Oktoberfest tour tickets worth it?

Took a quick look at Radius vs Local Experience.

Local Experience includes breakfast and an into to Munich / Oktoberfest. You then see the parade from multiple locations as you walk to the fair grounds. Followed by a VIP seat (hard to get) in a tent with some beer and food provided. They don't make it clear which tent, which may be importanrt regarding the beer, food and music you prefer. Relatively unique and difficult to reproduce on your own. I show it priced at Euro 220 per person. They also do a regular tour for Euro 190 (similar to Radius).

Radius offer a tour of the fair grounds followed by a reserved seat with beer and food at the Hofbrau tent. Priced at Euro 200 per person. You can reproduce this on you own if you go midweek when the crowds are less. Much harder, if not impossible, to do this on your own on opening day or any weekends.

I suggest contacting Radius and The Local Experence to be clear on what food and drink is included in your tour. Beer is about Euro 15 and food entre Euro 30 (with tips) on average in the tents. If you want the excitement of opening day and the guaranteed VIP seat, it might be worth the money, doubly so if you are already planning on $5-10k or more for this trip.

There are parade stands / seats available, but I don't know how / were to get them.

FYI. Traveling to Oktoberfest and Stuttgart's Volksfest this year with a group of around a half dozen homebrewers from Arkansas.

Lets put it this way, Opening Saturday, both Noon and Evening seatings, as well both Sunday seatings, you likely will only get by booking a tour. You can not make individual reservations for the tents, the only reservations (if any are left) are for a table of 10, requiring you to pre-pay for meals and drinks. You could try to find an unoccupied seat, (no cost) but it probably won't happen opening weekend, maybe early on Sunday Morning.

Monday however, you can find lots of seats during the day, and even some at night.

You could still walk the grounds, go into tents and see what they are like, maybe stop at the smaller booths and tents. Most of the beer gardens around town though also have bands and decent crowds, and can be fun.

Jkh Yes, I too saw the 220 price which I thought would be a reasonable price, but i emailed the tour and they sent me a link and that link had the price of 469. It was a shock! Thanks for your thoughts, I made my decision to go with Radius on Sunday for 200, basically the same experience albeit not opening day. I have a family of five and was going to break us up into 2 and 3 doing separate tours but decided that was stupid. We should all have the experience together so im going with what i can afford in this case.