We spent the month of October in Europe in six different countries so we bought the Eurail Global Pass, which gave us 10 days of travel in 2 months. The last time we did this in 2010 we just hopped on and off as we wished. Now reservations are mandatory on almost every train. So planning is very important as is help with making these reservations. We had excellent help from a Karen at Euraide.com. They charge a flat 40 euro fee and Karen spent quite a bit of time with us to help us finalize our reservations and supplied us with the tickets for our seats. In addition to the Eurail Pass cost we spent about $200 US per person for our reservations but it was great not having to hustle to get seats together. You could get to the train a few minutes before they left and be guaranteed a seat. And don't miss your train. Rescheduling your seat reservation can be as much a hassle as with changing your airline tickets. But, as with airlines, security has become very tight at the larger stations so plan on spending a bit of time in line for that. We used DB Bahn (www.bahn.com) the German transportation website to do our planning and Euraide to finalize. It worked well for us. And by the way, we were told to "validate" our rail pass just before we get on our first train. At the station in Amsterdam we were told we could have vailidated it at any time prior to our travel. We used Rick's gudebooks to book our room reservations and all were great and one was EXCELLENT and that was Hotel Amadeus in Seville, Spain. If we had known, we would have just stayed there the entire month. Our one truly bad room was made at AirBnB. Our first and last time trying that.
Posted by
Vienna, Austria
5508 posts
If you have to make reservations on every leg, what do you think the advantage is of a pass over point to point tickets?
Posted by
Knoxville, TN, USA
7209 posts
"it was great not having to hustle to get seats" - you never have to hustle to get seats if you have a seat reservation which automatically comes WITH your high speed train ticket purchases. You put your hustle time into purchasing those dinosaur tickets along with time dealing with Euraide to make reservations and evidentally they had to look up all of the train schedules for you, too.
You can do these things on your own, save time, save money and make your schedule exactly as you want it without having to jump the through the hoops of "Eurail" pass procedures. We should really come up with a new name for Eurail...something like "DinoRail" as in "Dinosaur".
People - leave your traveler's cheques, your preloaded travel cards, your Eurail Passes at home. You don't NEED them nor do you want them.
Posted by
Tresana, Highlands Ranch, CO, USA
23626 posts
There is a general belief that rail passes are no longer economical give the requirement of seat reservations fees and the deep discount available for advance purchases. You indicated you have a ten day pass. Did you use all ten days. When you add in your reservation fees what was your daily cost for train usage. In other words, cost of Eurail pass, plus seat fees ($200), divided by 10.
Posted by
3439 posts
I don't think the OP asked anyone to determine the value of his Eurail Pass. It sounds like he enjoyed his trip, and who cares if he MIGHT have spent less if he structured the trip differently.
Posted by
Lakewood, Colorado
19274 posts
"It sounds like he enjoyed his trip"
It's fine that he enjoyed his trip, but he also endorsed rail passes, and there are many experienced travelers here who would disagree with his position. If the OP uses this forum to promote rail passes, those who feel it is a bad choice have the right to warn readers that they feel that way.
I last used a rail pass in 2000, and I later figured that I just broke even, and this was a German Rail pass, and I did not need reservations. I now only use advance purchase tickets, regional passes, and point-point tickets, and I save a lot vs. passes.