Budget Travel - unlimited air or rail passes worth buying

hi everyone,
i'm taking off to do a world tour and was wondering if you could point out any unlimited air or rail passes worth looking into...especially the ones that i'd need to buy before i leave the states!

thanks!

European rail passes tend to be expensive but can be good values if used intensively. Once I decide to buy one I will use it a lot in order to get lots of value out of it. It's somewhat equivalent to using one or more air carriers extensively in order to obtain the maximum benefits from earning mileage on those carriers rather than a few miles here and there.

Rail passes don't tend to work well for people who only want to take a few rail trips. They work best for people who "commit" to virtually their entire travel in the covered area on rail. What applies in your case will depend on your travel needs and preferences.

I typically get about 3 times the pass cost out of my rail pass based on regular fares. Sometimes this is an excessive estimate as special bargain fares may be available on a point to point basis.

One way to look at it is that once the decision is made to buy a pass, then the more you use it the better the deal becomes...even if some of the rail trips might have been avoidable. The point being, since those extra rail trips are now effectively "free", you gain utility by making them!

In Japan it's definately worth getting a rail pass, the normal round trip shinkansen (bullet train) fare between kyoto and tokyo almost covers the cost of the pass, and the trains are real nice. You need to get them before enter Japan.

Interrail passes are (usually) worth far more than you pay. The European railpasses sold to Americans are a huge ripoff.

To buy them, you need to have been a European resident for 6 months, or you can fool a ticketing office into thinking you have been..

http://www.interrail.net

The European railpasses sold to Americans are a huge ripoff.

Maybe certain passes are, but I've been very happy with individual country passes for France, Italy, Germany and Switzerland. More than once I've priced out individual tickets compared to the rail passes, and found they add up to twice the price of the rail pass.

In Australia there's a few good passes available depending on where you want to head and what time frame you'll be travelling over.

For flying around the South-Eastern region of Australia, the following airpass can be quite good value, especially if travelling at off-peak times: http://www.rex.com.au/Backpacker/default.aspx

The various Countrylink travel passes are decent enough for travel up and down the East Coast of Australia, but will only be good value if you're stopping a lot of places along the way. The Great Southern Railways pass is decent value for the distance you can cover on it: http://www.railaustralia.com.au/rail_passes.htm

My cousin and I traveled around Europe on unlimited Eurailpasses one summer in college. It was expensive, but it was also very nice being able to go pretty much anywhere any time we wanted. We managed to get to Berlin, Oslo, Bergen, Copenhagen, Hannover, Amsterdam, Geneva, Interlaken, Florence, Amalfi, Rome, Nice and Paris. The trains we took probably would have added up to about the same amount as the cost of our pass, but the freedom of the pass made it worthwhile, and we didn't have to debate the cost of each ticket when we decided to move on to the next city. Besides, our parents bought us the railpasses as gifts! ;)

The Eurail Flexipasses (where you get a certain number of travel days in a period of one or two months) are generally a better value if you plan your use well, but they require much more discipline and planning.

Railpass in Japan is an amazing deal. Not sure about the Eurorail one, but I heard the best utility on those is when you can sleep on the train, it'll save a nights accomidation...