Probably, but you’ll only know after your trip is over and you know exactly which trains (dates and times) you took and exactly which specials were available for those specific trains. The railsaver recommendation in the trip planner is the best general recommendation you’ll find. It’s based on standard fare (what you’ll pay at the train station or on the individual national rail company websites if you don’t find a special) as opposed to global fare ( 30% higher and what international travel agencies charge for tickets and what many of the sites that sell rail passes use for comparisons).

Since your trip is less than 60 days out, many of the on-line specials available from the national rail company websites will already be sold out. However, if you’re willing to spend several hours looking for specials, buy non-refundable train tickets from the individual national rail company websites and you’re lucky enough that the websites will accept your credit card (not a problem at the train station, but a fair number of folks have experienced it on-line) you might be able to beat the railsaver recommendation. If you want flexibility, you’re unlikely to do better than railsaver recommends. Links to the national rail company websites are in the sticky at the top of this forum and under “transportation” on the “travel tips” tab.

Supplements and reservation charges are based on which specific train you choose to take, not how you pay for the ticket. If you choose to take a train that requires a reservation and use a railpass, the railpass is your ticket and you have to pay extra for the reservation. If you buy a ticket for that same train it will cost more than standard fare because it will include the reservation. Reservations are sometimes cheaper if you have a railpass, but not in the countries in your itinerary.

I assume you’ve been to Paris before?
What are your plans for more than a day in Vienna?

Reservations are paid on top of your railpass.

As far as how to figure out what the best railpass is, usually what I do is go through the national rail companies of each country [often bahn.de or raileurope.com, but sometimes those don’t help], and look up the individual fare for each train/leg and mark it down. Takes a bit of research, but then you can figure out which legs need to be covered on the pass, and where it would be cheaper to get individual passes.

thanks both of you! you guys really helped

Bahn.de is the German national rail system website — good for schedules anywhere in Europe but only good for pricing on tickets that involve Germany.

Raileurope is a travel agency that sells railpasses (a competitor to the folks who kindly sponsor this site) and tickets. Its point to point ticket prices will be “global fare” — 30 to 35% more than you’d pay at the train station or on-line from the national rail company websites, plus you’ll miss any specials that might be available.

Why fly to Frankfurt only to rush across germany to go to France? My advice would be get a Multi-city ticket…i.e. to fly into Paris, continue Frankfurt, etc. and fly out of Rome. Would save you a long train trip from Rome back to Paris.

wow…this will be a huge trip.

I’m assuming that with a departure date two weeks away that plane tickets have been booked and that DTW-FRA was the best deal available. Why so little time in Paris? I’d either pull a day from Vienna, Krakow, or Florence to do Paris justice, or skip Paris and save yourself the Frankfurt-Paris & Paris-Rome travel.

Ooops…didn’t see the looming departure date…forget what I said earlier

I’m on the same wave length as Augustin…Paris is worth minimum of 3 days (4 would be ideal). Vienna is 2 days max. You could easily cut Krakow to 2 days also. Florence is nice if you want to go to alot of art musuems, but I’d use it as a base ot visit Pisa and Siena for a day.

We changed it a bit…
Paris is 3 days now and we are doing Krakow for 3 days because we are meeting are family that lives out there! I’m excited about that! so we will have to cut out a day from somewhere in an Italy city. And we are flying from Paris to Rome.