Vaughan to Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest: the festhallen, the parade and the group night

Oktoberfest, an hour west

Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest is the largest Bavarian festival in North America — the twin cities' German clubs have run it since 1969 and it fills ten days in October with festhallen in the clubs and the arenas, a Thanksgiving Monday parade that is broadcast nationally, and a calendar of hundreds of events from the keg-tapping to the Rocktoberfest concerts. It is an hour from Vaughan on the 401, which is exactly the distance at which a group that wants to drink at a festhall needs a vehicle and a driver, and it is the October booking that this site's party buses and Sprinters exist for: the group together, the hall's door, and the 401 at midnight driven by someone who drank water.

The festhall night

The festhallen are the German clubs — the Concordia Club, the Schwaben Club, the Alpine Club, the Transylvania Club — and the larger venues the festival adds, each with its own ticketed nights of bands, dancing, schnitzel and beer in steins; the tickets sell through the festival's site from late summer and the Friday and Saturday nights go first. A group of twelve from Woodbridge books a party bus or an Executive Sprinter for the night: pickup at five from three addresses, the 407 and the 401 with the group together, the hall's door at seven, the night until the band's last set at midnight or the hall's close at one, and the drive home with the group asleep. Eight or nine hours of hourly hire, one number in the booking engine, divided twelve ways — which is the arithmetic that makes a chauffeured Oktoberfest cheaper per person than a night in downtown Toronto. The party bus is the birthday and the stag; the Sprinter is the office group and the friends who want to talk.

The parade

The Oktoberfest Thanksgiving Day Parade runs through Kitchener and Waterloo on the Monday morning — floats, bands, the festival's characters, the crowds along King Street from Waterloo's uptown to Kitchener's downtown — and it is the family booking: a Luxury SUV from Maple at 7:30, the route's kerb by nine with chairs and a thermos, the parade from nine, lunch at the Kitchener Market after, and home by three. The parade's route and the street closures are on the festival's site; the chauffeur knows where the vehicle can wait on a day when King Street is closed.

The Kitchener Market and the daytime festival

The Kitchener Market on Saturday mornings is the city's farmers' market with a German sausage counter that Oktoberfest makes a queue; the festival's daytime events — the Willkommen Platz's family programme, the Bavarian breakfasts, the Miss Oktoberfest pageant, the clubs' family afternoons — fill the two weekends; and the region's breweries have their own Oktoberfest calendar for a group that wants the beer without the polka. A Vaughan couple books the Saturday as a day and an evening: the market, lunch, the afternoon at a club's family session, dinner, a hall's evening, and a Premium Sedan home at eleven.

The weekend with St. Jacobs and Elora

The festival's Saturday pairs with the St. Jacobs market in the morning and the Elora Gorge in colour on the Sunday, which is how a Vaughan family or a group of couples turns Oktoberfest into a Waterloo Region weekend: a hotel in Waterloo's uptown, the Sprinter staying, the market Saturday morning, the hall Saturday night, the gorge Sunday, home by evening. Two days of daily hire; the travel desk holds the hotel, which the festival fills.

The route

The 407 west to the 401, the 401 west to Kitchener's exits — Homer Watson Boulevard for the south end and the Aud, the Conestoga Parkway for downtown and Waterloo — an hour and ten from Kleinburg or Woodbridge with the 407; an hour and a quarter from Thornhill. The routing estimate's hour and a half is the no-toll version; the fare includes the 407, and at midnight the 401 eastbound is empty.

Which vehicle

A party bus for the birthday, the stag or the office night with the music and the lights; a Sprinter for a group that wants tables and the drive home in quiet; an SUV for the parade family with boosters at $25 each; a Premium Sedan for a couple's Saturday. Twelve to fourteen is one Sprinter or bus; more is two, and the hourly page explains how an evening is priced.

What the chauffeur replaces

The designated driver — the friend who did not enjoy the festhall — and the 401 at midnight; the parade's closed streets; and the hotel's weekend parking for a couple that has stayed. For a group of twelve the fare per person is the cheapest thing about the night; for a couple it is the price of both drinking, and the site says so.

The calendar, plainly

Ten days from the Friday before Thanksgiving: the keg-tapping on the opening Friday, the festhall nights on both weekends and the weeknights between, the parade on Thanksgiving Monday, the Rocktoberfest concerts, the closing Saturday. The festival's site publishes the halls' schedules in August and the tickets go on sale then; Vaughan groups book the vehicle the same week, because the second Saturday's buses are the first thing that sells.

