Please help: Next Wed - AVE from Madrid, need to book ahead? And discount?
 

Hello,

I am posting this again. We are arriving into Madrid at 8:55 am next wednesday and hoping to catch 9 am AVE to Cordoba (and then onto Seville on the AVE that afternoon.) We will probably miss it though and end up on the 10 am AVE. But since I don't know what will happen, I thought I will wait until the last minute. But then what if it's full; should we just book ahead? Also we will eventually be returning to Madred from Cordoba on the AVE. I read that there is a 20% roundtrip discount or 25 % discount for taking AVE right after flight. Is that true? Thank you very much!

Book ahead if you can. At the train station, the lines to buy tickets can be very long. If you arrive at the train station at 9, you could still be standing in line at 10.

If you wait until the last minute, there is also a high risk of not getting a seat. This happened to me when I wanted to go from Madrid to Cordoba. After waiting on a long line, I was told that no seats were available on the next train, so I had to wait for a later train.

I would buy your ticket at the airport. This way you can avoid the line at the train station and ensure you don't miss your train. Depending on your flight being on time, clearing customs, and getting your baggage, you may not make the 10 a.m. AVE either.

I assume when you say you are arriving in Madrid at 8:55 and are catching a 9:00 AM AVE that your arrival point is at the train station and not at an airport since nobody in their right mind would think that trip could be made in less than five minutes!
That said, I would definitely have a ticket IN HAND before I arrived in Madrid. Having a reservation alone isn't going to do you much good if you still have to pick up an actual ticket..and you won't get that done in less than five minutes, either.
And this all assumes your arrival into Madrid will be on time.

I'd plan on taking a later train..perhaps as much as two hours later..if you mentally accept that now you'll do a lot less worrying I suspect. Good luck!

Oh, sorry, I meant flying into Madrid at 8:55 am and then making it to either 10 am or 11 am AVE to Cordoba. By taxi, I thought it was only about 30 minutes to the train station, so I could feasibly make it to the 10 am AVE to Cordoba? Or should I just resign to the fact that I won't make it and then reserve the 11 am AVE right now? I know it sounds like not much difference, but since we've flown overnight flight from NYC, I just wanted get to Cordoba as soon as possible. From there, of course we also need to get on the AVE to Seville on the same afternoon. (our time is very limited) Just how booked do AVE get? Or is it totally a chance? Thank you so much!

Your flight experience must be a lot different from mine. Even when a plane lands on time, it can take about 15 min just to get off the plane (or more, usually). Okay, even if you don't check luggage, you then have to get a taxi and get to the train station and negotiate it to get on the train. You cannot do all that in one hour, I'll bet. At least Madrid airport is fairly small.

I took the AVE from Seville to Madrid on a Sunday, and it took a long time just to pick up my ticket at the train station window even though I'd booked it online. Probably at least 30 minutes, if not more. You don't need to take an AVE from Cordoba to Seville, however. There are a lot of local regular train runs which are cheaper and frequent and you can just get on. The time difference isn't that great. I took the suburban train RT from Seville to Cordoba for a day trip, and I remember seeing someone on the train who didn't even had a ticket and just paid the conductor when he came around, so I gather that is pretty normal (she was Spanish).

As for the AVE, it was not full when I was on it on a Sunday a few weeks ago, so you could have got a last minute ticket, but I was in first class.