• The TUGBBS forums are completely free and open to the public and exist as the absolute best place for owners to get help and advice about their timeshares for more than 30 years!

    Join Tens of Thousands of other Owners just like you here to get any and all Timeshare questions answered 24 hours a day!
  • TUG started 30 years ago in October 1993 as a group of regular Timeshare owners just like you!

    Read about our 30th anniversary: Happy 30th Birthday TUG!
  • TUG has a YouTube Channel to produce weekly short informative videos on popular Timeshare topics!

    Free memberships for every 50 subscribers!

    Visit TUG on Youtube!
  • TUG has now saved timeshare owners more than $21,000,000 dollars just by finding us in time to rescind a new Timeshare purchase! A truly incredible milestone!

    Read more here: TUG saves owners more than $21 Million dollars
  • Sign up to get the TUG Newsletter for free!

    60,000+ subscribing owners! A weekly recap of the best Timeshare resort reviews and the most popular topics discussed by owners!
  • Our official "end my sales presentation early" T-shirts are available again! Also come with the option for a free membership extension with purchase to offset the cost!

    All T-shirt options here!
  • A few of the most common links here on the forums for newbies and guests!

Europe's rail passes are affordable again and much less confusing

jehb2

TUG Member
Joined
Nov 6, 2005
Messages
2,174
Reaction score
952
Points
473
Location
texas
I would love for somebody with more knowledge to weigh in on this. We did point to point tickets and it was waaaay cheaper than a Eurail pass. We’re planning to do point to point ticket next trip as well.
 

CanuckTravlr

TUG Member
Joined
Apr 23, 2016
Messages
2,011
Reaction score
2,651
Points
324
Location
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Resorts Owned
HGVC Ocean 22
I would love for somebody with more knowledge to weigh in on this. We did point to point tickets and it was waaaay cheaper than a Eurail pass. We’re planning to do point to point ticket next trip as well.

The Eurail passes have changed over the years, but generally they are the best value if you are doing a number of trips within the period covered by the pass. If you are doing a single trip or just a couple of trips, especially if they are fairly short or involve more than one country, the passes are less of a deal. IME, with a sale price on the regular tickets, they can sometimes be better than the Eurail pass.

The longer the trips and the more trips within the period of the pass, the better the deal. These new, simplified passes make it easier to figure that out. They more closely resemble the original Eurail and BritRail passes. When I backpacked around Europe after university in 1972, I had a 15-day BritRail pass for the month I was to spend in the UK and a 2-month Student Eurail pass for the time I spent on the continent. Both of them turned out to be fabulous deals.

I had the BritRail pass paid for by the time I reached Edinburgh (travelling up the east coast with several stops) from London. I travelled to Glasgow, down through the lakes district to Wales and Bath and several stops en route and then back across to London with many additional stops. I used the Eurail pass to travel from Paris through north-east France, Belgium, The Netherlands, northern West Germany, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. It was paid for by the time I left Stockholm to head down through Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, southern France and Spain and back to Paris.

On several occasions it saved me the cost of a hotel room, as we travelled on an overnight train. It also covered certain ferries or buses in areas not served by a train. But that was a LOT of train travel in three months. I was often changing locations every day, seldom staying more than three nights in any one place. But it highlights the point that if you plan to do a lot of train travel, the passes do work.
 

jehb2

TUG Member
Joined
Nov 6, 2005
Messages
2,174
Reaction score
952
Points
473
Location
texas
Thanks for the information. Have you used a pass recently. The passes now are not the same as the ones in the 70s & 80s. Now you often have to pay a surcharge with every ride. Sometimes the surcharge costs more than a normal discounted ticket (Pisa-Rome only €9 but the Eurail surcharge was €12). You also have to reserve your ticket and ride in first class and there are a limited number of first class pass ticket. No more just hoping on the train with your pass which made the pass so awesome in its heyday.

I purchased all point-to-point discounted tickets. We traveled to Italy, Scotland, England, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and back to Italy. We flew from Italy to Scotland, but all other travel was by train. The total cost I paid for my family's tickets (2 adults/2 kids) was $960.56. The Eurail pass I needed for this trip would have cost us $1856.07 and didn’t include the UK.

$1856.07 Group discounted Eurail Pass (does not include U.K. or the $157 in surcharges)
$960.56. Point-to-point tickets (my actual total cost & includes U.K.)

I’ll take a look at the new changes. I still have fantasies of the old Eurail pass.
 

CanuckTravlr

TUG Member
Joined
Apr 23, 2016
Messages
2,011
Reaction score
2,651
Points
324
Location
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Resorts Owned
HGVC Ocean 22
In recent years, we too found the rail passes too restrictive and relatively expensive. But we also were not doing as many trips in the allotted time period as I was doing in 1972, or we were having to add extra countries, which made the passes more expensive. So any trips in the last 10 or 15 years have always been with specific tickets. If we could get decent discounts, they were also more reasonable than the passes.

The old rail passes of the past were incredible bargains if you were doing a lot of train trips (especially longer distance trips) in the specified period. The hop-on, hop-off nature of them, without needing a reservation in most cases, meant fantastic flexibility. But even then specific tickets could be a better option, certainly for single trips, or a limited number of short-haul trips in the pass period.

I was hoping the new passes might get us closer to the old passes, but only individual examples and research will reveal the truth. I do miss the old system, but it was the early days of non-jet-set tourism and the passes were designed to encourage that. That is no longer needed, so suspect deals like those will never be seen again.
 
Top