Berner Oberland/Budgeting for rail and lift expenses

I hate to complicate things for you, but since you're basing yourselves in the Berner Oberland, the Berner Oberland Pass should also be considered. If you go to the webpage I've linked and scroll down to "Information", you'll see "Show area of validity". Clicking on that brings up a map detailing which transportation legs are fully covered by the B.O. Pass and on which the pass confers a 50% discount or--I guess--some other reduction. I believe other posters have stated in the past that in some cases the B.O. Pass discount is larger than you'd receive with other passes, but I haven't tried to confirm that. There's some additional information on the pass here.

I'm sure there's price information online for the high-mountain railways and other modes of transportation, but I don't know where to find it. You might need to Google for information on each of the high-altitude legs.

One thing to keep in mind is that the SBB webpage normally displays the rail fare you'd pay if you held the half-fare card; it does not show the full fare unless you choose a train and use the pull-down box on the next screen to select "No Reduction".

piano,

To begin with, one point to clarify....

"excursions to Gimmelwald, Murren, and possibly the Schilthorn."

If you're staying in Mürren, why would you need to make an excursion there?

When is this trip taking place? If the weather is decent, you can walk from Mürren down to Gimmelwald (takes about 30 minutes as I recall), so no cost there. You can either take the Cable Car back to Mürren or walk back up the hill.

You can see what the fares are for each excursion using the SBB.ch website. I believe the US dollar is close to the Swiss Franc so that will provide a close estimate. You'll have to do the number crunching to determine which Passes might be the most cost effective for the specific places you plan on visiting. In addition to the Swiss passes or the Half Fare card, you could also look at something like the Berner Oberland Regional pass. If you're going to be doing most of your touring on that side of the valley, that may be a good option.

One route you will travel often is Murren to Gimmelwald to Stechelberg to Lauterbrunnen. That's 2 cable cars and a bus to get from Murren to Lauterbrunnen one-way. I think that will cost $15 to $20 one-way. There might be some savings buying a round-trip ticket. And this does not even factor in all the other trains, funiculars, and cable cars in the region. You can see how this can add up quickly. Just doing that route once per day over a week will run as much as $140 even if it's a round-trip price.

I'm also visiting Murren this summer for a week and I'm buying the Swiss Pass for simplicity. I know I will be going up and down those cars a couple times a day. Over a week, the savings on this route pays for half of an 8-day pass.

Forgive me Ken, I accidentally included Murren as one of the excursions we'd like to take "from Murren." My oversight.
Thank you all for your kind suggestions and comments. Trying to remain positive, but I'm strongly beginning to fear that this dream destination may be too much for our pocketbooks. Everyone has been warning me that Switzerland would be one of the most expensive destinations we couldchoose.
Thank you again, however, for your wise suggestions.
PS Our goal would be to travel the first week of June.

Buy a Half Fare Card and be done with it! It will save you 50% on all travel in Switzerland - EVERYWHERE.

And who is "our budget". How many are you? any kids < 16 years old? Because they will be 100% everywhere with you.

Four adults total.

I built a spreadsheet for our first two trips to the Berner Oberland, listing each train and lift we planned to take by full fare, then calculating the impact/advantage of a half-fare card and a Berner Oberland Regional Pass. We found the B-O Reg Pass the best bet if we were staying only in the B-O and that a half-fare card in addition to the B-O Reg Pass was useful if we were also going elsewhere in Switzerland. I highly recommend building a little spreadsheet and calculating the fares and potential discounts. FWIW the Swiss Travel Pass has never noodled out for us.

First, forget the Eurail pass, as your travel is entirely in Switzerland, and the various Swiss discount offers are better than the Eurail pass discounts in Switzerland.

Second, it may not work out the very cheapest, but you cannot lose with a Half Fare Card. As said above, you get 50% off of everything that moves in the entire country, including the very expensive Jungfraujoch (only 25% off with most other passes). It's currently 120 CHF, so if you're taking at least 240 CHF of transit, you've already gotten your money's worth.

However, since you will be in the Berner Oberland for 7 days, you may do better with a Berner Oberland Pass or even a Swiss Pass. As said above, you have to do a spreadsheet and estimate. I know that since you haven't been there yet, it's hard to guess what you'll be doing. Since you have 7 days, you're highly likely to do most or all of the following:

Mürren Schilthornbahn to Schilthorn (round trip).
Mürren Allmendhubelbahn to Allmendhubel (round trip).
Mürren Schilthornbahn to Gimmelwald (at least one way, since the walk down to Gimmelwald is easy but the walk back up is more steep).
Mürren BLM to Jungfraujoch (round trip).
Mürren BLM to Lauterbrunnen (estimate that you will do this one a few times).
Mürren Schilthornbahn to Stechelberg (to start or end your valley walk).
Mürren to Wengen; Wengen to Maennlichen; and Kleine Scheidegg to Mürren (you'll walk the Maennlichen to Kleine Scheidegg portion).
- and don't forget your trips from Zurich airport to Mürren and Mürren back to Zurich.

Go to the Swiss Transit website, http://www.sbb.ch/en/home.html and put in a dummy date and get prices for all of these (without the reduction, as said above). This will give you a baseline to use when comparing the value of the various passes. I don't believe the prices change with the date. Yes it's a lot of work, but it's the only way to know for sure which deal is best for you.

Again, I'm not saying you will do all these things, or that you won't do other things too. But this is a good start to compare prices, so you can get a ballpark.

As for not buying in advance, what he means is that you should always check the weather before doing an activity. If it's good, it's a good time to do the expensive and very weather-dependent things like the Schilthorn or Jungfraujoch. If it's not, it's a good time to do a valley walk and see the Trümmelbach Falls (largely indoors). But in 7 days, you'd be very unlucky indeed not to be able to do all the activities at some point - you just don't know which point. There is no discount for buying tickets in advance, so other than figuring out your pass options, you don't have to do anything else beforehand.

I looked up the station names you need to use, because little Mürren has three possible starting points. There's a train station, called BLM, at one end of town, which goes to Grütschalp, which in turn has a cable car going to Lauterbrunnen. (Don't worry; these are all coordinated, and there's nowhere else to go at each station, so you can't get lost). There's a cable car station, called Schilthornbahn, at the other end of town a 10 minute nearly level walk away, which goes down to Gimmelwald and Stechelberg, and up to Birg and Schilthorn. And the Allmendhubel funicular runs from its own station in between the two, and on the road above them.

I promise it will all be much clearer when you are there. I know it's confusing now.

Thank you Harold and all! Very informative.