Voyager Seat Reservations

[Deafdoggie]

Hi, I seem to recall that XC voyagers could only have their seats reserved three times on a journey for some reason. I have just booked a split ticket journey which need five trips on one train. Four reservations were OK, but the fifth would not allow the same seats. Is it that four is the maximum number of times the seats can be reserved? Or are those seats reserved by someone else on that leg?

 

[cuccir]

I've come across this problem before when trying to reserve the same seat multiple times on a journey when splitting tickets along the route with XC - 4 sounds about right as the maximum from memory. I think the best solution is to see if you can reserve the adjacent seat for one of the legs!

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Edit - though as you say seats I presume that's less useful - I was thinking of a solo traveller!

 

[Deafdoggie]

We are a party of four in table seats. Although they show as booked for the remainder of the trains journey, they could be booked! But unless XC have changed in recent years, it is probably just that they can no longer be reserved

 

[Hadders]

I've had exactly this problem and was going to post about it but you beat me to it. I've bo and booked tickets on a through XC service from Birmingham to Newcastle splitting at Derby, Sheffield and York (and additionally at Darlington on the outward journey). I identified a suitable seat by means of a dummy booking and then used the seat selector to book the same seat for all of the tickets.

On the outward journey I couldn't move the the last ticket (Darlington to Newcastle) to my preferred seat. Tried a different seat, tried changing the Darling to Newcastle ticket first but came up with the same issue when trying to change the location of the seat on the 4th ticket. Managed to get the return seats lined up no problem.

I came to the conclusion that a seat on an XC train can only have a maximum of 3 reservations during it's journey. It seems that the only way to guarantee the same seat reservation when using more than 3 splits on an XC train is to use a friendly ticket office who can book a through reservation.

I've no idea if this applies to other TOCs as I don't usually need to use so many splits.

 

[Deafdoggie]

It seems that the only way to guarantee the same seat reservation when using more than 3 splits on an XC train is to use a friendly ticket office who can book a through reservation

I believe it is the reservation system, rather than the online booking system. So once the seat is reserved the maximum number of times, it can't be reserved again by any method. I thought it was 3 times, but I managed to get it to do 4, which is why I wondered if it had changed. In theory therefore, it is not a problem, as the seat that you are already in, is simply "Available" for the section of the journey you could not reserve it.

 

[class 9]

Contact XC via twitter they might be able to do what you need.