy. There I had reserved my TGV in advance (using the Belgian Railways' website!), and the TER Nomad to Cherbourg I reserved during my 20min layover in Strasbourg. In this case the pass was very useful, as I was only going to hear on the morning of my travel day where the yacht I was joining on the French coast would be.

Maybe not relevant but anyway.
2018 travelled through France on a Eurail Pass (x number of days free travel in the month in France).
4 of the journeys required reservations. First of those I turned up at the station to reserve our seats for a late morning train. He said he could get us on the train leaving in 10 minutes so we went for that instead. Meant a quick dash to catch the train.
Next time I reserved seats 45 minutes before.
3d time about the same.
4th time Straz to Paris on a Saturday (late July). Got off our regional walked up to booking had 2 seats on a train leaving inside the hour.

Why did we go Eurail?
We had booked our flights pretty late and we operate on a very loose itinerary. We book our accommodation as we go (often on the day) and often don't know where we might end up the next day/night. Interesting thing was our railpass (for 2) cost us not much more than our usual costs of running our cars for a month. Both of us had routine 500 km per week commutes (and Aussie petrol prices are pretty high).
The Eurail proved significantly cheaper than buying tickets along the way even with the rez charges.

Interesting thing was in a dozen or so train trips we never had our railpass checked. Nor our reservations checked on those journeys. It was very apparent that many people were travelling without reservations (and quite probably without tickets). Maybe there was industrial action going on?

Reservations are rarely checked. Only when there is a dispute (two persons claiming the same seat). TIcket are also often not checked. Public transit works on the honor system in many countries. Spot checks combined with hefty fines is how it is managed.

(Eg. in Switzerland fines start at 100,-, and if you get caught a third time you could actually end up in jail...)

the original question, in the title, is "Is Eurail Plus worth it". That implies a question of is the Eurail Pass worth it (you wouldn't have the one without the other).

My experience - and I worked the dickens out of a Eurailpass in the summer of 1972 when I did a whole summer including airfare for under $1,000 - is that now that Italy and France have made it so much more difficult for pass holders, and much more expensive when you add in the reservation fees which are included in all other tickets, it is very unlikely that a Eurailpass is worth it, so my answer to your question is - no.

I hope you think that my attitude and wording is right and not offensive.

Just want your dreams to come true.

After the discussion above about Italy and France I forgot that you are also going to Switzerland.

Do you intend to visit the mountain areas, particularly the Berner Oberland? There are big signs at Interlaken Ost station where you get the narrow gauge train up to Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald and upwards from there. Those signs say Eurailpass Not Valid beyond here, or something similar. That whole mountain area is out of bounds for the Eurailpass.

I believe you can use a Eurail Pass in the Berner Oberland, but you must show your pass in the Interlaken Ost ticket office and then you get a 25% discount on the purchase of tickets.

That has changed this year. The Eurail Pass is now valid in the Jungrau Area till Grindelwald, Lauterbrunnen, Wengen, and Murren.

Mark at seat 61 needs an update - he still has the old rules

Thanks WengenK

I do believe in the Eurail Pass sometimes. The questions to ask yourself are:

How many travel instances will I take in the time I am on the ground in Europe? To me an instance is one way. Sometimes on a day trip I might actually go from Point A to Point B and to Point C and back to Point A. That is 3 one ways. These can add up and usually need no reservation.

Other trips you may only change cities 5 times and have no day trips. That might be a cheaper cost just buying point to point tickets.

How important is a couple hundred bucks if you can save time and effort in travelling?

If the grand total is only a couple hundred bucks extra I may go for the pass just because it is simpler, faster and if I am running late I can just jump on the train without fumbling at a kiosk or worrying about buying on a wifi app. The ease of travel for me is worth a few bucks in the long run. I'll make that up in other less important spending.

Reservations I plan in advance to get certain trains, but most of the time I find reservations are not needed, especially on shorter trips. Eurail passes are not just money savers. There is a convenience factor included. Time is a valuable commodity when traveling. Minutes add up and less stress is just as important than saving a dollar here and there IMO.

As I said the pass proved beneficial to us in France back in 2018 because of our fluid itinerary rather than the rigid plans of many.
The reservation requirements were a small inconvenience as in having to line up for 10 mins. but that was only for intercity/tgv.
An example of how we travelled using it.
We decided the night before tomorrow on from the regional town in the Loire to our next region the Alsace.
In the morning caught the regional train into Tours, free with the pass. Spent a bit of time in Tours then went to station and reserved our seats to Strasbourg cost of 20€ each. Caught the train to Strasbourg, on the way I booked a hotel in regional Alsace for that night. Arrived in Strasbourg then took the regional train for free to our destination.
We liked that regional town so stayed an extra 3 nights.
After 4 nights we decided to head back to Paris so caught the regional for free back to Strasbourg, lined up for 10 mins forked out 40€ for our 2 reserved seats back to Paris and on our way within the hour.

5 train trips moving us from regional Loire to regional Alsace and back to Paris without anything more than 12 hours pre planning.

Thanks for the replies, everybody! We've decided to go with the Eurail passes. I think threadwater's response more closely aligns with our needs:

"There is a convenience factor included. Time is a valuable commodity when traveling. Minutes add up and less stress is just as important than saving a dollar here and there IMO. "

We're both 1st time Europe travelers, so maybe next time we'll be more savvy booking those point to point ticket. But the less stress factor is at the top of my list. As it is, I've a hunch we'll probably be out a few hundred, but no more than that.

Good luck. I hope it works out well for you.

Could you consider when you get back home writing up a trip report to let others with your questions know how it went? Thanks.

Are you buying a Eurail Pass or buying individual tickets through Eurail? There are only a few diehards and rookie travelers who still get Eurail Passes.

Don't believe all you hear, to the calculations. There are plenty of trips out there that come much cheaper using an interrail or eurail ticket.

Sorry if i sounded rude. Rick gets commissions on Eurail Passes from the links he has on his website. I don't mind he makes money, and if he quit selling them he would probably have to lay off an employee or 2. But he is hardly a dispassionate advisor on this subject. Its just my opinion. Take it for what it is worth.

I would not call it rude, I'd call it ignorant of the facts and worth absolutely nothing.

Next week I'll be heading from my home here in Switzerland to France for a couple of days. I'll use three days of a four day global pass because it cost less than half the price of the point to point tickets even when discounted.

It may have improved, but a big issue with Interrail/Eurail has been getting reservations for France and Italy. If you live in Switzerland you do have the advantage that you can just go to the station and sort it out. Even in Wengen where I live I can get reservations for anywhere in Europe.

However getting these on line is often difficult. And if you are going to nail down your itinerary months in advance I find that, especially for France it is often better to just buy tickets directly from SNCF than to bother with a pass.

...... most of the time I find reservations are not needed...... That is not entirely accurate. All trains in Italy except Regionale require a seat reservation. You don't just hop on a train in Italy unless it is a Regionale. Basically the same is true for France. Germany is a mix but for any long distance a reservation is recommended otherwise you might find yourself frequently changing seats.

Last summer we traveled throughout France on a 2-month Eurail pass (second month was UK) and we saved considerable $$ by using it. Very convenient, too. Maybe the lengths of the travel legs were long enough to warrant the pass: CDG to Lyon to Avignon, Bordeaux to Nantes to Orleans to Versailles to Paris, then Eurostar to London.

I will say that travel in England and Scotland probably was more expensive using the pass, but the convenience was worth it.

I will definitely give a report when I get back!