I went on the Germany ABD in July 2011. My experience was different in that I traveled with a colleague and our trip was funded through a program called Fund for Teachers. FFT allows teachers to design professional development experiences and write proposals for the travel. We are both literacy/reading teachers and wanted to visit Germany to explore castles, fairytale origins, and medieval periods, and we were both leery of trying to guide ourselves in a foreign land when neither of us speak German. The itinerary for this trip just happened to really fit what we wanted to research for our curriculum and it was within the proposal budget. Luckily, we were funded fully. With that said, we obviously viewed things through our "teacher" lenses instead of the traditional family vacationer, but it was an amazing experience. We have stayed in touch with Stephanie, our native guide, and she has even Skyped with our students and sent postcards from her travels. She still works on this tour, and she is amazing! Our American guide was leaving ABD to pursue law school. We kept a blog of our trip and what we did with our experience in our classrooms for the school year following our journey. You are welcome to visit our page but be aware that there may be some spoilers. I believe the hotel stays are still the same, but some of the experiences may be a little different.
Like any blog, it works backwards, so you'll want to go to the right sidebar and pick the earliest dates to read from the beginning (Heidelberg).
http://fairytaleduo.blogspot.com/