Linderhof tickets: what the door charges, and what eighteen listings include

What the palace charges at its own window

These are the Bavarian Palace Administration’s published rates, and the rows are given exactly as published, because the row you are buying is the thing people most often mix up at the desk: the palace and the grotto are two tickets, not one, and the cheaper of the two is shut for half the year.

The combination ticket is cheaper than the two separate tickets by about two euros, which is a small saving and a real one if you were going to do both anyway. The reduced palace rate is not far under the adult one, so if you are not sure you qualify, budget for the adult rate and be pleasantly surprised. And the last row is the one people are most often surprised by in the good direction: the Moroccan House, Hunding’s Hut and the Hermitage of Gurnemanz take no ticket at all, so the walk round the grounds costs nothing. The Royal Lodge is the one exception among the park buildings and it has its own small ticket, in the row above.

One more thing to know about what the eleven-euro ticket covers: The palace ticket admits you to a guided tour and does not permit you to photograph or film what it admits you to. The same holds in the Venus Grotto and in the Royal Lodge. Outside, in the park, photography for your own use is free. Why that changes how you should budget your time is on the how-long page.

Both grotto rows say summer, and they mean it. The Venus Grotto ticket and the combination ticket exist between the middle of April and the middle of October and do not exist outside that. In the winter half-year the palace is the ticket, with the Royal Lodge exhibition open on a narrower timetable beside it. What is actually open when is set out here, and it is the single most useful thing to check before you set a date.

Why there is no booking fee on top of it

One row that is not in the table, because it is an absence rather than a charge. Linderhof’s ticket carries no service or reservation fee. Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau both do, and the reason is ownership rather than policy: Linderhof belongs to the Free State of Bavaria and is sold by the Bavarian Palace Administration at its own desk, while Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau are both ticketed through the Hohenschwangau ticket centre — Hohenschwangau because it is not a state property at all. Under the settlement of 1923 between the Free State and the House of Wittelsbach, Neuschwanstein, Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee went to the state; Hohenschwangau went to the family foundation and is still its property.

It means the figure in the table at the top of this page is the whole figure, which is not true of the castle everybody pairs this one with. Who owns Linderhof, and what the 1923 settlement did, is here, and the three door prices side by side are here.

Why there is no bare Linderhof ticket to buy online

The palace administration sells its own admission at its own window and does not wholesale it, and what the platform sells for this valley is the day out that ends here. That is a different product with a different price. About eleven euros at the window. On the platform there are three figures worth knowing: the cheapest listing that names Linderhof at all is about seventy euros, and its own exclusions say you stay outside; the cheapest whose page offers you the ticket is about seventy-six euros, and there the ticket sits behind “(if option selected)”; the cheapest that describes the palace visit with nothing attached to it is about two hundred euros. Each of those is a different purchase. What those listings add beyond the door price is the drive itself. Why the drive is the product is the whole of the getting-there page.

What admission each of the eighteen Linderhof listings includes

Eighteen listings in this catalogue name Linderhof in their title. Seventeen of them were read off the palace’s own page on the platform and the one other off Oberammergau’s. The table below sorts them by the only question a ticket-buyer has, and the right-hand column is the point of it: those are the listings’ own sentences, copied out of their own inclusion and exclusion lists and labelled with which list each one came from.

Each listing’s inclusions and exclusions are shown separately here, with a label above each quotation, so it is easy to see which is which.

The two that state the entry

The private day out of Füssen is the unambiguous one. Its inclusions carry “Tickets for Neuschwanstein and Linderhof Castles” and then, separately, “Entry/admission - Linderhof Palace”, with nothing after either line. It is a private tour out of Füssen rather than Munich, listed at about four hundred euros, and it carries 5.0 from 16 ratings.

The cheapest that states entry is the cheaper one and the wording is worth slowing down on. Its inclusions read “Transport to Linderhof Palace”, “Guided palace visit at Linderhof Palace” and “Free time to explore gardens, fountains, terraces, and surrounding landscape”. A guided palace visit is exactly the product the window sells, since a guided tour is the only way into this building at all ; the listing itself does not use the words ticket or admission about Linderhof. It is listed at about two hundred euros, which makes it the cheapest listing here with the palace visit written flat, and it carries 5.0 from 11 ratings. Read its exclusions as well: the Venus Grotto is named there as an optional extra, so the grotto is a separate ticket on this trip exactly as it is at the door.

The two that put a condition after it

These two are worth reading closely, brackets included. Both of them list the Linderhof ticket as included. Both of them then qualify it, in their own words, and the words are not the same.

The most-booked day trip is the flagship and the most-rated thing in this catalogue by a distance: 16,467 ratings at 4.6, which is 90 % of every rating across all eighteen listings that name this palace. Its third inclusion reads “Neuschwanstein and Linderhof Castle entry tickets (if option selected)”. The tickets are a box you tick during booking, not something the headline price already contains, and the headline price is about seventy-six euros.

The Ettal and Eibsee day uses two different words: “Entrance ticket to Linderhof Palace (if available)”. That is not boilerplate on this palace. Tours leave every five to ten minutes with a maximum of forty people to a slot, so availability at the hour a private car happens to arrive is a real question to ask before you pay about four hundred euros for the day. It carries 5.0 from 2 ratings.

That left-hand column is the one to read to the end. Two of its five lines carry a condition, and one of the two is the entry to both palaces. Nothing on the right-hand side is a surprise: food and lunch. If you book this one, read your own booking summary back before you travel and check that the entry tickets are named in it.

The one that says, in its own exclusions, that you do not go inside

This listing has a line worth noting. The cheapest listing that names Linderhof puts Linderhof in its title and then lists, under what is not included: “Admission to Linderhof Palace *usually only an exterior visit”. If you plan to see the Hall of Mirrors, this is the line to note.

