Did you get a seat reservation or also a ticket?
In general, you need only a ticket to be onboard a train in switzerland. The Glacier Express however is an exception to this rule: On top of a ticket, you need a (mandatory) seat reservation.
Assuming you do not have the ‘Halbtax’ (A swiss yearly train 50%-discount card), the prices per person are:
- 540 francs for the excellence class seat reservation
- 272 francs for the ticket
Both are needed to travel on the Glacier Express and are usually sold together. You can nevertheless buy each seperately.
If you are sure you only have the seat reservation, you can buy the ticket without the reservation online. You need a first class ticket from Zermatt to St. Moritz on that day. As I don’t think it is possible to buy a ticket without a seat reservation, you have to use this workaround to still get a valid ticket for the GlacierExpress train as you need to manually set the online schedule to route you via Andermatt, Chur and Bergün/Bravuogn - else your ticket will cover a different route than the route the Glacier Express takes.
Step-by-step:
- open sbb.ch
- Select the travelling date
- Enable the ‘via’ option in the option (icon in the lower right corner of the form)
- Enter St. Moritz as the departure station and Zermatt as the destination station
- Add the first via ‘Bergün/Bravuogn’, the second via ‘Chur’ and the third via ‘Andermatt’
- Make sure you have the prices set to Full price / Vollpreis as opposed to Half Fare/Halbtax
- Select a train connection (it does not matter which one, as long as it passes by Bergün, Chur and Andermatt in this order)
- Select first class for the ticket
Up to three ticket categories might show up: Supersaver’s Ticket (Sparbillet), Point-to-point ticket (‘Streckenbillet’) and Saver’s Daypass (‘Spartageskarte’). Do not take the supersaver’s ticket as this will not be valid on the Glacier Express. Between the other two, you can freely chose. The Saver’s daypass covers all of switzerland on that day, but it is not refundable. The point-to-point ticket is refundable, but only covers the ride from St. Moritz to Zermatt.
If you made all correct steps, your ticket should cost 272.- per person for the point-to-point option. The price for the saver’s daypass will vary between the days, if it even is avaliable.
From then, just pay regularly.