About Nadine Bucher and this site
I grew up in Kriens, at the foot of Pilatus, and have been a licensed Lucerne city and mountain guide for eleven years. I have done the Golden Round Trip more times than the bus 1 driver. This site is my attempt to answer the questions visitors actually ask me, in writing, without the hype.
Why the site exists
Most people who ask me about Pilatus are not asking about the mountain. They are asking which way up to take, whether their Swiss Travel Pass covers it (it does not, it halves the mountain sections), whether the boat is running on their date, and whether Titlis would be better. Those are answerable questions with plain answers, and the answers depend on your date and your rail pass more than on anything else. So each page here takes one question, answers it, and points you to the one GetYourGuide product that fits, if one does. The long guide is the place to start; the comparison is the short version.
What I do not do
I do not publish prices. Rates change by season and by product, and a number printed here would be wrong within weeks; the live rate shows in the booking widget at checkout. I do not sell tickets. I am not Pilatus-Bahnen AG, whose official site is pilatus.ch, and I am not GetYourGuide. When you click a booking link you leave this site and book with GetYourGuide under their terms.
How the reviews are written
Ratings and review counts are GetYourGuide’s figures at the time of writing. The reviewer quotes are real, trimmed for length, first names only. Where a product has few reviews, as the private day does, I say so rather than dress it up. Where reviewers complain, the complaint stays in.
How the site is paid for
Booking links are affiliate links. If you book through one, GetYourGuide pays me a small commission and you pay what you would have paid anyway. The commission is the same whichever of the six products you choose, so it gives me no reason to push one over another. The affiliate disclosure spells it out.
Spotted a mistake, or a changed timetable? Tell me. Season dates and closures are the things most likely to go stale, and I would rather fix them fast.