Swiss Transfer Tickets, Half Fare Cards and best time and place to buy.

The best time to buy your Half Price Card would be after you get off the plane in Zurich. After you have your card then buy your train ticket from Zurich Airport to Wengen.
You would make the visit to the top of Jungfrau decision on the morning of. Go at the earliest time possible is my advice since the clouds and crowds tend to roll in later in the morning
Your hotel should have a monitor or a TV channel of the current view of the conditions on top of Jungfrau,

I would only use the local sbb.ch website as the schedule is usually more complete than Rail Europe. I found that once you actually get to the point of buying the tickets (checkout) on Rail Europe, you will see a service fee added to the cost of the ticket; not so on sbb.ch

The Half Fare Card will not give you half off the Transfer Ticket. The RE agent is wrong about that. Get one or the other.

Full price for the journey Zurich Airport to Wengen is 88 CHF. A TT costs 154 CHF (more if you buy it from Rail Europe) so you would be effectively reducing the price of travel to 77 CHF each way. A Half Fare card costs 120 CHF and will reduce the cost of your journey to 44 CHF each way. And you can use if for your mountain lifts and trains such as the Jungfrau.

You can buy the Half Fare Card when you arrive in Switzerland as Jazz+Travels dvised. No need to buy any tickets in advance for Switzerland; they do not offer discount prices for advance purchase (apart from a few city-to-city routes at certain times of the year).

Thank you Jazz + Travels and Lola! Your feedback is greatly appreciated. There were a few pieces of incorrect information that the RailEurope representative told me so I'm very glad that I decided to ask the forum. On the Jungfrau train, do some people have to stand for 2 hours? I thought I read that you aren't guaranteed a seat? Thanks!

It only takes an hour from Wengen. Take the first one at 8 am reserve a seat.
It is 100CHF roundtrip with the Half Fare Card.

The Transfer Ticket has to bought before your arrival in Switzerland, but I think we have established that it is not a good value for your trip.

You can buy train tickets and passes at Zurich Airport (located right opposite Starbucks). Its easy and there were no lines at the ticket kiosk when we arrived midday last July. You can download the Sbb mobile app for train schedules if you will have a smartphone and data plan. We purchased tickets for the Jungfraujoch at the TI office in Lauterbrunnen the day before. Keep in mind, if the weather is good, the whole experience will be very crowded - and its a long day of crowds. I was underwhelmed by the experience. If you are only in the area a few days, I would personally spend my time exploring other places such as the Schilthorn, Murren, Grimmelwald, or take the easy hike from Wengen: Männlichen to Kleine Scheidegg and take the train back down to Wengen. Enjoy your vacation! I wish I was going again this year!

Sorry, that was a typo. Now corrected.

Thank you all so much for your great advice. It sounds like one person was underwhemed about Jungfrau (crowds) and how about the rest of you? I literally have 2.5 days and would like to see as much as possible and am staying in Wengen. Anyone else think we should see Schilthorn and other towns instead? I was originally thinking of doing Jungfrau one day and mountain towns the next and the valley squeezed in there. . Jazz+ Travel, I wasn't clear on your last response. How do I reserve a seat if I'm waiting til that morning to see how the weather is? Also, were you recommending getting on at Wengen? If so, wouldn't train be packed already?

Thanks again!

In my experience, the train that can be packed is the one from Kleine Scheidegg up to Jungfraujoch. This train enters a tunnel through the Eiger shortly after you leave Kleine Scheidegg, and you are in the tunnel for the rest of the journey—-about 40 minutes if I recall correctly. That includes the time they stop so everyone can get off and look out the “windows” carved in the rock to allow a bit of daylight in. Also used, I believe, as an escape route for climbers stuck on the Eiger.

This time in the dark tunnel is one reason I am “underwhelmed” by the Jungfraujoch. Other reasons: it is indeed crowded, and we had an unpleasant experience with crowding and pushing on the elevator to the return train. And we did not know to bring food so buying lunch was extremely expensive. Also, if you are a skier or have mountaineering experience, it is not all that different from places you may have been in the US when skiing. So you go outside to the snow and yes, you are in snow, which was not in any way a unique experience for us. The views are nice but not all that different from what I have seen from the top of the ski lifts in many US or Canadian ski resorts.

The second time we went it was actually cloudy and a bit blizzardy, and we had more fun because it was not crowded. No views, but the kids enjoyed the teen action on the sledding hill ( on platters) and we explored the glacier palace with its carvings.

So I am not a fan of the expensive Jungfraujoch trip, but if you enjoy walking the walk from Maennlichen (a cablecar ride up from Wengen) to Kleine Scheidegg (where you can ride the train back down to Wengen, or walk) is very nice.