Munich to Grindelwald

Wether buying a ticket through to Grindelwald, or getting a BO pass is the best is for you to decide.

One thing that might be good to consider: If you buy a Sparpreis on DB you will see that Munich to Grindelwald is not that much more expensive than Munich to Bern. For example I checked a month from now, and Munich Bern is 37,90, whereas Munich Grindelwald is 49,90.
So buying an extra day on your BO pass may not be the most cost effective way. Unless you plan on already exploring too on your arrival day.

I would expect the Munich - Grindelwald ticket to be cheapest on DB, as kids go free with a Sparpreis Europa ticket. You can indicate that you will have the Half Fare Card, but the reduction is only applied to Flexpreis tickets, so there might not be a. big saving.

And your assumption that you can combine tickets and passes, and just stay on the train is correct.

We do this trip every year so I’m very familiar with it (we do Munich to Mürren - so same route up through Interlaken).

The fastest route is the direct train from Munich to Zurich, direct train Zurich to Interlaken Ost, direct train Interlaken Ost to Grindelwald. You have to line up your times to hit these direct trains to avoid unnecessary train changes though. Your 5 options - leave Munich at 6:54, 8:53, 10:54, 12:54 or 2:54.

DB is the best option because it allows you to reserve your seats on the Munich to Zurich leg and is typically cheaper. If you have the HFC, you can put “Halbtax” in as an option at checkout and it will allow for any SBB half fare discounts. If you end up with the BO pass, then just buy the same route as above but only to Bern (a point along the direct train from Zurich to Interlaken) and don’t get off the train.

We purchased our ticket for mid July back in April and at that point first class + seat reservation was much cheaper than what a second class last minute ticket would be. I never buy train tickets in advance for the summer except for that one, because it’s nice to have first class for such a long journey and my husband and I like getting the table with 2 facing seats. I’d check into prices now and then look at what they’d be if you hypothetically bought a ticket for today or tomorrow and it will show you that there is probably a pretty drastic savings for purchasing ahead of time.

The only way to know if you should get a pass in addition to the HFC is knowing length of stay and the activities you plan to do. You can share that for a more helpful answer from us. If you share you full entry/exit, bases, length of stay in each and planned activities it helps with pass recommendations, otherwise it’s just a generalized guess that may not be accurate for your specific trip.

These are wonderfully helpful responses. We will be in Grindelwald for four days (though one is travel but we can stay most of the last day because travel to Luzern is short) and Luzern for 4 days. I don’t have many plans, and am open to suggestions. I have read that many things are ‘weather dependent’ for mountain activities, so I was thinking of being flexible. My kids love a ropes course and I saw one in Grindelwald. Usually we are ‘go, go, go’ on holidays but I think this one will be more of an ‘enjoy the area, enjoy each other’ type of trip. We’d love suggestions on really neat local things to do in the area (maybe less crowded to ‘hidden’)! We live near mountains here, so we aren’t needing to see every mountain , but if there are some really neat not-to-miss activities, we’d love that. I think, honestly, walking around, seeing different stores, maybe a neat tour or experience would make our stay great! I understand the Jungfraujoch tickets can be half price or you can get discounts with the earlier departures. I gather those are weather dependent- is there a best time to check the weather (for instance, is the morning not ideal because of not being able to check the weather? Would checking at night still not be accurate enough?) or is this so over done during the summer that it would be best to focus elsewhere? There’s no chance we will be disappointed in anything as we will be excited to be in Switzerland and experience a new location!

I know my family is excited to see Switzerland. We are just as happy walking around a theme park, going on a hike, making dinner together, checking out a local market as we are plying a card game together, or having time to ourselves. We live in a tourist town and we like doing tourist things, BUT we LOVE doing local things.

So, if the best option for Grindelwald and Luzern for 7-8 days is a BO pass to take advantage of the train and bus and boat and cable car (both free and discounted) we can do that. If, within that time we would have to do some really expensive train rides to make that worth while, we can just stick with the HFC.

I’m fully aware my itinerary is not helpful for suggestion of train pass, but rather looking to hear if there are not-to-miss things that would help us lean one way or another. OR if saving the train money and spending it on a great fondue place or other experience could be the best!