Note the word “usually”. What it means in practice is that you should assume the outside and be delighted if you get the inside.

Two of its own reviewers describe exactly that. One, at four stars, wrote: “Very good communication with the guide. The route was excellent. I would like to visit the interior of Linderhof.” Another, also at four stars, was blunter: “My suggestion would be to skip Linderhof completely. We didn’t even go inside, and it wasn’t worth spending anytime there.” The difference in her day was the palace ticket she did not have. The listing shows 3.8 from 72 ratings.

The one that mentions tickets and names no building

The small-group premium day is the second-most-rated listing here, 4.8 from 1,673 ratings, and its inclusion list opens with two words and no noun: “Skip-the-line tickets”. The tour visits two palaces. The line does not say which building the tickets cover. It is listed at a little under two hundred euros, and a question to the operator before you pay it seems fair to everybody: which building are the skip-the-line tickets for?

Two listings file a “not included” sentence inside the included list

Read The private day for up to eight’s inclusion list to the end. The second bullet of three under included says: “Tickets for the castles and palaces tour are NOT included in the price and must be purchased separately.” A caveat ended up in the included list, which is a simple form-filling slip. It is a good reminder to read both lists on any listing before booking.

It happens twice. The six-seat private day does the same thing in its own way: its third inclusion, the last of three, reads “Skip the line service. We organise tickets. Ticket prices are not included in the price”. Same box, same shape, different words. Both listings also cross entrance fees out in their exclusion lists, so on both of them the two lists agree once you have read them both.

The bullet positions given here are taken from the catalogue itself.

Three listings quote a Linderhof entrance fee, and they quote three different numbers

Three listings state a Linderhof entrance fee in their own text. They do not agree with each other, and one of the three agrees with the window.

A number typed into a listing years ago stays typed until somebody edits it, and prices go up. the Linderhof and Oberammergau day is the oldest of the three by the look of it, and its own written reviews go back to 2015. the Linderhof, Ettal and coaster day is the only one in the catalogue that matches, and it does not have any ratings or written reviews yet.

The middle figure has a curiosity attached to it. Ten euros is not a made-up number: it is the palace’s current reduced rate, sitting one row under the adult one in the table at the top of this page.The same listing also says children up to 18 pay a reduced Linderhof reservation fee of about two and a half euros, where the palace admits under-18s free. Both statements are printed exactly as they stand in the tables on this page — the listing’s own line is in the right-hand column above and the palace’s rate is at the top of the page. Check the fare at the window rather than in the listing, and take a card and some cash.

A few other listings price “castle admission” without saying which castle — one crosses out “Castle Admission Tickets” and gives an adult figure covering a day that takes in two buildings. Those are not counted among the three, as they do not name Linderhof.

How to buy the ticket, and whether you can buy it in advance

You buy it at the ticket desk at Linderhof, on the day, for a tour time the desk gives you. The palace runs on timed guided tours, tours leave every five to ten minutes, and each one takes a maximum of forty people. In practice, on a normal summer weekday, the wait between buying and walking in is short. In August, or on a Sunday in the school holidays, it is not always short, and it is worth arriving earlier in the day.

If your ticket comes through a tour, one of that tour’s own reviewers described the mechanics better than any summary. On the Linderhof and Oberammergau day, a passenger wrote that their guide “went out of his way - by running ahead of a bus group - to buy our tickets to tour the castle and newly renovated grotto at Linderhof”. That is what a good guide does with a timed-entry palace, and it is a real part of what a tour buys. A passenger on another listing described the other side of it: “I wished it was a little clearer that our tickets for castle entry were timed. We thought we just had to pick them up by a certain time, not realizing they wouldn’t even let us in.”

And one reviewer on a private listing put the whole of this page into a sentence: “It wasn’t clear if the tickets to the castle were included on initial description.” The table above sets out the answer for all eighteen listings.

The three listings worth having open while you decide

The one everybody books, the cheapest one with the palace visit written flat, and the one that tells you in its own exclusions that you will be looking at the building from the outside.

The one everybody books

From Munich: Neuschwanstein & Linderhof Castle Full-Day Trip

★ 4.6 · 16,467 ratings

· a coach or minibus day out of Munich or Füssen · palace entry only on some options

Check availability

Cheapest with entry stated

Füssen: Neuschwanstein & Linderhof Palace Day Trip

★ 5.0 · 11 ratings

· a coach or minibus day out of Munich or Füssen · palace entry stated

Check availability

Exterior visit, lowest price

Munich: Neuschwanstein, Linderhof Group or Private Tour

★ 3.8 · 72 ratings

· a coach or minibus day out of Munich or Füssen · outside only — you do not go in

Check availability

Can’t make these dates?

Three more ways up the valley, all with instant confirmation and free cancellation — then live dates on the one most people book.

The one everybody books

From Munich: Neuschwanstein & Linderhof Castle Full-Day Trip

★ 4.6 · 16,467 ratings

· a coach or minibus day out of Munich or Füssen · palace entry only on some options

Check availability

Small group, more room

From Munich: Premium Neuschwanstein Castle & Linderhof Tour

★ 4.8 · 1,673 ratings

· a coach or minibus day out of Munich or Füssen · tickets mentioned, no palace named

Check availability

Cheapest with entry stated

Füssen: Neuschwanstein & Linderhof Palace Day Trip

★ 5.0 · 11 ratings

· a coach or minibus day out of Munich or Füssen · palace entry stated

Check availability

Next: how you actually reach the valley, how long you need once you are there, what is open in which half of the year, and every listing in one table.

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