Oktoberfest in Munich, 2020 to celebrate a 75th birthday.

My husband and I went to Oktoberfest with the Best of Europe trip. I had so much fun! We were there early on Sunday while the parade was going on. We had heard it was very hard to get a place to sit but we walked into the Lowenbrau tent and a waitress said,"would you like to sit in my section?" I think we were profiled! Mid 60s, no drama,etc.! This was about 10:30 in the morning. We were squished onto picnic table seats and getting out to use the bathroom was hard BUT it was great! I have to say I only lasted till about 2 p.m. Thinking it is really crazy at nite!!!! Please don't try to drink the litter of beer as a challenge. you will get pretzels throw at you if you don't succeed!!

Yes, Hotel rooms are hard to come by during Octoberfest, especially the weekends. Trying to secure something early might help, the other strategy people use is to stay outside of town, along an easy rail trip. You might consider Freising, Tegernsee, or Augsburg, if you search on this forum, several conversations about places to stay will come up.

The opening weekend is nice, good parade, there will be crowds, but within Munich they are manageable, at the fest grounds, a bit more intense.

You probably will not be purchasing a reservation in the tents. A reservation requires you to pay up front for food and beer for 10 people at a table. As a couple, you have several options. The most common is to just show up. It costs nothing to get into the tent, you can go in, look around (I suggest at least going in to look at as many you can stand), however, you have to be seated to order a beer or food. All tables have a reservation card for the day, if the table is open, ask the wait staff, you likely can sit down, up to the time that the table is reserved for. If you are a gregarious type of person and see a table with 4 or 6, you might inquire if you can sit, be good guests and converse and sing with your table mates, if they reserved the table, maybe offer to buy the host a beer. The other option would be to find some type of tour, might cost you a bit more, but if you want to guarantee a seat at night, that might be worth it.

Obviously picking up a couple seats can be difficult on opening weekend, but walk around, you never know. Evenings during the week can be tough, but not impossible, I have had tremendous luck going the Monday after opening weekend, especially in the afternoon, having a beer in multiple tents. While having fun with a group is the main attraction, if you are a bit outgoing, you can quickly become part of the group, even just the two of you singing along to the bands will be great fun...learn the lyrics to "Ein Prosit" and The Fliegerlied or 'So ein Schöner Tag'...and you will fit right in (or don't learn them and fake it, you will be fine).

As for other fests, less than a week after Octoberfest opens, The Cannstater Volksfest in Stuttgart opens, more what Oktoberfest used to be, now getting almost as many people, but fewer tourists. It is a great time as well. While other towns have fests, nearly all are well before or after. Further afield would be some wine festivals.

He loves beer so I thought it would be a blast.

Oktoberfest is not about beer, it is imo about see and been seen. All European D- and lower level celebs enjoy it. It is crowded and loud.

Have a look at 3-day Berlin Bier Festival, world's longest Biergarten: there he will have much more choice of beers from Germany and all over the world. Furthermore you will not sit at 1 place in a tent and order beer in 1 litre glasses (Maß is little more) but you can get a pro-glass with 0.2 litre that you can re-fill at various participating stands for small money. So he willl have more choices every day / evening. Also the prives are much lower for accomodation and for the festival than in Munich.
http://www.bierfestival-berlin.de/index%20eng.html

I'm thinking of taking my husband to Munich for Oktoberfest in 2020 to celebrate his 75th birthday.

Great birthday present. I took my father last year when he was 72 and he had a blast too.

We'd probably get there the first weekend for the parade and stay a few days before heading out.

Plan on booking your hotel rooms 12-10 months in advance. We go every other year and usually have our hotels sorted by the end of November. Expect hotel prices to be 2-3x and even higher if you wait to a less than 6 months our. For example, we always stay at Motel One and the normal price is 69-89€/night but during Oktoberfest it is 194€/night.

So far, I've done a little research and I know that the beer tents go on sale in December of 2019.

Don't worry about trying to book reservations in the tents unless you want to guarantee something on opening day. With two people you should be able to find a spot in a tent from Monday onwards. If you book with a tent directly then you have to pay for an entire table but even if you were somehow willing to do this you are not likely to get a table on opening weekend (or any weekend) as the table bookings work sort of like season tickets for a sports team where previous year patrons get first dibs. If you really need seats opening day then you best bet is to work with a travel agent that specializes in Oktoberfest.

I've heard that other towns and villages have a smaller version of Oktoberfest but I haven't found much information on that. Any help and advance would be greatly appreciated.

A VERY good alternative to Oktoberfest is Munich's Frühlingsfest (Springfest), almost always the last two weeks of April and through the first weekend of May. It's like a mini-Oktoberfest without the tourists and high prices.

DJ

We lived in Augsburg, Germany and did the fest in Munich three times in 88, 89 and 90. You didn't pay to enter a tent then. If you went about lunch time, the tents were not crowded. They became crowded later in the PM.

