Today on BigBoyTravel we're going to show you how to get reservations for the
beer tents at Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany
plus some insider tips on how to get seats without a reservation.
Oktoberfest in Munich isn't your average small County Fair as the huge festival
known as the Wiesn averages over 600,000 daily visitors.
Including outdoor beer gardens, and 22 small tents, there are seats for around 120,000
people at a time at Oktoberfest, but only 80,000 of these spots are located inside main tents.
This makes getting a seat in an evening or a weekend very competitive.
In this video, we're gonna go over the details on getting reservations for Oktoberfest
plus all of your options to get a seat without one. We also have a
complete guide on Oktoberfest covering reservations how to dress and insider
tips on our website bigboytravel.com
The biggest question you probably have is "do you really need reservations on Oktoberfest in Munich?"
the short answer is no. Between 30 to 50% of the tables each day at Oktoberfest
are pre-booked with reservations which are secured far in advance, but local
ordinance requires that the rest of the spots remain open and unreserved or
first-come-first-served seating. While that may sound promising, in reality,
it means that on any given day without an advance booking you're gonna be
competing with over half a million people for just 40,000 to 60,000 unreserved
seats inside the main beer tents at Oktoberfest.
Planning ahead to get a seat is very important as outside of a few
standing-room-only areas, you pretty much have to get a seat to get a beer and
once they reach capacity the doors are closed until people leave. If you want to
book a table for Oktoberfest the reservations are handled directly with each tent.
Most of the tents open a reservation window between January and April,
but a couple of them go all the way until August. What you really want to
avoid while booking Oktoberfest reservations are third-party sellers
claiming to have "tickets" which are often either invalid, are scams, or against the tent rules.
There are also some third party Oktoberfest tour guides but many of them
charge you hundreds of euros for access you can get for free yourself.
Make sure to visit our website BigBoyTravel.com for a complete list with all the links
to book your official Oktoberfest reservations directly with each tent.
We also have some great insider tips on how to choose a tent that's best for you.
Oktoberfest reservations can only be booked in full tables which hold 8 to 10
people and you'll be required to prepay for food and drink in the tune of about
25 to 30 euros a person which you get back in the form of food and drink vouchers.
Just like the Spring Festival in Munich which we will also have a guide on soon,
table reservations at Oktoberfest typically come with a pretty awesome food spread.
Most of the tents at Oktoberfest keep a majority of their
evening and weekend reservations limited to local Munich residents only.
Some of the tents even have special sections just for these local-only reservation spots.
In our online guide, we cover the few exceptions to this local only
evening and weekend reservation rule plus some insider tips to get unreserved
seats any day of the week. We will also cover the unreserved seats in detail
later in this video. If you're a foreigner, known in German as an Ausländer,
most of your reservation options are going to be limited to weekday lunchtimes only.
As long as you make your request early in the year these weekday lunch
table reservation spots are very easy to get. The only negative thing about a
table reservation at Oktoberfest is that once your time slot is over you're
either going to have to leave the tent or move to an unreserved table.
This small hassle, together with the fact that it's easy to get unreserved seats in the
middle of a weekday, means that the only time we usually try to get weekday lunch
reservations is if we're traveling with a large group and want to go to the
Kafer Oktoberfest Tavern as it's a very fun tent but kind of hard to get into.
We do have a separate guide covering all of our favorite Oktoberfest tents and
details on them on our website BigBoyTravel.com.
If you are not able to get reservations for Oktoberfest, don't worry as you can
still get seats at the unreserved tables inside any of the tents. Each of the 15
main beer tents has between 3,000 to 10,000 seats and 50 to 70% of the tables
are left unreserved each day. These sections of tables will be marked as not
reserved in German and if you're confused you can always ask one of the
servers for help.
Getting a spot at one of the unreserved tables cost absolutely nothing and as
long as you're buying either food or drink you can stay as long as you want.
If you find yourself hopelessly walking around the unreserved section looking
for a spot but can't find one, remember that all of these unreserved tables our
community seating so you can join a group or just ask if the seat is free.
Even the reserved tables are free to set at until the time posted on each one's
reservation sheet. One of our favorite unreserved sections is the 1,000-person
standing room only area inside the Hofbrau Tent.
Even with the abundance of unreserved seats you still want to avoid the weekends
as you have to show up at 6am to be guaranteed a spot otherwise
you can spend over half the day waiting in line. In contrast, on the weekdays the
unreserved tables don't fill up until 2-3pm, so this gives you plenty of time
to either show up a little bit later or tent hop in the morning and midday.
Even if you have a large group, you can easily tent hop until 2pm on any weekday.
Using the first half of a weekday to tent hop between the
different unreserved sections is the best way to be able to experience the
different atmospheres of the tents, plus you can try all the different beers and
signature dishes. Even if you can't get into the tents, many of them still
have food for take-away it stands including the Ox Tent which has a secret side door.
Each one of the main tents at Oktoberfest also has an outdoor beer garden.
In total there are 10,000 of these seats around the Oktoberfest grounds
and all of them are unreserved. The outdoor beer gardens can be a great
backup option if you don't get into the tents especially since they don't fill
up until the evening time on weekdays or midday on the weekends. Getting inside
the tents is a lot more fun but out of all the beer gardens by far our favorite
is the one of the Kafer Oktoberfest Tavern.
In addition to the 15 main beer tents and beer gardens, another great backup
option can be the 22 small tents that litter the Oktoberfest grounds.
One of the small tents called Cafe Kaiserschmarrn actually makes the cut at
our guide at BigBoyTravel.com as one of the top overall Oktoberfest tents you
should consider visiting.
If you feel totally out of luck with how busy the tents and beer gardens are and
just can't find a spot, remember that the Oktoberfest is a huge festival it's
filled with games rides and tons of other stuff to do. The east side of the
Oktoberfest grounds or most of the games are even has a lot of secret places
where you can get drinks. A majority of the spots are standalone drink stands worked
in between the carnival games. These stands serve everything from
schnapps, wine, mixed drinks, and champagne. Best of all is usually no wait to get served
at any of the standalone drink stands. As you walk between the rides and
past the famous ferris wheel the coolest of all the drink stands you need to look
for is the Beer Carousel. This vintage carousel is awesome to get a spot in,
requires no reservations, plus the whole thing slowly rotates while you drink your beer.
Now that you know how to get reservations for Oktoberfest and all
your options to have a great time without one, we hope you have the time of
your life at the Wiesn.
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trWe also have a complete Oktoberfest guide on our website BigBoyTravel.com
covering reservations the best tents and how to dress.
thank you again for watching and subscribing to our YouTube channel we'll see you again soon.