Castle tours

Do the tour on your own; it's so incredibly easy. Don't pay some company mega-bucks to do for you what you can easily do yourself.

Buy a Bayern-Ticket for 25€ + 6€ for additional travelers up to four (children under 15 are free if you only have 2 adults on the ticket). Leave on the 9:52 RE to Füssen (or anytime if on a weekend day). When you get to Füssen, go to the parking lot and catch the bus to Hohenschwangau (it's covered by the Bayern-Ticket). The bus should drop you off at Hohenschwangau at 12:13; it's less than a 15 minute walk to the ticket kiosk. If you make advance reservations for the 2 pm tour of Neuschwanstein (at www.hohenschwangau.de), that will give you plenty of time to walk up the road to the castle (or take the horse carriage).

There is also plenty of time to see the Hohenschwangau castle if you include both castles on the reservation.

After the castle tour(s), go back down to Hohenschwangau and visit on of the restaurants, see the shops, or take the bus back to Füssen and see it. There is plenty of time to see the town before heading back to Munich. The trains run hourly until 7:05 pm, then at 8:33.

We did this Greyline tour, it was great. One of the best days of our vacation. Highly recommend!!!
https://www.grayline.com/tours/munich/neuschwanstein-linderhof-premium-tour-royal-selection-5868_22_12130_14/

Although I like the destinations on the Greyline Tour mentioned above, the stop at Linderhorf seems a bit rushed at only 1 hour:

9:45am - Arrive at Linderhof Castle for Guided Tour
10:45am - Depart from Linderhof castle
11:15am - Arrive in Oberammergau
11:45am - Depart from Oberammergau
1:00pm - Arrive at Neuschwanstein Castle
4:30pm - Depart from Neuschwanstein Castle

I enjoyed walking the grounds and visiting the very varied little outlying buildings and man-made cave Ludwig II had built at Linderhof. This was his private get-away, not for entertaining guests, as the castle had only one bedroom and the dining room was built for one!

This 3 stop tour is a bit pricey at $172, but may be the best for you as everything is arranged and paid for except the meals, and you won't have to drive.

Hi Lee
You've helped me out in the past, but maybe one more time? I am doing the castles as well, which you advised me about a week or two ago. I just learned that you must now be pick up your tickets 90 minutes before your reservation instead of the usual one hour. Does that mean I should make the reservation for 30' later than originally planned (while keeping the same train)? Or should I do it an hour later? I don't know how the timing breaks down.

Thank you

hel2662

I don't know why they changed it to 1½ hours. I found 1 hr to be adequate, but maybe some people couldn't do it in the time allotted. So yes, you should make your reservation for 1½ hrs after you expect to get to the ticket kiosk. It's a short walk up the hill to the ticket kiosk; you really should be able to do it in 17 minutes. But if you wanted to be safe, you could say 1¾ - 2 hours later. It all depends on what you want to do with the rest of your time. A tour takes about 40 minutes; it maybe takes another 30-40 minutes to walk back down. Do you plan to see the other castle. The last bus that will get you to the train station for the trip back to Munich that night leaves from the Hohenschwangau Haltestelle at about 7:30 pm, or later, depending on the time of the year.

GoodmanTX:

One hour at Linderhof hardly seems like enough; I spent 6 or 7 hours there. The grounds are extensive and worth some time. And ½ hr at Oberammergau? Why bother?

My opinion is that they only added those to make it difficult to do the same thing on your own, so you might think the extra cost was worth it. IMO, it's not.

Lee:
Exactly. Perhaps my post wasn't clear. The schedule in my post was taken from the Greyline Tours website; the sites I like, but the times allotted to spend at two of the three are insufficient.

We used Mike's Bike Tours this past fall and felt it was a great day! When I booked it, I was not sure my DH would enjoy it as much as the rest of us, but it turned out he loved it, FWIW. The coach bus ride was very comfortable, and you can buy beer/soda/water on board. The bike ride was fun, and not difficult at all. There were many older folks in the group that day and you could tell some of them had not been on bikes in decades, and they did fine, to give you an idea. Anyway, we rode over to Swan Lake and back. had lunch, then were dropped off to hike up to the bridge and the castle. We had no complaints at all! A few days later we rented bikes from Mike's there in Munich and spent the day riding all over the English Garden, which I highly recommend if you have time.