trying to decide if a rail pass is the right way to go or should we just do point to point tickets
we will be starting Train travel going from Venice-Florence
Then florence-milan
then Milan-Paris
possibly one day trip out of Paris to Reims
then paris-London
I guess I am a bit confused as reservations are required and looking at rail eurpe you still get charged for reservations on top of buying the pass.
A railpass for Italy will be more expensive than P2P. All of your runs listed above have Eurostar-class trains running on the tracks along with slower trains. I'm betting you will like the faster Eurostars. You are correct about extra fees on top of the cost of the pass. Italy charges and additional supplemental fee of 15E-20E for each Eurostar run you are on. I think that there is a supplemental fee on the Artesia train from Milan to Paris as well. P2P tickets have no supplemental fees. Seat reservations are included in the ticket price and you get them when you buy the tickets.
Please do your research - look at the previous posts on the same subject. Rail Europe is an expensive place to buy tickets and especially reservations. There are lots of other places where you can get the tickets and save yourself money. However, you will need to do some legwork.
To understand the reservation system, you need to slightly change your way of thinking. On a plane, your ticket is also a reservation - you have a specific flight and usually a pre-assigned seat. On major trains, these are separate. You have a ticket and you separately buy a reservation for a specific train. With a pass, you have a prepaid ticket but you don't have a reservation. You buy that separately.
If you don't take the plane, you pay a huge fee to change your ticket/reservation. On the train, you lose your reservation fee but the "ticket" is still good.
I hope that is clearer.
As Larry says, for travel entirely within Italy it's cheaper to buy p2p tickets.
Booking well in advance on the Trenitalia site can get you very cheap tickets for Milan-Paris (the Smart Price fare is €25), but the site currently rejects all North American credit cards.
Paris-Reims is on regional trains and no reservations are even possible.
Book Paris-London at www.eurostar.com ASAP to get the cheapest fare.
Or phone the US number on the Euraide site. They will book as many tickets as you want for as many people as you want for all your train routes at in-Europe prices for one $50 fee.
that sucks about the site rejecting american ccs...so I guess this means we are faced with having to rely on raileurope unless they chang this in the near future
No, you do not have to rely on Rail Europe. (See my previous post.) Booking through Euraide will be cheaper than through RE, especially if you book multiple tickets.
Or phone the German Rail call center and book your tickets through them. You'll have to pay for an international phone call, but there will be no booking fee.
bluedenim,
One other option would be to just buy P-P tickets when you arrive in Europe, especially given the few (5?) rail trips you'll be making. I normally buy tickets for my outgoing journey when I arrive in a particular city (very easy since I'm at the station anyway). Tickets purchased will include the compulsory reservation fees, if applicable for that train.
You might try entering your Itinerary details at www.railsaver.com to see what combination of Pass and P-P tickets the site recommends. I believe the railsaver site is operated by Rail Europe, so it will probably suggest one of the Rail Passes.
Good luck!
One of the other reasons to buy P2P is if the trains go on strike. We ended up having to fly one the the trips we had planned to go by train and didn't use the extra train day.
