Handicap access at Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau

To get to Neuschwanstein your choices are a horse cart (with quite a step up to get into) or at times a shuttle bus. Neither goes all the way to the castle, about 1/4 mile below there is a turn around area where they let passengers out and turn their vehicles around. From there its all uphill on foot. I doubt there is handicapped access inside the castle, you enter thru a "turret" with a circular staircase. I would try to contact them directly, you might have to forego the castles this time.

Thanks for the info. I will contact them directly, and we may possibly do a tag team approach with one parent and child going and the other parent waiting with our son.

Bethany, please report back what you find out, as it will be helpful to others.

Stan,

From what I can see on the Neuschwanstein website, that castle will be out for our son. We have sent an email to Hohenschwangau regarding accessibility. I will post when we hear back.

If our family still gets to take this trip, I will report back our recommendations based on the various sites we visit.

We had a successful (if limited itinerary) visit to Germany with our impaired mobility son. Neuschwanstein has an elevator that must be reserved in advance. Only one guest per hour is allowed to use this elevator. We had prepurchased tickets, but the elevator was booked already. The ticket agent switched our ticket times in order to allow us to use the elevator.

Here's what we experienced at Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau.

Neuschwanstein: Neither the bus nor the horse cart takes you very close to the castle. You will have to walk. We took the bus, and there was a 15 minute walk to the castle for a person with no mobility issues. There were some steep-ish spots.

Hohenschwangau: We took the horse carriage up (quite expensive) and walked down. It was easier than Neuschwanstein for sure as the elevation is lower.

After these two visits, my son was done for the day. Thankfully, we had pouring rain the rest of the afternoon and evening, so we didn't feel like we'd missed anything!

Bethany, thanks for reporting back. This will help other travelers.