We will be travelling by train in the Bordeaux and Provence regions in March 2012 and were planning to purchase a France Railpass for 5 days of train travel (2nd class saver, 2 people). However, using the TGV-Europe.com site, I compared the cost of buying individual tickets for our itinerary once in France vs. the Railpass price and found the former to be about $100 cheaper. However, am I missing some advantages to the Railpass? Are there reasons to still get a Railpass if there is not a cost advantage, or even when it's a little more expensive?
Posted by
Minneapolis, MN, USA
8700 posts
If point-to-point tickets for your routes are cheaper than a railpass, then there absolutely is no advantage to buying one. In fact, since SNCF (French National Rail) limits the number of passholder seats it allocates on trains that require reservations (like TGVs), there can be a distinct disadvantage to having a railpass. If all the passholder seats are gone for a particular train, you'll either have to buy full fare tickets or take a different train.
Posted by
Oak Park, Illinois
4535 posts
Tim is right, there is no real advantage since TGV requires reservations and reportedly limits reservations to passholders. So the common pass reason of flexibility is negated in France.
Posted by
Boston
4132 posts
The times the French Saverpass has worked for us is when we used them chiefly for 2 or more days of region-to-region travel, such as Collioure - Avignon and Avignon - Paris. Not for short trips on TER-type trains. There is also an advantage to the pass's rail-drive option, if this is still available, which lets you rent for periods of less than a week at reasonable rates. Possibly on our trips we could have done as well or better with advanced-purchase prices, if we could have gotten them. But at the time the flexibility that the pass gave us was also a real benefit. These are all possible advantages to a second-class Saverpass.