The festhall night, in order, for twelve

A party bus from Woodbridge at 5 p.m. for the second Saturday: three addresses within ten minutes, the sequence on the confirmation; the 407 from Weston Road and the 401 west with the music on and the coolers in the bus's ice; Kitchener's Homer Watson exit at 6:15; the Concordia Club's door at 6:30 — the bus dropped at the club's coach zone, which the chauffeur has used every October — the tickets scanned, the hall's tables, the band's first set at seven, the schnitzel, the steins, the chicken dance at nine that everyone claimed they would not do; the last set at midnight; the bus at the coach zone at 12:15 with the group's water bottles; the 401 empty; Woodbridge by 1:30, the three addresses in reverse. Eight and a half hours of hourly hire, one number in the booking engine, split twelve ways — the per-person figure that makes the chauffeured version cheaper than three taxis from a Toronto hotel.

The Executive Sprinter version is the same night without the lights: the office group of ten from Concord, the tables for the drive out and the sleep on the drive back.

The halls, for choosing

The festival's festhallen have characters: the Concordia Club is the largest and the traditional one, with its own Bavarian band and the biggest Saturday; the Schwaben Club is the older crowd's and the best food; the Alpine Club is the dancers'; the Transylvania Club is the smaller, warmer one; the arena halls the festival adds are the younger crowd's Rocktoberfest nights with rock bands rather than polka. The festival's site lists each hall's nights, bands and prices in August, and a Vaughan group that has a hall in mind books its tickets that week and the vehicle the same day; the second Saturday at the Concordia is the first thing that sells.

The parade, in order, for a family

Thanksgiving Monday: the Luxury SUV from Maple at 7:15 with boosters, chairs and a thermos; the 407 and 401 to the Conestoga Parkway; a drop at the parade route's Waterloo end on King Street at 8:40, the chauffeur then moving the SUV to a lot outside the closures; the parade from nine — the festival's floats, the pipe bands and the brass bands, the Onkel Hans character the children wait for, the Miss Oktoberfest float — until eleven; the walk to the Kitchener Market for lunch and the sausage; the SUV at the market's door at one; home by 2:30 with the children asleep. Seven hours of hourly hire, and a parade day without the closed-street parking that the parade's own site warns about.

The daytime festival and the breweries

The festival's daytime programme runs at the Willkommen Platz in downtown Kitchener — the family stage, the Bavarian food, the keg-tapping's opening ceremony on the first Friday — and at the clubs' family afternoons; the region's craft breweries run their own Oktoberfest tents and tappings, and a group that prefers a brewery patio to a polka hall books the same Sprinter for a daytime tour of three with the chauffeur as the driver. The Kitchener Market's Saturday morning, the Waterloo Region Museum's German-settlement galleries and Kitchener's Victoria Park are the parts of the city a family sees on the weekend version.

Pickup notes

The 407 and 401 from every Vaughan community; a Thornhill or Concord pickup joins the 407 at Bathurst or Dufferin, Woodbridge and Kleinburg at Weston Road, and the fare, quoted from the exact address, reflects the difference. Give us the hall and the ticket time, the addresses in order, the group size and whether it is the bus or the Sprinter; for the parade, the seats and the chairs; for the weekend, the hotel; and the chauffeur confirms the plan the evening before.

The weekend, in order, for four couples

Four couples from Kleinburg in an Executive Sprinter: Saturday at 7:30 to the St. Jacobs market for the morning, the Waterloo hotel's check-in at noon, the Kitchener Market's sausage lunch, a brewery's Oktoberfest tent at three, the hotel at five, the Concordia's Saturday night from seven to midnight, the Sprinter's five-minute drive back. Sunday: a late breakfast, the Elora Gorge in colour at eleven for the rim walk and lunch in the village, and the 401 home by four. Two days of daily hire, one number in the booking engine, split four ways, with the hotel held by the travel desk in August when the festival's weekends fill.

Booking it

Book an hourly evening from your Vaughan address for the festhall with the hall, the ticket time and the addresses in order, an hourly morning for the parade, or a daily hire for the weekend with the hotel; tell us the group size and the seats, and the chauffeur confirms the plan the evening before.

Book the Oktoberfest night