Is Thalys Comfort worth 2X the price of 2nd Class seats from Paris to Dortmund?
 

Yes, I know questions of "worth it" are indeed subjective yet I'm still asking.

For a 4 hr, 46 minute direct route on Thalys on Sunday morning, Nov 4 (07:55 - 12:41) for my husband and me, I'm leaning toward the special €35 per person fare in 2nd class if I can get it once we are at the 120 day mark. I will request seats facing each other and hopefully Thalys will assign them to us. As an aside, I just noticed that the cheapest prices for Sunday Oct 28 in the 2nd class cars are already €121.80!

We are traveling on a budget but if the 1st class seats at €70 each (Comfort, not Premium) are that much more spacious, is it something to consider for a nearly 5 hour trip?

Today marked 120 days ahead of the day we will be traveling to Dortmund and I was finally able to buy tickets online for the trip. With a €35 ticket available, I couldn't resist. So 2nd class for nearly 5 hours. We'll deal with it given such a great price.

5 hours might seem pretty long but if you consider that you won't need to go to/from the airport as the train stations are in the cities, taking a flight won't take much less time.

Moreover 35€ is probably what it will cost you to go from Paris to CDG and from DUS to the city itself (so without the plane ticket itself).

for 2 people, I think that 2 seats next to each other are much better : you won't have to share the leg room. And in 2nd class, the seats that are face to face go by 4, so you might have some people next to you.

You're right.

We will be sitting across from each other at a table because that was the only way to guarantee that at least one seat will be facing forward. Sitting backwards no matter how smooth the Thalys train purports to be is something I wanted to avoid. Hopefully there will still be good leg room! If not, we can always walk around for a bit. :)

Five hours on Thalys 2d is much more comfortable than any airline in economy for five hours.

You scored a real deal, Thalys trains are very nice. For your trip it wasn't worth it to pay twice the price. Seats across a table are good.

Glad to hear how nice they are! Even if we were able to fly, there is no way I'd find an airfare that inexpensive and now we don't have to deal with CDG. If we are seated next to others, that is nothing new for me. That's how it is on commuter rail and Amtrak much of the time.

Just wanted to give an update to say that Thalys to Dortmund was GREAT. The seats were very comfortable. My husband and I sat across from each other and enjoyed the trip. Was pleasantly surprised that we didn't have to through security at Gare du Nord. It was all easy.

Why surprised ???
There are only security checks for trains using the channel tunnel between UK and France ...
(... and maybe for Spanish high speed trains - but I really don´t know)
Train travel here in Europe is generally much more relaxed - if a bit tight regarding seating space in 2nd ("coach") class on occasion.

Why? Because I read either in FT or other forums that there is a security check before boarding Thalys at Gare du Nord. Happily, that didn't happen to us so it was a pleasant surprise.

Depending on the alert level, I have passed through randomly secruity check at gare du midi in Brussels. So they are not unheard of, but currently there are none. And I hope, this will remain so ....

The Thalys platforms at Gare du Nord have security scanners and sometimes I have seen queues in front of them on the way to the Eurostar. Presumably they check luggage.

Your luggage would also be scanned when boarding an AVE at pretty much every major station in Spain.