I'm looking for input from this crowd concerning this pass. It looks like it could be a reasonable deal, especially after looking at transportation costs in the area from Interlaken.

The pass is available in either a 7-day (3+4) or 15-day (5+10) version, 3 or 5 days free and 4 or 10 days at half price for all but the Shilthorn and Jungfraujoch "high" rides.

http://www.regiopass-berneroberland....l/geltung.html

for price and coverage reference. Sorry for the crappy formatting of the url.

I'm only spending 3 days in the BO (last week of May) and already have transportation to and from Interlaken worked-out (Swiss Card) and will be staying in Mürren and never venturing beyond Interlaken except to move on to our next destination in our travels. I'm not too concerned with losing the 4 days of half-price travel, but my initial feeling was that the convenience might be worth it.

Guess what I'm looking for is some ideas on how much any travelers to Mürren might have traveled around the region and if the pass seems like a reasonable deal? If you traveled back down to Lauterbrunnen via cable/rail/bike/foot, maybe over to Grindelwald and the Kleine Scheidegg area of the valley, what were your approximate transportation costs for your stay?

MvK

ttt

I have gone through several Excel spreadsheet scenarios with the available passes:

The Swiss Card
The Swiss half fare card
The Swiss Pass
The Jungfrau Region Pass
The Berner Oberland Regional Pass.

It comes down entirely to what you want to do and where you intend to go and how intensively you want to go at it.

The hardest pass to amortize is the BOB Regional Pass when evaluating it in the context of the others. It is expensive, and you must use it intensively to recover your costs. I have yet to develop a scheme by which buying the BOB pass on top of the Swiss Card will save me anything unless I engage in heroic efforts to amortize my costs.

As for convenience, I don't think that is a factor because it is no big deal to buy tickets. It takes an extra few minutes usually. I put a value factor of perhaps 10 chf on that.

Let's look at the prices.

Cost of BOB Pass = 179 chf with the Swiss Card which has already cost 178 chf.

RT Cost of Jungfraujoch from Wengen with
the Swiss Card: 145/2 = 72.50

With the BOB Pass: 47.20
Savings = 25.30

Wengen to the Schilthorn

With Swiss Card: 101/2 = 50.50
With BOB Pass: 69.40/2 = 34.70

Savings = 15.80
Total savings on these 2 trips 41.10 chf.

So far you have spent 179 chf to save 41.10.

As I see it right now the BOB pass is about 138 chf in the hole.

To reach the break even point you will need to find 276 chf worth of undiscounted rides.

Some candidates:
Wengen - Grindelwald via Kleine Scheidegg 89.00

Grindelwald - First 51.00

Wengen - Schynige Platte 78.80

Well, we are at 218.8 and still need more than 50 chf worth of rides.

Where to next? Let's see how about the Luftseilbahn to the Männlichen from Wengen? It is 38 chf RT, so we need one more ride. Take your pick.

The point being that you will be hard pressed to fully amortize the extra cost of the BOB ticket whern you already have the Swiss Card in hand. It can be done, but you are also gambling that you will have 3 days of beautiful weather.

Believe me, there is nothing more expensive than a ride to the Jungfraujoch to look at clouds! I can see them for less money at a lower altitude. They look about the same from the top down as they do from the bottom up!!







With the Swiss Card you will pay 31.60/2 = 15.80 to travel between Wengen to Mürren. With BOTH passes you will have to pay half of the final leg at 69.40/2 = 34.70.

So right now, we have looked at the two most expensive trips in those hills and you have saved a total of 15.80 + 25.30.

For this saving of 41.10 you have paid 179 chf.

To reach the breakeven point you will have to find rides costing about 276 chf undiscounted to use up the residual cost of your BOB pass.

PS Strike the bottom part. It was hidden by the big space and I failed to delete it.

The bottom line is: It takes a real effort to amortize the cost of the BOB pass. You have to travel hard for 3 days to do it.

Bob,

Thanks for the info. I was thinking along the same lines. It seems quite difficult to travel enough to eat the additional costs of the BO pass.

The time to physically purchase each ticket wasn't really a concern, but the thought of those BIG prices for each trip was. My thinking was, if I had the BO pass, I would travel freely without concern for cost as I had already spent the money. I didn't want to limit my freedom to travel because I was "cheaping-out".

Back to the Excel spreadsheet as you have done! Thanks again for helping me do the mental exercises on this.

MvK

If you want to do some more price analysis let me share with your my source:

http://www.jungfraubahn.ch/en/Deskto.../172_read-696/

Look to the right side of the screen, about two thirds of the way down, and you should see a link entitled Individual Fares.

Click on that entry. You may need to flip it back to English, but the German is not that tough if you know some.
You can select the origin you want, such as Wengen, Mürren, Grindelwald, Interlaken Ost, etc. and look at the individual fare prices.

I bought a BOB pass one year when we drove to Lauterbrunnen and returned the car in Zürich at the airport, thus negating one of the prime values of the Swiss Card.

I never analyzed what I did with the BOB Pass against the Swiss half fare card mainly because we could not remember where we went.

Our situation was a little different: We had a full week so we milked it as dry as we could with the aid of some good sunshine.

Those 3 free days were within our 7 day window, and we were able to wait out a couple of cloudy days.

One ride I did not suggest is to take the train from Wengen to Grindelwald Grund via Kleine Scheidegg. From Grindwald Grund, ride the long gondola up to the crest of the Männlichen. Then you can either walk down the gentle trail to Kleine Scheidegg and take the train back to Wengen, or jump over the side on the cable car and go down at a very steep angle to Wengen.

By the way, the konditerei/bakery in Wengen (2 of them ??) is/are the best in the area. The one in Lauterbrunnen is not very good, unfortunately.

When we go up that way, we usually stuff our packs with goodies. Some actually survive the trip until we return to our apartment. Usually they don't.

That is one of the bad things about Switzerland -- all those bakeries that you have to stop at. I need to develop a strategy for getting around them, but Wengen is laid out in such a way that I have to walk right by them.