Question about Eurail pass reservations

[keri]

Hello

I know there have been a lot of questions about this and I'm trying to understand how this works exactly...

I have purchased the global pass 10 days in 2 months.

Well, I obviously didn't do enough research because I was quite shocked when I looked online and saw that some of my trains will be costing me 80$-200$ in reservation fees.... That was quite a shocker and one I had not budgeted. Now I don't know if there is a way to cancel my pass (I bought it 2 days ago and it actually arrived the next day). But now I'm realizing that I probably could have found overall cheaper ways to get everywhere (okay I'm not 100% certain... but I planned everything basing it off of the fact that I would have the pass and I didn't know there were such high reservation fees).

Anyway, most of my trains are international... in fact I think all of them are.

So far according to the webpage some of my train reseravtions will cost: (Canadian)

Paris-Barcelona (night train that I knew would cost a bit more)
81$ second class- reclining seat

Barcelona- nice
26$

Nice- Rome
40$

Venice- Munich 90$

Munich-Interlaken 24$

I was really not expecting to pay such high amounts (even a night reclining chair for 80$ seems a lot)

I was wondering what I can do to cut costs? Should I book now here? When I get there? The prices that I put here are the cheapest I could find... So basically because most of my trips are international I'm a bit screwed? It's the whole reason I went with Global in the first place...

This is giving me such a headache and knowing I can't cancel my pass now is adding to my frustration (also calling the 1-800 number proved to be useless)....

Any help would be greatly appreciated....

[WillTravel]

Do you only have one reservation for a night train?

In the case of Venice - Munich, it is sometimes possible to buy a 39-Euro fare directly from www.bahn.de . I think that's a day fare, though. I think I have heard this is good to do during the day because you can see the Alps. If you did this, you could save a day on your pass, and it would be cheaper than $90 CAD. The bahn.de specials are not always available, and tend to go quickly, but take a look.

I tend to think the passes are generally not good value, because you can typically get cheaper fares on many national websites by booking in advance. So often the only instance where the passes work really well is if you would never try to save money by booking in advance, and when you compare the pass cost to the walkup cost.

Are the reservations required in every case you have listed, or just recommended? If they are just recommended, this may mean you have to stand for some or all of the journey if you don't buy them, but you might think that a risk worth taking.

[keri]

Thanks for your information! I might just do that I don't mind. I just find it off that I would have such high reservation fees for every single trip.

And so far all the ones I have looked up are required (mainly because I'm taking all international trips). I also have 3 night trains I'm taking. It's funny because a travel agent I talked to told us we would save money taking night trains because we wouldn't have to pay for a hostel when in fact a hostel would have been cheaper. I don't think we would have planned our trip quite this way if we knew how much extra it would really be costing us.

I don't know if there's a way I can figure out how to take slower trains and just manually transfer at the border or something... I really don't know how to cut costs for this. Going to travel agents seem to be useless. :/

[WillTravel]

Keri, I totally agree that the logic about night trains can often be quite spurious, exactly for the reasons you described.

I am not sure when your trip is, but it's also worth checking out flights at www.whichbudget.com . I think in some cases, it's quite possible the flight could be cheaper than the reservation fee. Take the costs to and from airports into account, though.

I am not sure if it's worth the loss in efficiency and comfort to give up reservations for certain routes. For example, for Nice, maybe you could get a reservation for Nice to Milan only, and not get a reservation for Milan to Rome by taking a slower train (double-check that though), but I'm not sure that would be worth it, particularly if you are doing this at night.