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Glacier Express seat reservation difficulties

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I have read that getting Glacier Express seat reservations is very difficult because you have to be ready before the first day of availability for the date you want and start at midnight Swiss time. So, I went to the https://glacierexpress.ch/en website just to practice and get the experience of going through the process. However, tonight when I try to reserve a seat for any date within the 93 days period for 1st and 2nd class, nothing was available. It kept indicating "No connection found". The same thing happened when using my desktop or iPad. I even tried that Excellent seat reservation for 11 months out, same thing "No connection found".

What am I doing wrong? It cannot be that there is no seat at all for the next seat months!

Posted by
25 posts

Thank you for your reply. I tried again this morning and it worked. I wonder if there are different times of the day the site does not work? Last night I tried around 10:30pm in California time and nothing worked. This morning at about 8:00AM things worked fine.

We are planning to take the train on June 7, 2026, which is a Sunday. From what I read, it is best to aim for the earliest train (7:52AM) and the second car? We would like to go from Zermatt to Pontresina, but I think the earliest train does not go to Pontresina; it ends in Chur. If we take the 7:52AM train, then we will need to take the regional train from Chur to Pontresina after the Glacier Express. That is if we managed to reserve seats on the Glacier Express.

Posted by
22951 posts

The Glacier Express stops at Samedan where there is a 10 minute train connection to Pontresina.

When you checked at 10:30 pm California time, it was 7:30 am Sunday morning in Switzerland, maybe too early if there was an overnight outage in their reservation system. I checked at 1:45 am Sunday, so it was 8:45 am in Switzerland and they were up and running.

If, from your other post, you wish to do a day r/t to Tirano, you can take one of the direct regional trains from Pontresina and save the expensive seat reservation fee with service every hour. Same tracks, same scenery, and no crowds, plus windows that open for better photos.

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