Wachau valley day trip notes
 

We did a day trip from Vienna to the Wachau valley on Saturday, October 1st and used the many posts here and on tripadvisor for our planning. I don't want to repeat the info that's in other post, but I thought I'd post a few notes here about points that confused us a bit. Hopefully this will help someone else.

Buying the ticket:
It was easy to buy the combo ticket from the ticket machine at the station. It is called Bahn - Schiff - Kultur. You get train tickets, the Melk Abbey voucher, and the boat voucher.

Trains:
On the OBB website we saw the following train options to Melk:
7:20 train from Westbahnhof, non-stop, arrive 8:22 (runs Saturday-Sunday only)
7:30 train from Hauptbahnhof, 28 mins to St. Polten, 7 minutes to change, 17 more minutes to Melk, arrive 8:22, choose a car in the middle of the train for easy transfer
7:55 train from Hauptbahnhof, 35 mins to St. Polten, 25 minutes to change, 14 more minutes to Melk, total 1 hour 14 minutes, arrives 9:09

Since we were going on Saturday we opted for the non-stop train from Westbahnhof. We were a little confused at the station since the displays didn't show that the train went all the way to Melk, but checking with conductor confirmed that it did.

Abbey guided tour:
We paid extra for this, luckily it was only 2 euro each because it wasn't good. The guide was very young (high school) and although she was trying very hard, it was apparent that she was very new at it. We gave up after the 2nd room and toured on our own.

Boat:
The DDSG ticket booth is on the path from Melk and the Brandner ticket booth is little inland, within sight of the path. We went with DDSG because their boat has a larger open-top deck and it was a beautiful day. We were the 2nd in line to board and I believe we got in line a little after 1:00. If you want to find seats on the top deck, definitely get there early. It got very crowded.

We got off in Durnstein, took the bus to Krems, and then the train back to Wien Spittelau Bahnhof.

It was a very pleasant day and I'd be happy to answer any questions.

We did the same on September 22nd with a little different approach:

Bought the combo ticket at the tourist info shop near the Opera House
Took the Ubahn 2 stops to Hauptbahnhof
Train to St. Polten with a 7 minute change time--enough because the trains were next to each other--then on to Melk
Melk Abbey on Our own
Lunch at Zur Post in town, excellent
DDSG boat to Krems
Train back to St. Pollen, change, on to Vienna

We chose this approach as our B&B was close to Hauptbanhof. All was very easy.

Anyway you do it, the combo ticket makes a great day trip. We did it at the beginning of September.