Experiences with Landerpasses and other one day passes

I've used Länder-Tickets for years for traveling in Germany. When I started (shortly after 2000) there was only the Schönes-Wochenende-Ticket for weekends. Then they added the Bayern-Ticket (in Bavaria) during the week, eventually extending the Bayern-Ticket to weekends for less cost for just Bavaria.

They work perfectly for my kind of travel. Most of my travel is to small towns that only have access by regional trains, so regional-only doesn't bother me. I also love Bavaria (as well as Baden-Württemberg), so I tend to stay in a single state for much of my time, and most of my trips are short, so the time difference doesn't matter. For instance, a few years ago I went from Freilassing to Munich. Although non-regional trains (EC/RJ) would have been faster, I used a Bayern-Ticket and a regional express (really a regional, not an true express, train). The fare difference was significant; the time difference negligible.

Southern Bavaria has an extensive network of buses, run by RVO (Regional Verkehr Oberbayern), a subsidiary of the Bahn, and the Bayern-Ticket is valid on all of it except lines that run outside Bavaria (like the Watzmann Express, RVO 840, between Salzburg and Berchtesgaden), so it greatly extends what I can access with the Ticket.

"Has anyone had good or bad experiences with these passes?"
Absolutely.
The Quer durchs Land ticket is for weekdays and works across state ("Land") lines.
For Sat or Sun there's the cheaper "Happy Weekend" or "Schönes Wochenende" ticket. It's also good for the whole country.
Then there are numerous local day passes for even smaller areas than a "Land", like the VGN tagestickets
Then there are certain communities and areas (like Garmisch, Cochem, and the Black Forest towns) that offer completely free travel within certain areas when you have a "guest/visitor card" from your innkeeper in hand (these are normally free but only from certain innkeepers or in certain towns:
Garmisch's visitor card
"I realize that you can't take any of the express trains..."
You can actually use express trains - like the Regional Express trains - with these tickets. The IC, ICE, EC, RJ and other high-speed trains however are verboten.

The number of special tickets available in Germany is hard to keep up with.
A Servus ticket in Bavaria for certain subregions at less than the cost of the Bayern Ticket.

The Bayern-Boehmen Ticket covering the border region of Germany and the Czech Republic.
http://bahnland-bayern.de/tickets/regionale-tickets/bayern-boehmen-ticket in German

The VRM 3-day mini group ticket for the region of the lower Mosel and middle Rhine.
http://www.vrminfo.de/en/home/

I've used these and you can just buy them out of a vending machine.

Trains run by the Bahn (ICE/IC/EC/IR), otherwise referred to as Fernverkehr, as well as some non-German trains like the RJ, are considered express trains. RB, RE, and IRE, otherwise know as Nahverkehr, despite including the word "express", are run by the regional authority (SPNV) for that land and are regional trains, not express trains. There are also some privatize trains, such as MRB (Mittelrheinbahn) or Meridian; these are also regional trains, and Länder-Tickets are valid on these trains. It should be noted that although the Bayern-Ticket is accepted on the private BOB (Bayerische Oberlandbahn), south of Munich, rail passes are not (www.bayerischeoberlandbahn.de/tickets-tarife/gueltige-tickets).

Another advantage of Länder-Tickets is they are usually valid for all transport in the metro districts (Verkehrsvebünde) in that Land. So, if you arrive, say, in Munich, the U-Bahn and a bus to you hotel would be covered by a Bayern-Ticket.

Tom_MN,

since there are only regional trains between Würzburg and Bamberg, it's hard to compare train speeds, apples-to-apples. However, between Frankfurt Hbf and Würzburg Hbf, the ICE takes just over an hour while the RE takes almost 2 hours. The difference might not be the speed; the RE stops 20 times between the stations while the ICE stops only once, in Aschaffenburg.

I found that the RE regional express between Bamberg and Würzburg seem to travel just as fast as the ICE train from Würzburg to Frankfurt.

This is true, but be careful about drawing any broader conclusions. The rail route between Frankfurt and Würzburg follows an old winding cut through the Spessart mountains. The curves are too tight to take advantage of the ICE kits' full capabilities. The corridors to cities to the north, however, were designed for speed. The route between Frankfurt and Köln in particular is blindingly fast.

