Marathon Man

cool! Well when we are there and you are there, let us attempt to connect in here. I do suggest a few things however...

1) That before we go, you PM me with your cell/text and let me know here you have done so so I see it. Often on my phone and for some reason, things do not always register. So I wont know to look.
2) that if we use cell/text, we text over calling because you cannot hear in busy crowded loud drunk fumbling Munich.
3) that you remain flexible as things and plans change on a whim. Best to go with the "let's try it and see" method.
4) cell batteries die so communicate early and often and no party should get offended if the other fails to reply right away cuz people lose phones or things die or all that.

As in the past, once people stumble to hotels they often charge devices and can check emails or whatever if able, but it is harder to do that when raising glasses with a buncha drunk Assies, etc.
I can tell you that on a day like Saturday or Sunday, if we do the tents we would likely get in there early not at night. Then again, if we do something else in the day (like head to THIS PLACE again, as I have done in the past with different groups of friends who have come in different years, then we might do the OW at night, as suggested above.

Hardest thing to do is to link up with people you plan to meet. It seems either the group--however large or small--travels as a bubble within the moving fabric of the membrane as one, or it fragments and you never see each other. Seems easy but never ever is. It's kinda like when you want to meet a friend skiing and one of you is already on the mountain. Unless one party literally stops and waits, the odds are one of you will remain a half run ahead or behind the other all day. And it is hard to do when you have like 5 people who do not want to stop and wait. This dynamic just happened to me and a friend when we all realized we were in NYC together. My 11 year old son and I were in the 9/11 museum and a friend and his kids were in there too, so we found out with texting, and we never could meet. It is a large venue. So my son and I had low power on both our phones and when we left we went to an Apple store nearby. We texted the guy saying we will wait outside for when he comes out with his family. I had wanted a small hand held power charger for a while (and in fact, for this upcoming Munich trip) so I bought one there and we now had juice. We texted with our friends and waited in the Apple store until they emerged from the nearby museum. The Apple store also provided a perfect place for my son to check out cool stuff and we both got to charge our phones while waiting there 15 minutes. We all linked up and it was fun cuz their kids are friends with him. The point of this is that in order to meet with friends, you cannot always just rely on conventional things, especially when drinking, which we will all be doing in Germany (no my son is not going lol). Even a new iPhone XR will eventually drain battery and then you find yourself saying "Screw it! 'Ave another, mate!" and you drink and do not care. Meanwhile the person wanting to meet you is like, where is he? why doesn't he answer? What a jerk? When in fact this may not be the intent, but beer and communication get messy. In the past--a buncha years back, we "Murkins didn't even have the ability to use our phones outside of hotels for anything except where there was WIFI unless we had phones issued by a company we worked at that paid the bill for that level of service. So the only way to communicate was essentially before you left your hotel. Now we do and obviously I set up the travel pass, but still, trying to reach people and be reached is a challenge.

So I will try to meetcha and it would be fun cuz we both in FT, but we gotta be prepared and let luck and fate and the will of the godz take over. That, and some ability to plan a tiny bit. The concept/mindset being: We text, we find out we is both around the same place at the same time, I holler to my group that this bloke from FT is gonna meet us, we end up somewhere, you end up there, we fumble to figure out where you are in relation to the table we sussed out, you meet us, we talk about travel and drinking, one of us spills beer on some Norwegian girl, we snort Oktoberfest coke off her chest, we high five, and everybody wins (the thing with the girl has happened before--pretty common there)
Our group cannot yet say where it will find itself on any particular day or night. I can say that as we speak, all those coming in on the 25th want to head right to the tents that day and be there from around noon til like 4-5. And then at least a few of us want to train to Salzburg either on the Thurs or Fri, Haven't yet figured out the day or bought train tix. Then another bloke is flying in either Sat am or Fri am. He currently has Sat am arrival all set but wants to change his flight come in a day early if he can, and two others still have yet to commit to coming, where as four of us are set but at least one of those guys wants to also do THIS PLACE for one day, and THIS PLACE for another, whereas some of us have done both and do not need to go again. With limited time available I suggested they just do one thing and come back every year but you know how it goes.

incidentally, for our Salzburg plans, I am using THIS LINK.