Tours of Kings Castles (Neuschwanstein & Hohenschwangau) from Innsbruck

The best part of Neuschwanstein is the outside. Keep in mind that you will be paying a third party to buy your tickets to the castle. You'll still be part of the general population with your timed ticket, entrance and tour being conducted by the Neuschwanstein employees. Not sure how Hohenschwangau works. I recall the walk between the two castles is about 20 minutes.

I went to Neuschwanstein on a viator tour from Munich. Like the other poster said, the inside is not great. But overall, it was worth it and I would go again.

We visited both castles on our own. Simple. Both castles are visited via a tour included with the tickets. Be careful with Viator, more and more I hear of tours cancelled last minute.

I agree that the tour of Neuschwanstein isn't all that interesting. Most of it is not furnished, it was never lived in. Hohenschwangau is not real big, but I thought the tour was quite interesting.

No matter which tour company you use, the "private" part of your tour does not happen inside Neuschwanstein; the overpriced 25-minute tour is always conducted by guides in the employ of N'stein, and they typically pack in as many tourists as possible at the same time. I would not bother with the trip there and the trip back just to see these palaces on the inside or the outside.

A much better experience IMHO can be had at Nymphenburg, which is right in Munich. Like N'stein and H'schwangau, Nymphenburg is a residential palace - not a castle. But Nymphenburg offers much more in the way of history and sightseeing experience than either of the other palaces. You could easily see Nymphenburg with half a day and then take on something else in Munich as well.

https://www.theworldisabook.com/16991/munich-with-kids-nymphenburg-palace/

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g187309-d242773-Reviews-Nymphenburg_Palace-Munich_Upper_Bavaria_Bavaria.html

Following... does anyone have thoughts about the audio-guided tour vs a person-guided tour of Neuschwanstein? We're needing one in English and the reservation times are more limited for English than audio-guide. Though I also can't tell on the website if "audio guide" means that English is an option..!

Thanks folks. We are more going for the private tour so we can get a ride there and back and be time efficient and not rent a car, but noted that our tour company won't be doing the tours inside of the castles themselves. There are several stops and they probably will give info before I'd imagine. While some aren't super impressed with the inside, I do love the setting and the nearby bridge and such and from a couple videos of the inside, and they look amazing to me, and I will be staying in Munich later in the trip and may check out that other palace as well - thanks for the tip! I don't see any other tour companies giving rides from Innsbruck to the castles (palaces), so thanks for the note on Viator. I'll ask them about possible cancellations to see what they say.

Ok, so now I’m wondering why you wouldn’t do the castles on a day trip from Munich? Closer and couldn’t be easier by public transportation

Replying to this "Ok, so now I’m wondering why you wouldn’t do the castles on a day trip from Munich? Closer and couldn’t be easier by public transportation". Actually, I hadn't thought of it. We will be in Venice for a week and are taking the train towards Munich and thought we'd stop at Innsbruck on the way, and stay for 2 nights, and these tours popped up and we figured we could do a side tour one of the days since I really wanted to see them but didn't want to add another town to the lodging list. I just quickly looked at tours from Munich to the Kings castles/palaces and it appears to take just as long. Also, we are going to Salzburg maybe for 2 days after this and Munich for 3 days at the end, and I guess we had lots of plans for our few days in Munich (Dachau, things in Munich).

The day trip by public transport from Munich to the final stop for N'stein and H'schwangau typically requires nearly 5 hours round trip on trains and buses. It's not necessarily "hard" - the harder part is the 40-minute walk up to the N'stein entrance - but Munich just isn't all that close, so a lot of transport time is involved.

the bottom line is that Füssen isn't really convenient from any other major tourist base

Munich, quiet a long and rarely direct train ride

Garmisch, buses run via a long roundabout route. By car you go via Austria, which is shorter but rental companies have started to add fees for cross border use.

Innsbruck, ought to be easy but the bus timeables simply don't connect at Reutte - the mid morning fast bus from Innsbruck has a 1 minute connection to the onward bus to Füssen. By train, they built a station called Ulrichsbrücke-Füssen on the Austrian side of the border - but it's 13 minutes walk just to reach the road to Füssen then another hour into Germany - and the only bus is the one from Reutte.

Sometimes you have to stop and tell yourself "if these people really wanted me and my money they would make it easier....". And until they do there are plenty of other options.

Granted its been a while (10 years), but I'm quite sure we took a direct train from Munich to a short bus ride to get to the "castles". Honestly, given the availability of castles/palaces in more convenient places, having seen both, I don't think I'd go out of my way to see Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau.

Just a couple of points for clarity. Viator is NOT a tour company. They are merely a booking site. They are contracted with the companies that actually conduct the tours. If you dive down into the details of a given tour ad, you can find the name of the company to look up reviews, or to look at their own website. They will only supply transportation to and from, and timed tickets. Your tours inside the castle will be large groups, led by N'stein employees.

The arduous 40 min climb to N'stein from the parking lot is true. However it is also true that there are shuttle buses and horse drawn carriages that make the trip up as well.

jules' memory is correct, the plan timetable has TWO direct trains each day, one mid morning for the tourists and another mid evening which is the return run of the one that brought the tourists back, and is presumably mostly empty! There is also breakfast time direct train at weekends. But this summer the plan is suffering a lot of alterations due to track engineering work in central Munich and these oddities are the first to be sacrificed when capacity is cut. Even with them the journey from Muncih to the top of the hill will be close to 3 hours each way.