Oakdale Chocolate Festival

Well I am from a time when the Hershey factory was there. I finally remember taking tours and getting free chocolate. Probably because of the commercial presents, I remembered the chocolate festival being much bigger. Hopefully local artisans, and confectioners can get this back to the fun festival at once was.Glad to see that they held it even though they're still struggling with covid. The crafts and local goodies are always good to see. Plus you never have a bad time when you go to oakdale, people are pretty friendly there.

In my opinion it was not as big or good as it could have been. In years past Oakdale always did it so big! I am very glad to see Chocolate there this year. We are slowly coming back from all the Covid stuff! I can't wait for next year, it's only up from here.

A small community event. This year was probably impacted by Covid. This is the first time I've attended and it was much smaller than I expected. And I didn't see many chocolate stands. Weird since this is supposed to be a chocolate festival. There was a small classic car show. The best part was talking to the owners and listening to them talk about their cars, the history, the smiles they get from strangers when they're driving, etc.There was a handful of artisans. I purchased a beautiful glass pendant from a vendor who mentioned she joined the festival last minute because another show had cancelled on her. Probably the reason there weren't too many there today.Overall a cute little festival with plenty of food and rides for the kids. Hopefully next year's will be back to "normal".

Great vendors and nice day oops it's rained on Sunday but it wS still fun. I droves from tracy it was worth the drive

I enjoy this event, it's one of the better local community festivals around. Usually there are a lot of venders selling a vast selection of items, food, and services. While admittedly there has been less chocolate flavor to this festival since the Hershey's plant shut down in town, it's still worth attending and there is plenty to see and do. Besides shopping there is a car show, rides for the kids, petting zoo, live music, and more.

What is with people. I read the complaints from others about past festivals and the lack of chocolate, non-chocolate vendors, difficulty finding parking... This is a small town festival. This is not a Disney Production. I'm sure that a lot of the work was done by volunteers. And of course, the Red Cross was out there too volunteering time. And providing water and sunscreen and shade.As for the lack of chocolate, I didn't see it as an issue. There were around a dozen vendors selling their stuffs in a small area. I think it was a good size considering the size of the area that was available. The food vendors? Typical festival type of food. Sausages. Garlic Fires. Some ethnic food vendors. Shaved ice. Lemonaide. Nothing special but certainly acceptable.The Classic Car Show was great! Every car was beautiful. And it was set up very well. Cheers to the car show staff. And the 1 Mile / 5K Fun Runs were .... fun. I took part in both of these events.If I had to make suggestions on how to improve upon this event. I would suggest better signage. It was not easy trying to figure out where to go due to street closures and detours. Also, it was difficult for those that needed to place their cars in the car show area and still have time to do the registration for the first Fun Run that starts at around 830am.I recommend checking this event out. I think it is well done and the volunteers are super friendly.Maybe again next year?

Meh. There were maybe 6 booths that actually sold some chocolate based stuff. The rest were all pretty much the usual county fair offerings. They need to re-vamp and re-package this festival. Just read the promoters argument, that festivals named after a particular theme ought to have little to no theme related booths, Sorry but that argument doesn't fly. Someone from Oakdale ought to go to the Gilroy Garlic Festival to see how a theme can be carried throughout the entire festival.

It was a nice day to go to the chocolate festival. I was excited because I hadn't been since I was a kid and now I could bring my kids. We show up at like 9:30 and it's pretty empty. Not a big deal I'd rather deal with that than tons of people. It was very disappointing that they're wasn't so much chocolate :( maybe three booths with it? Also, I didn't see the "plenty of kids activities" they promoted. I saw a side with fair rides but After seeing so many children get injured on these lately I refuse to allow my kids to ride any. (Not in these particularly just on carnival rides in general) It was still a small festival so you got to enjoy taking silly pictures with your family and just spending time with your kids but honestly It was pretty underwhelming.

When I first moved to the area, my friends were excited to take me to the chocolate festival, knowing that I was coming from the home state of Hershey's Chocolate.Anyway, after we did the festival and on the drive home, they looked at me and said, "What did you think?" I was like. "Welllllll....."It was a joke! I only saw 3 or 4, maybe 5, booths dedicated to actually selling anything chocolate. I mean, if you're going to bill it as a chocolate festival, that needs to be your focus, not how many hot sausage and fruit smoothie booths you can get in there. I saw very little chocolate-themed activities. And one thing I hate about festivals is how they try to hose the visitors by jacking up the prices. $3 for a small frozen banana on a stick covered in chocolate? Are you freaking kidding me?!?! And fudge for $12/lb??? Yeah, let me bend over and just take that overpriced banana where the sun doesn't shine. It's sugar, chocolate and butter for goodness sake!Event planners - best if you take a trip to Hershey, PA and tour the real chocolate capital of the USA to get some ideas on how to make this festival even a tad credible in the future.PS: I was going to give this 2-stars, but then I remembered how I had to pay $5 to park my car. Another suggestion - you want more visitors to come, offer free parking.

The third weekend in may has no fewer than four festivals in the general region, honoring the Strawberry in Galt, cherries in Linden, the celebrated jumping frog in Angels Camp, and this one for Chocolate in Oakdale. We decided to try this one out, mostly because of the blanket of billboard advertising, and chocolate! Before going, we decided to get some info from the website, very little info on entertainment, no map of events, no map indicating parking. By Category....Parking: No signs indicating parking, which from my observation was either on the street or in one of the small public lots.Food: Food court was rather cramped, not allowing for the lines of the more popular selections. Seating: Having a festival in May you need lots of shaded seating, they had maybe 20 to 25% of what they needed. Plenty of people were sitting on curbs and on the grass.It really feels like the team responsible for planning this quit halfway through, things really did feel slapdash. Tips for next year: -Better, more informative website-More shaded/covered seating-Better arrangement of food vendorsI'd really love to come back next year and see some improvements!