I like the Spatenbrau beer and visited their tent as well as a couple of others. Pace yourself, the beer is stronger than American beer and much better.

We always met Australians there and had great fun with them, trying to sing the German songs.

The most beer that I have ever consumed in one day was a one fest where I drank six of the liter sized (mass) mugs. Also, lived the roasted chicken that is eaten during fest time.

One thing, I wanted to see the parade at least once. It is at the beginning of the fest. We were warned to go early. We did and had to stand on the sidewalk for two hours before the parade started. It was worth the wait. The beer wagons with huge horses and the costumes that people wore were great.

We took the train down from Augsburg, about 50 miles west of Munich. If you can't find a hotel in Munich, check out Augsburg.

We stayed here once during Oktoberfest, about 30 minutes by subway into Munich. Holzkirchen itself does not have much going off but the hotel is very clean, we had a large room and the water pressure in the shower was way above average, the breakfast excellent:
https://www.alte-post-holzkirchen.de I ate jellied vegetables one evening, no idea what I ordered.

If you fancy a small town vibe, Bad Tolz is attractive and is about an hour by subway from Munich.

Salzburg also has a fest going on at the same time. I enjoyed that more than the one in Munich because it was much smaller. I would suggest doing both. The fest in Salzburg is called St. Rupert’s Day fest.

We lived in Augsburg, Germany (Bavaria) from 87-91 and found that there are beer fests in southern Germany from late Spring until early October somewhere. The largest fest outside of the Oktoberfest was in Stuttgart and I think it was held about the same time as the Oktoberfest.

In the Rhineland of Germany, there are a lot of wine fests that are fun as well.

If you go on a weekday afternoon you shouldn't have any trouble getting in any of the tents without reservations. It is also much less crowded and hectic.

I don't agree with MarkK that Oktoberfest isn't worth going to because of the crowds, but he makes a good point about the beer. Oktoberfest is more about quantity over quality, and the party atmosphere. If this is what you want, then by all means, go!

If you're a little worried about the hotel prices, I'd consider Stuttgart's Volksfest (the world's SECOND largest beer festival, after Oktoberfest) as an alternative. The atmosphere is similar but it's far less touristy and easier to navigate. That said the breweries here aren't overall as good. My favorite tent is Glockelsmaier and Schwabenbrau (for better beer). Nice thing about Volksfest is that there are lots of lovely outdoor drinking areas so you don't have to sweat in a hot tent all day.

However if it's actually a diversity of good beer you want, neither is ideal. In that case, the Berlin Beer Mile as recommended by MarkK might be more up your alley.

Thank you all for good information. I will take it all into account as I decide how I want to plan the trip.

I don't agree with MarkK that Oktoberfest isn't worth going to because of the crowds, but he makes a good point about the beer.

Sarah, did you read my post?
I did not state in this thread's post that it isn't worth going. I stated that it has nothing to do with different sorts of beer for beer lovers, that it is crowded and loud. The rest might happen as conclusion somewhere in your head but please do not state that I wrote that here :-)

"Worth ..." is imo always a personal opinion and experience. And as we can read here a few people liked it - but I read different reasons than beer loving.

Sarah, you wrote ".....the breweries here [Stuttgart/Baden-Württemberg] aren't overall as good." This is all about personal preference.
Munich/Bavarian beers are different, but you shouldn't say they are better or worse.

"Munich/Bavarian beers are different...." Very true when compared to Dortmund beers, such as DAB if one is interested in Dortmunder Biere.

Munich/Bavarian beers are different, but you shouldn't say they are better or worse.

Actually I feel quite confident in stating that many of the major Munich breweries are significantly better than all the major Stuttgart breweries, except perhaps for Schwabenbrau. People's tastes can differ, but if you asked any panel of passionate beer fans whether Dinkelacker and Stuttgarter Hofbrau are as good as Augustiner and Paulaner, they're going to come to a consensus. Which is quite fitting, Stuttgart is wine country, and Munich is not.

Now for individual micro-breweries you are going to find exceptions, but I was referring to what the OP would find in the beer tents at the respective fests.

Someone mentioned visiting Augsberg. I will second that! We ended up there by happy accident on one of our trips and enjoyed it very much! The walking tour of the city was great, we learned a lot.

We also stumbled onto Oktoberfest in Munich, on another trip. Our only chance to see the festival and tents was our one evening, so we simply followed the crowds. I was happily amazed to see that the festival is not just for rowdy adults. We saw family after family strolling the streets in town as well as the festival in traditional garb. It's as much a carnival as it is a beer fest. We didn't get into a tent, but we watched from the SRO areas and enjoyed seeing the participants having a tremendous time. The waitstaff are amazing, don't get in their way or you'll get plowed down, they have no time to waste! LoL.