Austria by Rail - Salzburg to Vienna to Bratislava to Budapest

From my research it looks like I can cover the Munich to Fussen to Salzburg via the Bavaria ticket in the Bahn website for me and my wife for only 28 Euros.

Technically this is correct but in practice it means you will have to backtrack to Munich from Fuessen or perhaps find connections through Rosenheim or/and Buchloe to get to Salzburg which is a lot of rail travel in one day as you're also restricted to regional trains and travel after 9am...the Bayern ticket includes travel to Salzburg alright (and also Kufstein) but not through Austria, only to and from...

The OeBB in Austria operates an Einfach-Raus ticket which is their equivalent of the Bayern ticket except it applies to the entire country for €28...however being restricted to local trains on ths route will add a lot of time to your journey between Salzburg and Vienna...

You could investigate the Orangways bus between Bratislava and Budapest to save money as well...

But you're really trying to do far too much in 5/6 days of minimal daylight by taking in 5 cities plus trip to Fuessen and back...

well this is different - heading out to Europe...
i must say, although strange and sounding as if Europe is a store (perhaps where one buys one's cultural delights?), i like this more than hitting or doing Europe!!

can someone confirm how long it takes to get from Munich to Fussen to Salzburg? I thought it's at least 2 or 3 hours from Munich to Fussen and presume it will be about the same on to Salzburg...? My point is, you'll either have a massive day, or spend about 1 hour at Neuschwanstein (i presume this is what you're going to visit in Fussen).

So your trip could look like that:
Dec 11th:
Munich dp 9.19 - Hohenschwangau ar 12.13
Hohenschwangau dp 17.23 - Salzburg ar 22.47
Have a look at http://www.deutschebahn.com/site/bahn/en/start.html
Dec 12th with einfach-raus:
Salzburg dp 15.37 - Linz 17.33/18.53 - Amstetten 19.56/20.19 - St. Pölten 21.19/21.43 - Wien Westbf ar 22.57
standard fare: Salzburg dp 19.00 - Wien Westbf ar 21.40
http://www.oebb.at/en/

well this is different - heading out to Europe...

Darling Eva, you've obviously never seen the old Times newspaper headline that went: "Fog in Channel - Continent Cut Off"...a common conceit of English speakers to be heading to Europe even if they are already a part thereof...

can someone confirm how long it takes to get from Munich to Fussen to Salzburg?...I thought it's at least 2 or 3 hours from Munich to Fussen and presume it will be about the same on to Salzburg

nvd covers this very well in #3 above...if using the Bayern ticket you must backtrack to some extent, probably to Munich and then to Salzburg so you can factor in 2/3 hours from Fuessen to Munich then 2 hours to Salzburg plus some 'hanging around' time, in-between...so the 5 hours 20 minutes instanced above would be a good average...

Thanks everyone for your input. I think there are a few doors worth investigating there. I really thought it would be tight but this is just one of those things that I wanted to do since I was younger. When you are living in the US, which I will be doing next year, you cannot definitely do something like this for sure.

dude, if it's something you've always wanted to do, then ignore my advice.
i've spent more time in a car to spend a shorter amount of time surfing at Manduka in north-west Spain... but it was damn worth it!