Zugspitze and Neuschwanstein in one day

Get resies as early as you can for Neu. Castle (8-9 a.m?) and if you leave by 12-1 I think you can do both but its a whirlwind.

Reserve tickets for Neuschwanstein for the earliest possible time slot. After that you have two possibilities to reach the Austrian (!) Zugspitzbahn in Ehrwald: (1) Füssen dep. 11:13 (Bus 100) - Reutte Bf arr. 11:40 / dep. (S7) 11:58 - Ehrwald Zugspitzbahn arr. 12:30 . (2) Füssen dep. 13:11 (Bus 100) - Reutte Bf. arr. 13:49 / dep. 13:57 (Bus 150) - Ehrwald Zugspitzbahn arr. 14:30. The ride with the cable car takes only 10 minutes. The last descent is at 16:40, and with a train / bus combination you can be back in Füssen at 18:30.

First question- will you have a car? It's easier if you don't have to wait for trains and buses.
Second, if you are using public transportation, I would think you would want to take the train from Garmisch-Partenkirchen to Munich; not back to Füssen. There are direct trains, pretty much hourly until late evening. You will want to sleep in Munich the night before you fly home.

It is not doable by public transport to first visit Neuschwanstein in the morning and then go to Garmisch and the Zugspitzbahn. The trip to the Eibsee valley station of the Zugspitzbahn takes 4.5 hours, and there is only one connection at noon, so the won't arrive at Eibsee until 17:10 - half an hour before closing time.

Also keep in mind Zugspitze might not be great depending on the weather! I don't have much knowledge in regards to doing them both in the same day, I have visited both before though. You can spend a lot of time at/around Neuschwanstein but if you do the castle tour and scoot, it wouldn't take too terribly long. Zugspitze is beautiful on a clear day! It's worth it to do the little climb to the top where the cross is too, if that interests you.

Thank you all so very much for your replies! We so appreciate!

I should have mentioned that we will have a car. It seems that everyone agrees to visit Neuschwanstein Castle with the earliest reservation possible and hope to leave there around 11AM. Then, if we are fortunate enough for good weather, we could hope to go up to Zugspitze.

Could anyone recommend the route that we would take from Fussen, where we would park and which rails we would need to access for both?

From Füssen go to Reutte and follow the Austrian B 179 in direction Garmisch. Then you could take either the Austrian Zugspitzbahn near Ehrwald or, a few miles and 10 min further on in direction Garmisch, the Bavarian one from the Eibsee (search on google maps for "Ehrwald Zugspitzbahn" or "Eibsee Zugspitzbahn", resp. My preference would be the Bavarian Zugspitzbahn, since the views are more "dramatic" and you could do a nice walk at the Eibsee after the descent. In the evening, you can reach the autobahn to Munich via Garmisch and Oberau (a few km north of G.).

We were there in early November 2021, did not get to the Castle. We had a car and arrived at our B&B at the base of the Zugspitse after dark. The next morning it was clear and the view was awesome. When we went for breakfast and said we planned to ride the cable car up she said "LEAVE NOW" and handed us a pastry.

We got to the parking lot about 9:00 and we're 8-10 rows out. There was a line but I think we were on 6 cars out.

It was spectacular at the top, we stayed for a couple of hous and had a beer. When we got to the bottom the lot was full and the line snaked through the lot. On the road a line of busses were bringing in people from remote lots, It might have cleared late?

This is all such great information! Thank you all so much for your input! If the weather is good, I think that we will plan to go to Zugspitze first and N. Castle secondly. For some reason I had thought that Zugspitze would not be as crowded in November.