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Seat Reservations for TGV Lyria with Eurail Select Pass

Posted by (West Sacramento, California, USA) on

After researching a variety of transportation and fare options, I made the decision to purchase a first class Eurail Select Pass valid in France and Switzerland for 5 days in 2 months. The $349 cost was $250 less than the of tickets for my planned journeys. I then went to the SNCF website to purchase seat reservations, with the full knowledge that the trip from Paris to Zurich on the Lyria service also includes a meal and is thus about $80 each way. I could not find Eurail passes listed, but did find an option for a Swiss General Abbonnement and Forfait 1st class for the SNCF. Using this option the fare was 68 Euros each way, within the $80 range I was expecting. I now have these confirmed and held on a Purchase Option to be paid by Friday, 7 April. Is this the correct method to reserve the seats? I am concerned because of the lack of the Eurail Pass option, but the GA and Forfait 1 are effectively the same function. Please advise me as to whether I am correct or if I should cancel the seat reservation option.

Thank you for your assistance,
Kevin

Posted by
7209 posts

Kevin - This is exactly why many people including myself do not recommend purchasing Eurail Passes. They're not especially easy to use, they're over priced, and when you choose to ride a high speed train you have to pay additional money to purchase a seat reservation. Required Seat Reservations are AUTOMATICALLY INCLUDED if you purchase directly from the country's rail website. Purchasing ahead from SNCF will get you greatly reduced fares.

Eurail Pass ticket holder seats are also limited on the TGV trains (there's a cap) so you may not even be allowed to use your pass on that particular train if other Eurail Pass holders have already snagged the remaining alottment.

The Swiss General Abbonnement is otherwise known as a Swiss Travel Pass.

Lastly, you can also purchase this route Paris->Zurich directly from the Swiss Railways website www.sbb.ch

Posted by
281 posts

I got the answer to my own question. I posted this on Friday, the last day of March, and then on Saturday, the first day of April, the reservations became available on the RailEurope website. After consulting with Rick Steves travel advisors via telephone, I decided it was safest to just purchase the reservation through RailEurope. When I printed it out, says:

"Lyria Pass 1-Holders of a valid pass covering France or valid pass covering Switzerland (combination of a general CFF season ticket, a SNCF season ticket, EuRail pass or and InterRail pass."
And, it shows a fare of 68 Euros, exactly the fare shown on the SNCF site when I put in the information as described in my original post. Today that would be $75. RailEurope charged $82, plus $7.95 booking fee for me to print it at home. I would conclude from this that I could have used the SNCF booking and would have paid $150 (at today's rates) plus a credit card exchange fee of 1% or $1.50.
The real pertinent information is that I could have booked the same trains as of today for 148 Euros on a no-changes ticket, or $163.
Next time I will not be lured in by a rail pass special.

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