Interail pass - anyone done this as a family?

[Wonderfulcheapfalafel]

We are planning a trip end of june/beginning of July to celebrate DS finishing secondary school. He wants to go to Rome. I was thinking it might be nice to get aninterail pass thing so we can stop somewhere on route, either another place in italy, or somewhere in Switzerland or france.

Has anyone done this? is it easy? I am trying to work out an itinerary and it's making my head hurt a bit! not sure if we'd need to 4 days of travel in one month, or the 2 days...
the passes have 25% off at the moment but i don't want to buy one if it's going to end up being a major headache.
Having said that we are used to getting around on trains and I do love planning holidays...
any advice would be appreciated

Did it this year with DH and our 15 and 11 year old. One word - amazing!

Two more words: exhausting and fascinating.

I could bore you with our itinerary but it would be quite identifying if anyone knows me. We mainly went around central and eastern Europe though, where the pass "goes further" ie the seat reservation fees are lower. I suggest you join the Facebook group called something like interrail and eurail travellers, and read through past threads there.

If you want to go to Rome and you know your dates, try putting in a fixed route and seeing how much it costs. Then work out whether the per-day interrail ticket price, plus seat reservation fees (which are mandatory on a lot of western Europe trains), but the additional benefit of flexibility to change your plans, balances out for you.

I think we could have done our route slightly cheaper if it was all fixed, but not by very much. We were away for three weeks total, spent 3 nights staying with friends in one place and 2 nights with other friends somewhere else, we stayed in apartment/hotels in three countries in non capital cities, and two nights on sleeper trains, with Eurostar at the start and end, and some legs of the journey we did on flixbus. We spent 4500 GBP total on travel (passes and reservations) insurance and accommodation (paid slightly more for fully cancellable bookings). And 3500ish on food and activities. Happy to answer specific questions if you want to pm me!

I agree that it is worth costing the rail journey by other means, not just Interrail. When DD went interrailing there were a lot of routes that she couldn't use the interrail ticket on. To get from Paris to Amsterdam meant changing trains three times with an Interrail ticket. Had she bought a ticket from Trainline she could have just used a through train.

Exhausting and fascinating is a good description.

In case you've not already found it, the Man In Seat 61 website can answer any and every question you might have about train travek in Europe.

We did it 18 months ago, 3 weeks hitting Munich, Salzburg, Vienna, Budapest, Bratislava and Istanbul. It took epic mountain of organisation, and the interrailing ticket was the easiest bit 😂. But I'd definitely recommend it, and would like to do it again when it's just DH and I. I swapped between hotels with AirBNBs so we could occasionally wash our clothes!

My other recommendation is to get the whole family involved in the planning if at all possible. This should reduce the chance of whining when connections inevitably get messed up/days are tiring, because they're invested in the process and it isn't an endurance test that you've foisted on them.

Get a guide book for each of the main places you want to go, and give it to each person to make the shortlist of stuff to do in that city/region. Even if you then do the booking/timings/etc , they will have been more involved. My 11 year old's contribution was that he wanted to "stay somewhere weird" and my 15yo wanted to go on a sleeper. DH wanted to avoid capital cities, which I think was quite good for costs, in the end. Loads of major rail routes bypass the capitals.

thanks everyone, this is really useful and interesting to know. I read somewhere else that it's not necesarily cheaper to get an interrail pass... however there's 25% off at the moment so i was hoping that would mean it was. i'm not sure i have it in me to work out the maths for the trips to compare!
Current thoughts are London to Zurich, spend a few days there, then Zurich to Rome (via Milan). Coming back we'd have to do Rome to London in one go if we only had the 4 journeys type of pass.... I think that's do-able...

Yes, was fab but tiring. There are various Facebook groups - 'Interailing and rail Holidays with families' and 'Interrailing for the older crowd' are both really useful (the latter especially).

I wished we'd done more 'big' journeys, I regret we split one leg and added an overnight because we thought it would be too much otherwise, but actually we were so busy on the other days walking and experiencing places it was nice to have a rest and watch the world go by.

I was advised to book Eurostar as soon as possible in peak season as they have a certain number of interrail pass seats available - might be something worth considering.

We are probably going to do it again at some point...

I've organised two Interrail trips as a family - one with an actual Interrail pass and one booking the journeys individually.

There's no real alternative to just sitting down with a calculator if you want to work out which way is cheaper. Make sure you've added in the cost of seat reservations.

Travelling by train around Europe is fantastic either way - so much more romantic than flying! Plus that smug satisfaction of being environmentally friendly.

Yes, brilliant holiday - ours were 9 and 11 when we went :)

I hope you took advantage of the passes in the sale OP! I bought ours- 10 days in 2 months this time.

2 years ago we bought 7 days in a month passes, and spent the Easter holidays doing London- Brussels- Innsbruck- Venice- Rome- Genova-Paris- London. For us it's always cheaper to get Interrail passes because we're coming all the way from Cornwall, which is included on your outgoing/ incoming travel days. Plus DS2 is still young enough to be eligible for a free pass (as I think your 11 year old might be? 🤔)

This year we'll go in the summer holidays, so I'm thinking Germany and Eastern Europe (we love Italy, but in August it's going to be scorching 😬).

Can someone please post the link to where I can get the tickets? I tried to find it but the website I was on said I had to be from outside Europe to buy the tickets.

Just a word of caution as I've been through this - by the summer might he not want to go to Rome with friends rather than mum and dad?

Interrail.eu is the website. Interrail passes are for those in Europe (including the UK), Eurrail for those outside.

Ah thank you !

Thanks all, sorry I didn't realise this had more replies! @crackofdoom yes I bought the 25% off deal. We're on a bit of a shoe string budget so I am not sure if we should've just gone for a budget airline... Train sounds more fun but the seat reservation costs are going to add up.... DS is 15 so not free unfortunately!
Starting to get my head around it now. The 'seat 61' website is excellent.