Is there a better option than a rail pass?

Ray, I'm sure the OP is referring to Rothenburg ob der Tauber, which is NW of Munich and a bit far for a day trip (3-1/2 hrs each way on the train).

I do agree that your itinerary is a bit rushed but realize you're only asking about transportation so I'll not comment on that. I've used the trains all over Europe but have never been able to make a rail pass pay off so I always use P2P tickets (or day passes in Germany). Hopefully the rail 'experts' here will chime in with some advice but I doubt if anyone here will recommend a rail pass.

"Is there a better option than a rail pass?" - Yes, buying normal tickets for each journey.
If these are booked in advance they usually work out cheaper than a rail pass, and they include all necessary reservations.
In some cases, such as your excursion to Ludwig's castles from Munich, a local one-day is the best option. Look up "Bayern ticket".

First, this is a classic example of what I call a "check list" itinerary - for instance Bacharach to Rothenburg, Rothenburg, check, Rothenburg to Munich. If you leave Bacharach at 8:30 and arrive in Munich after 8 PM, and you will only have 3¼ hours in Rothenburg. Not much time to see anything; just enough to tell your friends that you were there.

The logistics with rail passes are not pretty.

1) Your daughters are under 26, but a youth rail pass is only in 2nd class. They can use youth passes and purchase a 1st class adult pass and sit in 2nd class with them, or you can purchase 4 1st class adult passes.

2) You're going through 6 countries - Netherlands (Benelux), Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, and France. You can get a global pass. If you want to get a less expensive Select pass, it's only available for four countries. Benelux, Germany, Austria, and Italy will get you to Italy, but then you will need another select pass for Italy to Switzerland, to France.

Normally I would say to use a lot of advance purchase discounted tickets, but, depending on when you are going in June, you have something like 28 to 59 days to purchase tickets. You've probably waited too long to get the best deal on P-P tickets.

We've lived in Europe and are there many months of the year. We get the Eurail pass ( www.eurail.com) before leaving. Not all trains require reservations so you could mostly use ones that do not and pay nothing more. If you plan to travel in France, just book your seats when you order your railpass. Reservations don't cost that much. We've been doing this for many years and it- combined with public transport in cities- is really very affordable. See www.eurail.com/plan-your-trip to see how to make train reservations and to make them. I love the trains and you get a lot of sightseeing pleasure when you ride them. Since you have your itinerary planned by number of days, you can easily decide which days to travel and which trains to use. You can make reservations right at the plan your trip site I posted and have it all done as you buy your railpasses.

For a day in June, I see advance purchase tickets from Amsterdam to Bacharach for 116€ for four adults (29€/person). Leave Amsterdam at 10:30, get to Bacharach at 4:29 PM.

Two days later, Bacharach to Rothenburg (3 hrs) to Munich, 233€ (58€)/person.

A day trip to the castles is 38€ (9,50€/pers) for a Bayern-Ticket.

Total for Amsterdam to Munich (w/ sidetrip), 387€ (32,25/person/day). I don't think you can beat that with a rail pass.

Night train from Munich to Venice, 4 people in a 4 person couchette, 280€ (70€/pers) with advance purchase SparNight ticket from the Bahn website. This is an advance purchase ticket, but for a night train, even with a rail pass or full fare, you need to purchase in advance (accommodations on these trains often sell out well in advance).

So it looks like Amsterdam to Venice, half you trip, is 457€ for all four. I don't think you can get rail passes that cheap.

Your itinerary is a little busy, and I hope you can physically and mentally keep up with 3 youngsters. There's so much culture, history, architecture, art and food that such a trip can be a blur for everyone.

We like to stop every few days for much needed rest when we take a fast paced trip. I think you may be underestimating the distances from place to place, as this is a very long combined itinerary.

Why don't you stop in Cologne for one night and limit your stop in Bacharach to one night? I'd hate to ride past Cologne on a train going up the Rhine and not stopping to see The Duomo of all Duomos. It's also an underrated city in nightlife.

