Trying to book tickets from Munich to Paris in April for my family of 6 (spouse, mother-in-law, and 3 kids, ages 16, 13, and 10). Maybe I'm the problem, but it seems fairly difficult. I ended up on the group page and got stuck after entering my travel info. It won't let me move on but it also won't tell me if I'm making an error. At this point I'm just trying to find a schedule of options and cost per ticket. Is there somewhere I can go that will explain the DB site or should I just try a different one? Maybe I should just buy when we get there? Thanks for your help.
Posted by
Vernon, Canada
32330 posts
Chris,
You might try using the Capitaine Train website instead of DB. It's very user friendly and you should be able to book your tickets there.
Posted by
Frankfurt, Germany
9153 posts
If you are trying to book your tickets more than 90 days from today, you can't do it. Tickets are only available 3 months ahead of time.
Posted by
Corvallis OR
7131 posts
I tried a sample date within the 90 day window and it still wouldn't work for me either. it appears that it doesn't want you to book more than 5 tickets in one operation - as soon as you put a total of 6 in, it bops you to the group page but then won't let you enter the children's ages correctly and won't complete the selection, so it may be a glitch.
I would suggest you try Capitaine Train website as suggested. If that won't work for you, you could try booking 4 and 2 as separate entries on DB Bahn. Hopefully you would then be able to choose seats together or at least in close proximity to each other.
Maybe Lee will see this and comment. He's the bahn expert.
EDIT Also, have you tried booking on the French rail website? http://en.voyages-sncf.com/en/. Some people have had problems with it accepting their cc info on this site, but I used it successfully several times. Be sure to input France (or any country other than US) to avoid being redirected to Rail Europe site. I tried a sample date in April and it let me input 6 passengers ok.
Posted by
Rick Steves' Europe
16895 posts
The main reason to book now is for a better price, as well as seats together. I would not wait to buy these tickets in Europe. If you just want to see schedules, then you don't need to enter the number of travelers. You could also see the price for one adult-and-child pair (from €75 for early booking) without entering the whole group.
DB's link on the group booking area says:
If your group received a note telling you that you had not entered the required number of persons in your request, please contact a DB Reisezentrum (travel centre), a DB agency or a DB Mobility Center. You can also call the DB service hotline at +49 (0) 180 6 99 66 33 (€0.20/call for German landline calls, max. €0.60/call from mobile phones).
Rick’s France rail travel page has the link and tips for buying “Prems” rate TGV tickets through SNCF (cheap, reserved, nonrefundable, available three or four months ahead of your travel date) to print at home and pay with PayPal. Since a year or two ago, it does not tend to work with US credit cards, unless you have an extra level of security set up, called Verified by Visa or MasterCard SecureCode.
Posted by
OP
Corning, ny, us
37 posts
Thanks everyone for the great advice! I was able to book the tickets using the Capitaine website; I just separated them into 2 groups of 3 people. Had a bit of a problem trying to purchase both at the same time. My credit card went through for one ticket but not the other. Finally solved the problem by logging off then back on again. Otherwise it was fairly easy and I was able to print the tickets off at home. I even saved money on the Capitaine site. For the 3 adult ticket I paid only 117 € compared to 177 € on the DB site ( for the same train).