Going to Oktoberfest 2022
 

Hello! I am a new member and recently joined. After years of talking about it, an old school friend and I have finally arranged to visit Oktoberfest 2022 in Munich for 4 days. We are a couple of middle aged professional men, recently retired. I based in the UK while my friend is arriving from New York.

We'll land early in the afternoon of Sunday 25th September and stay for 4 nights, thus giving us all of Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of the 2nd week to enjoy the festival.

We have already booked the flights and hotel. The latter is in the Theresienwiese area, only 200 metres from the park and so within walking distance.

As there are only 2 of us, reservation of any kind is out of the question. Therefore, we have to risk being walk-ins for the beer tents. That's why we chose weekdays to attend, as I read that the park would be less crowded. Since we are going to Munich only for the Oktoberfest and nothing else, we intend to arrive early and spend all day and evening in the park and take things as they come. The general plan is to try to walk into 2 large tents during the day, one around noon and the other perhaps by 6pm, doing rides and enjoying other amusements in-between, but I know that it may not work out that easily.

I think we should be able to find 2 seats for the weekday afternoons in the tents if we arrive by noon, but even on those days, the evenings could be a problem. THAT is where I would like advice. Based on what I read about the atmosphere in the tents, we made the following provisional plan

Sunday 25th September.....Evening only. There is supposed to be a concert in the park and so were leaving things open and see how it goes.

Monday 26th Septmeber............Hacker Festzelt at noon and Hofbrau Festzelt at 6pm

Tuesday 27th September............Ochsenbraterei at noon and Lowenbrau Festzelt at 6pm

Wednesday 28th September......Paulaner Festzelt at noon and Herzkasperl Festzelt at the Oide Wiesn at 6pm

My questions are:

1. What are the chances of finding 2 seats in those tents on weekday evenings if we arrive by 6pm?


2. If we have beers & order food, how long will they allow us to stay?

Hi Nostromo, welcome to Fodors! I noticed your post as I sometimes answer German-themed posts, but I don't do beer festivals myself. I am topping this in the hope that someone will see this and answer, but if you don't get another response, you have a couple of options: either go back through the boards to see if you can get a historical answer to your question (may be possible, in the past there were many more Oktoberfest goers), but they would all be pre-Covid and who knows how things will be now. The other possibility is to ask on TripAdvisor, where there are usually a lot more locals to respond.

From my perspective, the big problem for festival-goers is usually accommodation in the appropriate area, which books out months in advance, and you seem to have sorted that out for yourself well enough. If it wasn't hard to find accommodation then I am wondering if a few people are a bit more cautious around attending big events right now ..?

Good luck, hope someone sees your post. And have a wonderful trip!

Lavandula

Thank you. I also posted in the Tripadvisor foum and got all the answers I needed. Still different views are always welcome and very helpful.