Is the card worth it?

Every guide answers this with a single number of visits. That number does not exist: the dearest attraction costs € 43 per adult and the cheapest € 4. So here are two answers, both worked out over the 89 attractions that belong in a sum like this: price checked at the venue itself, per person, and one out of each choice group. A category average has no place in a sum meant to prove something.

What the card costs

For 2 adults the card costs € 258 for twelve days and € 206 for six. It runs on consecutive calendar days from first use, this season from 01/05 to 01/11. From the third child on the pass is free, single-parent families included.

The quickest answer: 4 visits

Take the dearest attractions first and the card is earned back after 4 visits: Alpentherme Gastein, Gasteiner Bergbahnen AG, Panoramabahn Großarltal and Smaragdbahn Sommer. Together those cost € 311 without the card, against € 258 for the card itself. This is not a trick with edge cases: they are cable cars and a thermal bath, exactly what most people were going to do anyway.

The honest answer: 14 visits

A middling attraction costs € 19 for 2 adults. At that rate it takes 14 visits, and all of them have to fall inside the run of the card. That is almost two a day, every day, and every one of them has to be within driving range as well.

Where it comes apart

The 187 attractions are spread over the whole province. Krimml is 92 kilometres from Salzburg with a good two hours between them; straight-line distance is useless in the Alps. What the card is worth to you therefore depends mostly on where you sleep. That is the sum the planner does per attraction, with the drive time from the place you set yourself.

The rule no guide prints

You get 24 hours in the city of Salzburg or one drive over the Grossglockner Hochalpenstrasse, not both. The 24 addresses in the city count together as that one bundle, worth € 38 per adult. Anyone who put both in their sum has counted one of the two twice.

Where these numbers come from

Of the 187 attractions, the price for 129 was checked at the venue itself; for 58 it is a category average, and those do not count towards anything above. Amounts are whole euros: the age limits of the card and those of the attractions do not line up, so a figure down to the cent would claim a precision nobody has. Whatever else is unresolved sits on the data quality page.