Bacharach is just about 300 yards long, and it's a sleep stop rather than a destination. See BavariaBen.com for great B&B's there. (We've stayed there 2x.)

I would suggest taking a day train Munich-Venice. You'll be missing the incredible Alps scenery in route at night, and you'll likely have a difficult time sleeping very well anyway --stopping in Innsbruck.

You should consider saving Cinque Terre and Gimmelwald for another trip--spltting the time to give you more time in great European cities like Amsterdam, Munich and stop at Florence. A flight on EasyJet from Rome FCO to Paris Orly will save a very long 900 mile in train trips, and it'll save you substantial $. I'm not a fan of riding trains, especially in the Summer when it can get very hot in Italy. I prefer budget airlines.

You are trying to cover a lot of places and distance in a short time. I recommend that you use Rome2rio to plot out the trip as you have planned it and show yourself just how long it will take to get from place to place. R2R shows the options for the routes (car, plane, train, bus, etc.) and how long it takes, along with estimated costs for each option. The results include a map so you can see exactly where you are going.

For example, it is 4 1/2 hours with 2 train changes between Amsterdam and Bacharach.

I'm sure others will continue to put their 2 cents in, but I think you need to figure out exactly what you want to do and see where and decide whether the time on the train is worth the seemingly short time you have planned in each place. And remember, traveling with 4 of you will slow things down considerably since you will only move at the rate of the slowest person.

You don't mention anything about where the 4 of you will stay together (not very common and/or pretty expensive for all of you in one room). I hope I'm wrong, but I'm guessing that with the four of you, you are also not prepared to pack light and do laundry on your trip. If you take big luggage, you will have real challenges in train stations (getting up and down stairs both in the stations and on and off the trains), getting to your lodgings which will likely not have elevators and in general just getting around. All that can affect your train travel, no matter how you pay for it.

Thanks for the responses!
Nancy, please comment on the itinerary, I would like your input. I know it's rushed. I was following RS tour schedule. Germany is giving me the biggest trouble because I would like to do the nightwatchmen tour in Rothenburg ob der tauber, but I also want to go to Neuschwanstein Castle, so I thought Munich would be a good home base and instead of the tour I would just make it a 4-5 hour stop on the way to Munich and the next day do the day trip to the castle.
Lee, I appreciate you looking up the train schedule. I also saw that Germany would be cheaper, but I having a hard time from the Cinque Terre Manarola- Gimmelwald- Moutier, Switzerland -Paris route. Thanks again for your input!

It is hard to duplicate any tour schedule because a tour schedule eliminates two of the biggest time wasters - finding/checking in and out of hotels, and transportation. His buses pulls up in front (or close to ) the hotels, you get on and off. With the train you have to get to the station, find your platform, wait bit, and then repeat at the next end. So you cannot match it for efficiency.

Terri's comments need a little perspective. She has boasted that she flies only first class, business class when forced, and never in economy, stays only in five star hotels, and doesn't worry about weight or size of her luggage because someone else always carries it. She buys rail pass just for the convenience and not for the economy. Her concept of affordable is a bit different than mine. Obviously if that is your style, it is a nice way to travel. Rail pass do provide convenience but if looking for economy you need to do the math for comparison. Until you are taking a lot of long distance trains, rail passes seldom work these days.

Here is a link to information on Neuschwanstein Castle. Be sure to pay attention to the getting there part and the tours (required) part. I went way back in the 80's and the thing I most remember is that "It takes about 30-40 minutes to walk from the ticket centre to the castle (around 1.5 km on a steep uphill road)." I had not done much research on it back then, so I was also disappointed to learn that it was built in the 19th century.

This is the link to the Nightwatchman Tour in Rothenburg ODT. It starts at 20:00. I don't quite see how you can do it in the way you are thinking. I used the DB Bahn search page (see next paragraph) and the fastest schedules I saw from Munich took about 2 hours 45 minutes with 2-3 train or train/bus changes. That's only one way, of course.