Both the rail and corresponding Autobahn route (A3) between Frankfurt and Würzburg are currently undergoing a massive restructuring, which should cut the trip time considerably.

Has anyone had good or bad experiences with these passes?

I would think the experience would depend more on the train service than anything to do with the pass. Deutsche Bahn is usually efficient and punctual, but delays do occur more often than some of the regulars on this website may like to admit.

I use the Happy Weekend Ticket, the Quer Durch Deutschland Ticket and Hessen tickets all the time. They are a pretty good deal if you don't mind some long train rides to get all the way across the country or if you just need shorter rides. Took my daughter and niece to Garmisch from Frankfurt on the Happy Weekend ticket. Took 7.5 hours but we had a break in Würzburg which was pleasant.

Sometimes the Regional trains can be very full and I have more than once rode for a long distance without a seat. Usually when small towns have popular fests, like Christmas markets, Easter markets, medieval markets or wine fests. Just last week, quite a few people rode the whole way from Seligenstadt to Frankfurt standing up. Earlier this year, the train was standing room only from Wiesbaden to Rüdesheim.

The regional trains are usually punctual, but I would always leave a cushion of time between trains. Way too many reasons for delays, from weather, technical problems, accidents or suicides. This happens with all of the trains though, including the ICE.

"The route between Frankfurt and Köln in particular is blindingly fast." Here, again, there are no regional express trains on that route for comparison.

A better route for comparison would be from Nürnberg to Munich on the "new" route built for the ICEs. They make the trip, non-stop, in just over an hour. Every two hours an RE also makes the trip on that route. It does the trip in 1h47m, including seven stops, one in Ingolstadt for 15 minutes, presumably to allow an ICE to pass.

Considering 20 minutes for stops plus time to decelerate and accelerate, the REs top speed must be nearly as fast as that of the ICE.

As for full trains, ICEs can also be SRO, but they have reserved seats, so you can probably reserve a seat and not have to stand. The only ICE where I had to stand was from Frankfurt Flughafen to Mannheim on a holiday. Although every seat was taken, I noted that only about half of the reserved lights were lit. Had I bought a reservation, I could have sat.

I've only been on two regional trains that where people were standing. One was an ALX from Hof to Freising on the last day of a three-day holiday. The other was an afternoon commuter train coming out of a big city. As we away from the city, people got off and seats became available.

We used the Lander ticket to do a day trip between Nuremburg and Bamberg last year. It was only around 25 Euros, maybe a little more. It was a real bargain and the trains were perfectly nice and fast enough for us. Actually I think there might have been an even cheaper pass that would have allowed us to do the same route, but we still felt that we got a good deal. Think we purchased the same pass the next day to go from Nuremburg to Munich. Covers local public transit on the same day too, I think. Germany is a much underrated country in which to travel, and these passes are just one way that they make it easy for you. It's not the cheapest country to travel in but the value is often surprisingly good.

Using the word 'slow' is misleading since most of the trains go at normal train speed but take longer because of more stops.

I've used the QDL ticket once and lander tickets several times with no problems. As mentioned, there are other, smaller regional transit networks that are even better values. For example the BODO ticket which I used in the area near the Bodensee ( Ravensburg - Friedrichshafen - Meersburg ) that was only 15 Euro for two.

"I think there might have been an even cheaper pass that would have allowed us to do the same route"

There is. Nürnberg and Bamberg are both in the same metro district, Verkehrsverbund Grossraum Nürnberg, VGN, and VGN has an all-day pass for travel inside the district. It's called the VGN TagesTicket Plus (Preisstufe 10), for 18€, and would have covered all of your transportation inside the district for an entire day or weekend.

We have used them extensively for 11 vacations over the last 10 years. They are especially good for day trips as they cover both directions and often save a bundle. Remember to print the name of the passengers on them where required (Bavaria for sure). Regional trains often carried an interesting clientele like a group of nuns on a day outing and school children going home from school. A nice way to connect a bit with the country.