For the 50th edition of the National Shrimp Festival, organizers are getting ready for the largest yet at the annual beach party on Oct. 12-15 at the public beach in Gulf Shores.

“We’re going to have 41 bands, more than 30 food vendors, close to 300 vendors,” Shrimp Festival Chairman Andrew Hart told the city council on Aug. 28. “The footprint is a little bit larger this year just due to all the interest that we have and a lot based off of the success that we had last year. We’re looking forward to another great year.”

Work on the festival grounds will start on Sunday, Oct. 8 and over the course of the next few days limited access to the area and the beach will slowly increase until opening on Thursday, Oct. 12, at 10 a.m. During the regular session, the council unanimously approved an assembly permit for the event.

With perhaps the largest crowd ever for the festival, parking will be at a premium because of construction in the Beach Walking District area.

“As you can imagine with the shrinking available of large collective parking lots due to the Embassy Suites construction and other activity at the beach,” Director of Recreation and Cultural Affairs Grant Brown said. “It’s harder to get to the beach.”

To that end, the festival will bring back a bike valet service started last year to try and encourage people to ride to the festival to help with parking and congestion.

“The festival is actually ramping up their bike valet service,” Brown said. “The chamber’s Junior Leadership Program will be handling it, free bike parking which will be monitored by staff. Last year they parked a total of 555 bikes and this service will once again be expanded for this year’s festival. We’re encouraging people to use the shuttle services or to use bicycles to get to the site safely.”

Click here for more information on shuttle stops and parking.