Wengen/Jungfrau with kids July vs October?

Laurel just posted this the other day:

https://www.jungfrau.ch/en-gb/live/operating-info/

If you scroll down, it shows the operating dates for the various trains and cable cars.

Some hotels start closing down in Oct. to break before the busy winter season. I see the Wengen hotel I stay at, hotel schonegg. closes on Oct. 13th of next year.

I think I would opt for July/August.

Our grandkids 7 and 10 loved the playgrounds, marble runs and public pool in Wengen this last August. There’s another great playground with a large cow slide at the top of the lift out of Wengen and a kid’s “cow trail” hike down hill toward Grindelwald. In Grindelwald there’s a tram up to a toboggan run and zip lines. Needless to say, they had a wonderful time.

Early to mid Sept would be much better weather…traveled here many times.

After visiting BO in late October, I;d have a hard time going at any other time--less crowds, fine weather. At least in Murren, there was plenty open and adequate lifts everywhere.

I'm assuming your option for October is based on a fall break for school. There will definitely be less crowds, as July/August these days is NUTS. Most things don't close down until late October/early November, so you should be fine with those dates. The weather is very hard to predict. We had amazing weather this July & August and then some pretty horrible weather the first 3/4 of September and then it got nice again in October, but you never really know. There could be snow on some mountain trails by then or it could be totally dry - it's impossible to predict.

Did St. Moritz in mid -October a couple years ago and it was wonderful weather, but the towns were already shut down for the shoulder season. i would expect the same in the Berner Oberland.

We were just there in the first ten days of October and loved it. I felt it was still crowded, the idea of going in summer would be awful to me.

We found everything was open, except the Hotel Schoenegg and an Asian restaurant we would have like to try. There was so much open though that we ran out of nights in our seven days, not restaurants.

In the above link that Carrie shared you can see the dates for 2025. Not all are posted yet. Check back once everything is open again for winter 2024. 



Click on “seasonal overview” for each lift and you can see the schedule. Some have a short season such as:

Schynige Platte: 2025 season June 14 - October 26

Others just have periods of closure for revision work such as:

First Cable Car:
Closed October 27 2025 until Nov 28 2025

Hi TR,

We did a trip in Switzerland with same aged kids in Summer 24. You can find my trip report here: https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/trip-reports/family-trip-to-switzerland-june-2024

It's lengthy but I had a lot I want to remember for when we return. :) We didn't find Wengen or Murren too crowded, but the Jungfrau station was crazy busy as was the Grutschalp cable car traversing from Lauterbrunnen up to Murren. My. husband went up to Kleine Scheidegg on our last day to get pictures of the mountains and said it was quite busy as the weather was the nicest it had been in days.

In October, I think the leaves changing in the Swiss valleys would be lovely.

-Katherine