In addition to Rome2rio, you can check train schedules using the DB Bahn search page. Within Germany, you can get your tickets online through DB Bahn. The results show all the stops, the train changes, and you can click on a map to see the route.

It's these kinds of details that you need to research. In my opinion, the logistical planning is the most important part of planning any trip. I decide in general where I want to go and what I want to do there. Then there is the reality check of determining whether or not it is possible to do it in the way I want to do it. It's an iterative process with trade-offs, sometimes very difficult ones.

And it's work. There's a reason why taking a tour costs more than doing it yourself. They do all this kind of work for you.

Lo is right about the timing of the Night Watchman Tour in Rothenburg. It is nightly at 8PM for the English version and then he does another one at 930PM in German. You go on the rounds with a night watchman to keep the streets safe from various ruffians and bad guys incidentally listening to very bad puns and getting some medieval history thrown in (and a bit of WWII history as well). If you are going to do it you should spend the night in Rothenburg. The tour lasts about an hour and while I found it funny and entertaining I would probably not divert way off my path for it. I did it as part of the RS Best of Europe tour.

Frank, upthread, and Lo are right in that you can't really do a fast moving tour itinerary on your own especially for your first European trip. The RS organization has the tour thing down pat. The guides and bus drivers know exactly where to go, how to time things and are experienced enough they can easily flex if something comes up.

BTW, I felt the same about Neuschwanstein Castle, but no one could have talked me out of it earlier. If you are going to Munich area, you might want to consider a visit to Dachau. While this may not be something you think you want to see on vacation, it had way more impact for me than Neuschwanstein. I hate to add one more thing to your list of things to see!

Although I am not expert in European itineraries, I would probably add a night to Amsterdam as you all will be jet lagged on that first day and I would cut Bacharach and Rothenburg and add to Munich for day trips. If you wanted to keep in the German itinerary I, sadly, would cut Italy. As I said, I have done Rick's BOE and it was an exhausting tour and that was just with having to spend energy on sightseeing (lol!!), not having to figure out travel and hotel arrangements.

"I would suggest taking a day train Munich-Venice. You'll be missing the incredible Alps scenery in route at night, and you'll likely have a difficult time sleeping very well anyway --stopping in Innsbruck."

Taking the night train from Munich to Venice makes sense. It gives one an extra day of sightseeing, in Munich or in Venice.

The night train from Munich to Salzburg looks like it combines with the EN train from Vienna in Salzburg and goes through Villach to Udine and then to Venice, not through Innsbruck.

Speaking of Innsbruck, I went over Brenner Pass from Innsbruck to Italy a few years ago, and I was under impressed. Ok, maybe living in real mountains (the Rockies), Brenner Pass, which would be underground in Colorado, did not impress me. It was pretty, but not like 12,000 foot Loveland Pass or nearby Berthoud Pass, a little lower.

Depending on actual travel dates, the cheapest rail pass that covers all 6 countries of travel (including Austria) is probably the Eurail Global pass for 10 days of travel within 2 months. Youth discounts are no longer only in 2nd class, as of January. If you buy 1st class passes for everyone, 2 at the saver rate and 2 at the youth rate, then the total is $2506 (tomorrow's price). The pass give you 2 extra days for any other side trips, which could include a Swiss lake boat, but it just gives you 25% discounts on trains and lifts "above" Interlaken, so you won't use a travel day for those. Or, if your train travel from departing Amsterdam to arriving in Paris fits into 15 consecutive days, then that version of the pass costs 15% less.

Unfortunately, even if you bought a separate ticket from Amsterdam to the German border, you still have too many countries to work with the cheaper Select pass.

Italy's reservation fees are €10 or currently $12 each for the faster trains, so that adds up to about $48 per person for the four routes you listed. To secure the French TGV reservations for June, book them together with the rail pass, if you decide to buy one. The cheapest TGV reservation (by a big difference) is from Strasbourg, instead of Basel, adding one train connection on that travel day.

Buying regular-fare 2nd class tickets as you go won't be cheaper, according to my estimate, but booking a few of the longer train tickets ahead could be, especially in 2nd class.