Oktoberfest with large group

I don’t have a city or hotel to offer you, but I will offer the advice that, with such a large group, you should make a reservation ASAP. The Oktoberfest draws large crowds and you will find it difficult to find accommodations for such a large group this late in the game.

Also do you have a plan to get into the tents? Are all 18 adults?

Quick search found this:

• Oktoberfest, staying outside Munich but near train
• Lodging outside of Munich for Oktoberfest
• Staying near Munich during Octofest
• Octoberfest hotels in and outside of Munich

As you can see this has been covered extensively by this forum. I prefer the areas south of Munich along the BOB train route (private train line south of Munich, http://www.bayerischeoberlandbahn.de/). The BOB is a little faster than the same S-bahn route to Holzkirchen as it does not stop at every stop, and its faster and more frequent than regional trains to places like Tegernsee, Bad Tolz, or Lenggries.

DJ

Thanks so much! I know I'm a little late with booking, that's why I came here to get some advice because I have been researching for a while now and just need to get this part of the trip planned. I tried looking in this forum for large group information but couldn't find that info so I appreciate you linking them. We already have reservations for 2 tents separate days and yes we are all over 18.

Wow - you'd better get on that lodging reservation because you're wayyyy late. Oktoberfest is huge and lots of properties are already booked full...and don't forget the prices of the normally cheap rooms will be quadrupled.

Augsburg might fit the bill. Even there, lots of Oktoberfest bookings. Take regional trains and it is 41 to 49 minutes to Munich Hbf. Use Bayern Tickets, and for a smidge more than 10 EUR per person (figuring 18 people), includes trains to and from anywhere in Bavaria, and all local transport for the day. Begins at 9 am week days and runs to 3 am the next day, all day on weekends. Trains about every 30 minutes.
https://www.bahn.com/en/view/offers/regional/regional-day-tickets.shtml?dbkanal_007=L04_S02_D002_KIN0060_REGIO-INDEX-LAENDERTICKETS-UNTEN_LZ01

I take a large group to Oktoberfest every other year (last year we were 20) and he is what we did and my advice:
We stayed in Munich during the fest (Motel One Ost to be exact). I suggest calling hotels in Munich to see if they have availability even if they say they are booked up online. We found Motel One was holding back rooms from the online reservation system last year and the only way to get a room was to call. We had a few people in our group book late and had to split their rooms between 2 hotels in Munich but this was still better than coming in from 40-60mins away everyday. Looking online I see that several Motel Ones have availability during Oktoberfest still. Getting 20 people coordinated is a nightmare and I can't imagine throwing in a regional train trip on top of that. If you must stay outside the city then I highly suggest places that have direct train connections to Munich with at least hourly service. It would be stressful to just miss a train because a few people in the group were not ready and have to wait 3+ hours for the next one. Plus if you tent reservations are in the evening and you miss the train that is a long night in the station.

If you can't find something in the city then I would suggest looking at places served by the S-Bahn before considering taking a regional train somewhere. Erding, Freising, Herrsching, or Starnberg would make decent areas to stay still close to Munich.

DJ

More on group ticketing. Both the Bayern Ticket, and the Munich "entire network" Group day ticket, work on in groups of 5 or less. So in both cases, you would need to buy 4 tickets, with groups of 5 or 4 traveling together at all times.

So the Bayern Ticket pricing works like this, 25 EUR for the first person and 6 EUR for the next passenger up to 5 traveling together. So for Augsburg, outside of the S-Bahn network, you would have 2 groups of 5 at 49 EUR per group and 2 groups of 4 at 43 EUR per group, 184 EUR total.

Staying someplace like Freising, inside the S-Bahn network, would be 4 MVV (Munich Transit Authority) Group Day Tickets. These cost 24.30 EUR for a group up to 5, regardless of the actual number of people in the group. So 4 tickets cost 97.20 EUR total.

I don't know if you have to write the names of the travelers on the Munich ticket, but you do with the Bayern Ticket. So everyone in the group of 5 or 4 will have to travel together for the rest of the day. Thus you don't have to have the entire group ready to come and go at a certain time, each group will have to have someone you can navigate the system. I know from experience, trying to get 18 people to do something at the same time is difficult if not impossible. So having it broken up into 4 different groups helps (a little).