Flying in to Frankfurt instead of Munich?

Cincinnati is not a very efficient airport to travel out of, and the only reasonable airfares (under $3K) require two stop flights. Today, Frankfort is not showing as cheap of a destination as flying into Munich. The reasonably priced Munich flight takes you through Chicago and Warsaw on 5/30. Louisville to Munich is showing a $846 flight on 5/29, but its connections are Chicago and Dublin. The layovers are very short, however. A 90 minute drive to Louisville may actually save you time in the long run.
Note that the other days of the week may appear much more expensive. My source of info is ITA Matrix.

"Either way it is a lot of travel after a long flight." Getting on a train and just relaxing and/or snoozing isn't all that bad. Your train station is right there at FRA - easy to get to - and there are direct trains to Munich. Rothenburg involves changes of train - maybe see R'burg later. The full fare price is 98€ for FRA to Munich, so even if you don't take advantage of advance-sale savings fares, the savings will be substantial. You might check with your airline about RAIL & FLY packages

David, please spell Frankfurt correctly. Otherwise folks might end up in Kentucky.

If the difference between the two flights is over $700, I guess the only question is do you mind spending a large portion of your first day on a train? Train tickets purchased at full price on the day of travel will not even approach $700.

Have you checked Air Canada? Not sure if having a direct flight to Germany was more important to you than prices, but flights look really reasonable. You fly to Toronto and then to Munich.

Ended up with tickets to Frankfurt (long story) and realized we wanted to spend our time in Bavaria, Salzburg, etc. So, bought RT tickets to Munich from Frankfurt on Lufthansa for about 100 euros. The flight only takes an hour and 10 minutes. Much quicker than the train. Going next month.

Stacie, I ran your dates through kayak.com and found the Munich round-trip only a little bit more expensive, $25-$50 or so. Are you sure you were searching for the same dates on both routes?

Keep in mind if you fly from Frankfut to Munich you'll have to spend anouther hour and 12 Euros per person taking the S-Bahn into the city center. You can land in Frankfurt in the morning, walk to the Frankfurt Airport Train Station, take the non-stop ICE to Munich Hauptbahnhof (3hr30min ride and as many as two trains an hour), and be eating a late lunch in Munich. Plenty of hotels near the Hauptbahnhof so you can connect the next morning to Garmisch, plus you get to see beautiful Munich. Rothenburg is a lot of extra work to get to after a long flight and you'll end up spending more time traveling. Plus, in my opinion, Munich > Rothenburg The Bahn website has all the infos: http://www.bahn.com/

Stacie:
Flying out of Cincinnati is not what it used to be! You might want to consider taking the "Mega Bus" to Chicago and departing from O'Hare. You will likely get a better deal (saving more than the $82.00 each RT for the bus) and have many more airlines to from. Perhaps you could get a flight to Munich. If not, take the train from Frankfurt to Munich, on the ICE it's about 3:30 hrand comfortable

We faced this same situation in December. We ended up flying in to Frankfurt, and on the same day, taking the train to Rothenburg. It actually was not bad at all. We hooked up the train at the Frankfurt airport to Wurzburg - changed trains to Steinach then change again to Rothenburg (Just about a 15 min trip). It was well worth it. We spent that night and the following night in Rothenburg then caught the train to Munich which was an easy trip as well - about 3 hrs maybe a bit less. We spent a couple of days in Munich then took the train to Garmish - a VERY easy trip.

Thanks so much for all of the advice. It is always so helpful to hear from experienced travelers. We have decided to postpone our trip until September for various reasons. Hopefully the flight costs will come down as well.