Sad that I can't give this a good review. Unless you view an Oktoberfest celebration as solely a reason to get together under a tent and drink beer with other people, you are probably going to be disappointed in Naperville's Oktoberfest celebration. It just seems like so little effort was put into it.
There is a tent. There is (a limited selection of) food. There is beer.
Aside from the fact that the caterer is grilling bratwurst, and the beers are from Munich, there's not much more German flavor you are going to get at this party. Sure they've got an Oompah band, but they've also got a classic rock cover band, and all day on Saturday, before the bands started, we ate our brats and drank our beers to the traditional Bavarian sounds of Fraulein Gaga, courtesy of 101.9, Der Mix.
We popped for the half price tickets through the Amazon Deals website when they became available, so it cost $4 each for us to get in (daughter was free, being under 4 years old). We brought her, and we came here mainly, because they advertised family and kid's activities during the late-morning and early afternoon hours. Basically, lunchtime. Thank god they had a "train" ride to take the kids around the Naper Settlement, even though it did work out to 3 tickets, per person, per ride (get a roll of 25 tickets for 20 bucks). So for one of us to ride along with our daughter, each time, it set us back $4.80. At least it made her happy. They also had a couple of art tents set up where kids could make spinning-art, sand-art, candle-art, and leaf-stamp art (all but the leaf-stamp art required tickets). They also had some German language school with a tent, but I could never figure out what it was they were doing, and not wanting to fall victim to a sales pitch, I didn't ask.
For entertainment they had a karate demonstration by three pretty talented teenagers from a local karate school. While it was impressive to see these kids flip around, a display of Asian martial arts didn't really scream "Oktoberfest" to me. They also had a "puppet show" which turned out to be some old lady with a couple of ventriloquist dummies... you know the kind... the ones who go around and give shows in junior high libraries about the dangers of drugs? Yeah, that kind of puppet show. I didn't listen to what her show was about, because quite frankly she freaked me out.
Now to the upside, the brats were really good, and so was the roasted pork sandwich. However, when my in-laws went later in the day (maybe 2-3pm) they kept running out of food. We were the first ones in line as soon as they opened up the food table, so we didn't run into that problem. The food was reasonably priced, for a fair/festival, at $3.50 per brat. The beer was $6 per glass, although you could pop for the $4 collector's mug (brightly colored plastic, kinda like you'd get at Medieval Times) and then get $1 off your refills. Only worth it if you like to collect plastic mugs, or are planning on drinking more than 4 beers.
So that's pretty much it. Decent food (in short supply), crappy entertainment (during the day at least), a severe lack of any German flavor (aside from the brats and the beer), and not really that much in the way of family entertainment for the kids. I expected much more from this event, and unfortunately, I didn't get it. read more