Oktoberfest too crowded, say officials

Picked this up on TV München news last night, and later in the SZ.

Basically the head of the KVR, has expressed his concern about the large amount of people on the oktoberfest ground during the weekends of last years oktoberfest. Police, Firefighters and emergency medical teams had huge problems getting through the crowds to deal with situations.

"I tremble during the Wiesen weekends, it forces a sweat on my forehead. We've had a lot of luck that nothing really bad has happened" - Mayor Christian Ude (loosely translated by me)

The basic proposal is that the tents will be shifted to the outside of the site, making a bigger space on Wirtsbudenstraße (that central str). More details can be found in the SZ article linked about.

Changes will not be started until at least 2006, and all tent owners have to agree!

Poots

They should get rid of all the winetents, rollercoasters and other unneccessary tut, then there would be more room for the priority items (i.e. biertents).

Looking at the maps and stuff, I guess this will only affect 3 major tents - Braurosl, Augustiner & OchsenBratteri.

I think you need to keep the other bits, but move them out a bit, and get rid of that silly farming show they have every 2 years too!

P

Well, as long as they aren't actually removing anything or moving the entire thing to another site (heaven forbid!) I don't have any issues with it. We'll have to wait and see how it affects things.

Um, Pootle, the silly farming show is only every 4 years.

It might cut down on the crowds a little bit if they clear out the people who are too young to drink from the beer tent side. Some of the under-16s seem to troll that area just to gawk at the tourists and show off their mini-dirndls. Since they can't get in the tents, they just clog up the road outside. Let 'em stay over by the rides, I say.

Extending the opening hours could mean people dont feel so rushed to get there early just do have a good solid 12 hours drinking. Make it 24 hours and the families could go during the day, and drinkers during the night.

yeah but it's getting bigger every year (or at least, I think it will in the long term as the town is growing and more hotels are opening) so they should do something about it.

I'm totally for shifting the tents further apart, also for adding on a couple of tents so there's more capacity and less crowding caused by people either queueing outside or hanging around in the tent

blocking off the brenner pass might help

Genius!

problem solved

Pootle & acquascutum in agreement shock horror!

I went on a Saturday once... I couldn't get my mates to go to the beer tents before 12:30pm... I repeatedly told them that we should get there early. Finally we went and there was already a shoving match at the doors. We spent oktoberfest drinking at some pub off the Wiesn. I will never go on a Saturday again and only with people who are willing to get an early morning start. The fest immediately following 9/11 was great however... with the rumours that the fest was going to be canceled and everyone's fear of traveling there was just the perfect amount of people!

I've always felt that the wies'n would be a lot more popular if it wasn't so busy!

I second that!

I agree the last weekend of the Weis'n blockoff the Brenner Pass and ban Trenitalia from entering Munich might help a bit