Best way in touring the Sound of Music location

I suppose that anything is possible. We took the Panorama SOM Tour 1A at the beginning of the year (January): http://www.panoramatours.com/en/salzburg/tour/tour-1a-original-sound-of-music-tour-R-28/

The tour route description gives you a rough idea as to the tour stops. You could use something like Google Maps to locate these stops. You will need to do some research as to the filming story - what's real, the back story etc.

You should be able to access the sights by some combination of buses, walking and rural bus service. The folks who over stay Mondsee church stop apparently get back to Salzburg by intercity coach service. That said, a do it yourself tour would likely take you more than the half day guided tour unless you have a car.

A DIY SOM tour is a frequent source of discussion on the Trip Advisor forum. Liz, a local expert on Salzburg, outlines a great overview of sites from the movie and how to see them on your own in this link:

http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g190441-i391-k4257985-Sound_of_Music_Tour-Salzburg_Austrian_Alps.html

I agree with Liz for the most part. Almost everything still in Salzburg from SOM can easily be seen without a tour, but I have to disagree with her slightly.

The singing and dancing scenes were filmed in a much larger gazebo in a sound stage in Hollywood (did you think it just happened to start raining at the end of the song?). The gazebo at Hellbrunn was originally located on a temporary "patio" set on the same lake with Leopoldskron, and was only used for distant shots.

Leopoldskron never appears in the movie. The scene with the Captain and Maria talking after the boat swamping was filmed at two separate locations, Frohnburg, which is not on a lake, behind Maria, and the temporary lakeside patio set, which was a copy of the patio at Leopoldskron, behind the Captain.

I went by bus to Mondsee in 2009, on my way to Hallstatt. There is a bus every hour from in front of the Hauptbahnhof in Salzburg to Mondsee. The bus trip takes 51 minutes, less than 20 minutes longer than driving, according to ViaMichelin, so you are not giving up a lot of time by doing it yourself on the bus (and, of course, you can stay as long as you want. I.e., there is more than one bus back.).

We went on the Panorama SoM Tour in mid-May and as far as I can recall every one of the stops was a public location so in principle you could DIY the tour.

I certainly would not recommend driving it yourself - we drove into and out of Salzburg when we visited and without a doubt it was the most congested and convoluted driving of the many towns we drove through on the trip. In fact the tour bus had the devil's own time getting through town - the guide had to get out of the bus a couple of times to move barriers so the bus could make a turn. It would appear that Salzburg is in the middle of a road-improvement program. A lot of construction added to an 'old town' street layout adds up to - take public transport :-) There is plenty of public transport so it would just be a matter of laying out the trip and overlaying it onto the available public routes.

The one big reason we liked the Panorama trip was the guide - Peter - perhaps because of the traffic we had a long trip so he filled in quite a lot of history on the city - it was like two tours in one.

There are many sites within the city that you can easily see on your own like others said. The majority of the sites of interest within the city (fountains and building seen in the movie, walking bridge, Mirabell Gardens, Cemetery that "inspired" the cemetery set in the film, and more are best seen on your own, and are within walking distance of each other within the town of Salzburg. There are many guides you can read that are even sold in Salzburg that can help you find these sites. There are a few sites from the movie or that inspired sets for the movie that are farther out, and Mondsee (the wedding church) is much farther out. You can can get to them on your own DIY. I liked the convenience having it arranged on a tour for these sites, and the fun of being with an SOM group. If you end up looking for a tour, I enjoyed Bob's Tours. On this tour we had a smaller van with 8 total people and had a really good tour guide.

At $110 to $120 for two people, those commercial tours had better be awfully good.

P.S. The bus from Salzburg Hbf to Mondsee in 2009 cost 4,50€/per adult, each way (about $24 for the trip), and you can stay as long as you like.

As Lee notes, Bus 140 goes from Salzburg to Mondsee about every hour and takes less than a hour each way.

You can plan your trip using: http://fahrplan.oebb.at

For Fahrplan use "Con" (out of) = Salzburg and for "Nach" (towards) = Mondsee. Reverse to get back.
Or under the "Busses/Linien" tab enter the line number 140 and you can also see the stops.

I also checked using Google Maps. It looks like you can get from Mirabelle to Leopoldskron with Bus 170 but Google Maps has you walking the last 1.7 km to Leopoldskron. Getting from Mirabelle to Hellbrunn on Bus 170 is more direct with only a. 6 km walk.

That's "Von" (out of), not Con.

Typo. c to the left of v on my qwerty tablet.

Easy to do. I find it difficult to proofread my own postings in that little box. Sometimes I come back to a post a day later, and I'm aghast at the typos and grammatical errors I find. But some people don't bother to proofread, either.

We did the SOM tour with Bob's special tours. We were lucky, we couldn't book early so once we got to the Hotel Elepant, the desk clerk called Bob's for us and got us a 2pm tour. the normal 2pm tour was booked so Bob's had a Taxi that helps them out take us. He was great. The van was very new, clean and large and we had the van for just our family of 4. There are several sites you could do on your own in town but the best part for me was driving out in the country. He took us off the beaten path through some beautiful hilly farmland that made the trip. I would assume the bus would take you by interstate which was not as scenic of a drive.

We were very happy with Bob's and would take them again.

"...through some beautiful hilly farmland..."

Sounds like the route the bus (140) took. It was definitely not the "interstate". I was so impressed with the beatiful rural scenery that I took three pictures out the front window of the bus.

Only my trip was 6,50€, one way.

You can stay in the actual family home in Salzburg - Villa Trapp - It is full of old family photos and some original furnishings. The woman who runs it is very knowledgeable in the family and home history and is happy to share. It is really a lovely B&B.