Yes; the reason we had a car was that the "available at sensible prices" hotels are too far to walk, so a car is handy anyway.
I once tried to book the nearer (walk-able) hotels and they were c. €300/night.
There is a simple solution: don't book a hotel. At the entrance of the fair, there is a booth of the tourist information and they offer rooms. There is usually plenty available because a lot of simpler places are not found on the usual booking systems. I have always found a nice place for less than € 100 and always very close. The odds of having to sleep under the bridge are very small, worst case you have to go a bit further out and pay another 50 € for the cab fare.
I was vaguely thinking of coming; but as I dislike crowds AND commercial buzztalk, the urge is mainly to meet some like-minded people, and there might be better occasions for that. If I were to come, I'd go by the recommendation of the Konstanz field, with ferry+bus to the Messegelände. Hotels in Konstanz should be more reasonable too, at that time of year.
or try couchsurfing.com
or try couchsurfing.com
Sleeping in my Cessna and brushing my teeth with AVGAS sounds a lot more attractive than that 
I a beta tester for PocketFMS, and for the past three years have helped out as a volunteer on their stand at Aero.
I'll be there again this year, if you come to Aero Expo, please drop by and say hello!
dp (Colm)
I've just noticed that Monarch fly there from Gatwick. Tempting, to avoid the hassle of booking slots, the "ban" on IFR below 2000kg, weather, etc.
GA slot booking will be by telephone this year (a massive technological advance; I bet it will be by fax next year) but opening only after 3rd April - details here.
So really no IFR below 2t? Forget it then.
What you could not do was to book an IFR arrival slot.
They could not stop you filing a Eurocontrol "I" flight plan all the way to EDNY.
So, one might assume, their plan was to force you to either cancel IFR to land, or refuse a landing clearance.
In reality, they let people in anyway
But probably because the wx was so bad that the GA traffic was much lower than normal.
If the wx is fine, cancelling IFR is OK.
Thanks. Is there any hardstand parking?
There is quite a lot of it but it tends to get allocated by the marshalls to what they regard as bigger planes.
Maybe it is possible to argue with them? Difficult to do that with the engine running.
I got hard parking 2x, and grass on 2 later visits. The grass was IMHO too hazardous to taxi, but 3 people can push/pull a TB20 on grass OK.
