train from Munich to Garmisch-Partenkirchen

There's no reason at all to buy those tickets to G-P in advance - only disadvantages if you do.

The Regioticket Werdenfels day pass or the Bayern Ticket day pass will probably cover your family depending on the number of family members, ages, the day of the week and the hour of travel, and whether you plan to take any additional bus or train trips that day after arriving at G-P station. If you were to provide those details, I could say which choice would work best for you.

Travel to G-P uses only regional trains - so tickets are always available last minute and cost the same no matter when you buy them. There is no specific train you are obligated to take, so you cannot be late. There are no seat reservations on these trains to bother with either.

We've gone Munich to GP many times, never considered tickets in advance. Note that you need to take the S1 or S8 from MUC to the HBF first, then to GP.

Also note that the DB pass is available to visitors if bought in advance, online. It give you unlimited train travel (2nd class), and busses, for one month. It's a subscription, so you buy it and then have a window of time to cancel it for the following month. So you only pay for one month. Cost is now about 60 Euros, I think. We always buy that, so we haven't used a ticket machine or booth in years. Buying and cancelling can be tricky, there's a lot of posts about it on this forum. Or go to "The Man in Seat 61". He's the expert on train travel.

I am planning to buy our tickets from Garmisch-Partenkirchen to Vienna, and Vienna to Ljubljana ahead of time - is that a good idea??

Yes.

Thank you!

We'll probably just walk around town in GP once we arrive to try to stay awake until bedtime.

I'll look into the DP pass. We will be using trains/busses once we're there; but we're only in GP for four days then heading to Vienna. Any thoughts on if a pass is worth it when we're in Germany for such a short amount of time?

We're going GP to Vienna by train, then Vienna to Ljubljana by train, then renting a car to go to Croatia.

The "DB Pass" is not called that - it's the Deutschland-Ticket or D-Ticket which costs something like €63 each for an entire month and is good all month long for all of Deutschland (Germany) on regional trains, buses, etc.

But with 4 days in the G-P area you probably don't need to buy anything further whatsoever (with the exception of mountain-lift tickets that is.) A FREE Guest card provide FREE public transport on the area's public regional trains and buses during your stay:

https://www.gapa-tourismus.de/guest-card#/pois

Map of the covered region:
https://www.mvv-muenchen.de/fileadmin/mediapool/downloads/plaene/netzplaene/2026/2026_layout_MVV_Regio_300_GAP.pdf

I doubt a Deutschland ticket is that good of an idea. You mention "my kids", so I assume it is a family. The Werdenfels ticket will be pretty cheap as the main traveler pays 31 EUR and each additional traveler pays 10 EUR, and kids under 15 ride free. With a Deutschland Ticket, each traveler older than 5 needs their own ticket at 63 EUR each.

Advance purchase of tickets only saves you money if you are getting Spar or Super Spar tickets for long distance trains, and it doesn't look like there are currently any long distance trains between Munich and Garmisch-Partenkirchen. So there is no price advantage to getting tickets in advance.

Yes, it does mean that you will have your tickets "in hand" when you arrive, but sometimes the lowest price tickets (regional passes) will only be valid on a certain day. If your plans change, you tickets might be worthless.

It's so easy to buy tickets from a ticket automat at the station that, except for full fare tickets for a long distance train not on my arrival day, I never buy tickets in advance.

The SuperSparpreis discount requires part of the journey to be made by long distance trains of DB or their international partners on cross border routes. If you buy a through ticket from Garmsich to Vienna from DB most of the journey meets that rule so the discount applies. Looking on the DB site at random now (11:40 German time, 15th July) for23rd July you can depart Garmisch at 10:07, change at Munich Hbf (a comfortable 43 minutes transfer time) then catch an ICE to Vienna arriving 16:47. Price booked now would be €65.99, this will go up with demand, full price is €140.55. Yes, that is a 50% discount waiting to be grabbed before it sells out. No cancellations or changes. You could add an extra €12 to get the option to cancel up to the day before, which is insurance in case something goes wrong with your plan (like the flight...).

For competive families there is an interesting race. Heading in the opposite direction there is a 10:02 departure to Innsbruck which has a connection to Vienna arriving at 16:32. You'd have to check prices with ÖBB for that because it doesn't include any travel by long distance train in Germany so the DB offer doesn't apply. And use ÖBB for the Vienna-Ljubljana journey.

PS will there be a Ljubljana to Munich journey to complete the tour? That's where things get a bit tense....

EDIT corrected, apologies to Lee.

me.crewe: You appear to have misunderstood Lee's comments.

Lee advocated advance purchase of tickets for journeys such as the G-P > Vienna journey... in his words, this strategy "...saves you money if you are getting Spar or Super Spar tickets for long distance trains," tickets which of course would include the necessary regional train segment from G-P.

With "So there is no price advantage to getting tickets in advance," he was referencing the Munich > G-P journey, not the one to Vienna.