Reservations

Oooops. Another of the various problems that occur when using railpasses. Sorry. Thalys doesn't play well with others and has a bad reputation with pass-holders. Don't be disheartened, the Thalys train does do what it says on the tin - it goes to the cities it says it does, it is decently comfortable (I've never wasted the money on First Class because 2nd is plenty cushy enough for me like Business on flights), and is fast and reliable usually. They just, like the TGVs in France, don't like pass-holders. They are a multinational joint venture so aren't required to accept the railpasses that their owning country national railways would have to. You can get, for an extremely high price, get a pass-holder ticket if any are available out of a small pass-holder pool. If you can't find one, try a different train or a different date. Or plan on buying a normal advance ticket, which may not vary much from the reservation price if you get it well ahead, maybe even trying 2nd class. You don't say when your trip is. It may be too far in advance with tickets not for sale yet. It may be too soon with all pass-holder reservations used up. A bit more information may result in a bit better answer. Just for the record, you are the first person I have "met" with a First Class Benelux Pass. We don't see many round these parts.

I just reread your post and see that you are attempting to get cogent information out of RailEurope. Not everybody is successful at that task. Try the Thalys website.

Hi Nigel, Thanks for the information. We are travelling on 16 September. We will also look at another train or company.
Dennis

A good reason to check out reservation availability for any train you might want to use before buying a rail pass. Use the German Rail (Bahn) website to find trains other than Thalys. You might have to check "all without ICE" to eliminate Thalys from the list of trains. There are intercity trains available for use. They take longer, but don't have the pass holder reservation restriction. Using that method, I found 3 hour IC connections at 8:42 and 10:42 with one 2 min cross-platform change in Rotterdam. BTW, looking at the RailEurope website, it doesn't look like they sell tickets for that train. But it does show up on the Bahn website (although the Bahn doesn't sell tickets for segments entirely outside Germany).

Nigel & Lee, Thanks for the input. The problem has been solved by switching time and train. We now have 1st class seats leaving Amsterdam one hour later than originally planned.
Denni