Düsseldorf this weekend any one?

I'm going by car, setting out Thursday night and travelling overnight Harwich - Hook.
Should be there by mid morning Friday, plan to spend 2 days there as it's a huge show.
Really looking forward to it, I've not been before.
 
jrudge said:
Thinking of heading out Friday morning and heading to the show Saturday.


Anyone else going ?

How far is the exhibition hall from the airport ?

Thanks

Jeremy
Click to expand...

Airport is very near to the exhibition. Taxis are very reasonable in Dusseldorf. Enjoy. We went last weekend and enjoyed the show and the delights of the Altstadt for 2days/2nights. Came back absolutely knackered. The new Princess 30 Metre is a must see........stunning vessel.
 
Jeremy, Jez, Martin / wife,
good to meet you Guy's !

Dusseldorf boat show gets more interesting year by year
when you can meet new mates, collegues or friends :)
 
Likewise lovely to see you.

For that that have not been a quick report.

The show is HUGE.

There are some 17 halls that with the odd exception are all about 2/3 the size of LIBS - so the show is probably 10 times the size being conservative.

There are halls for motorboats - big ones, medium ones, small ones, ski boats etc. An entire hall devoted to diving - complete with dive tank! 2 halls devoted to holidays and charter, 2 halls for water toys and canoes ( complete with lazy river) sail boat halls ( complete with indoor boating lake driven by fans), water toys complete with indoor water skiing.

Brand wise you can see pretty much anything. The main hassle is that to get on almost any stand you need to register with them which is annoying ( a central registration with a card to scan would give the exhibitors the same info for a lot less visitor aggravation.

Whilst I would not buy a new one due to the depreciation hit the Galeon Sky Deck was really clever. Fold out sides, sliding glass and a huge opening sunroof on a flybridge boat.

The Absolute 52 was nicely finished and at E660,000 + tax was a lot better value that the english equivalent.

On the bottom end of the scale the Cranchi Eco Trawler 43 ( winner boat of the year??) was hideous. The screen was probably 10 feet in front of the helm and there was a huge inaccessible area ( huge - 6 feet square) in front of the helm which was just plain bad design.

Worth a visit? Absolutely.
 
I'm probably going to get shot down in flames for this but thought I would chuck in my perspective. As a very regular boat show attendee at LIBs, SIBs and the odd overseas show when it has coincided with me being there, I thought I might add my 2p worth. I attended this year for the first time, really just to see what the fuss was all about after reading on these fora the generally very positive reviews of the show.

Despite these generally good reports, I have a slightly different view. Yes it is huge, but not ten times bigger as previously mentioned. It is spread over 224,310m2 of floor space compared to one hall of Excel at 43,664m2. That makes it slightly over five times the size.

People complain about the non boaty stands at LIBs but this is nothing compared to Dussledorf. A whole hall, albeit one of the smaller ones, for art FFS. There was also motorhomes, and whole halls for activity holidays, charters, clothing/fashion, fishing, diving and watersports, as well as plenty of random stands of non boaty stuff inserted here and there as fillers, just like they do at LIBs. So in reality the whole show is not going to appeal to all. As an average Moboer, ie not someone who could afford a super-yacht kind of boat, I would say that around 40% of the exhibition was relevant to me, but that percentage will vary depending upon your interests. Even so it is indeed much bigger and full of interesting stuff, albeit not always relevant to a UK based boater. Nice to look at and see different things, but nearly all of the relevant stuff could be seen at LIBs and SIBs. It was very, very busy when I went, so moving through halls took a long time (particularly annoying if you want to get through a hall that is of no interest to get to the next one) and getting on boats was sometimes impossible. (queuing wasn't always done in a British way :-)). Maybe like LIBs there are better days to go, midweek I would imagine, so worth considering taking a couple of days off work rather than do what I did and go at the weekend.

Food was typical show fare but everywhere was soooo busy you had to queue for ages. If you grabbed a quick snack there was no where to sit and eat.

Transport was good and a free bus service from show to airport was excellent.
Flights were cheap with a budget airline (not Ryanair as they fly into somewhere completely different), and the hotel was averagely priced and perfectly acceptable. Many have said that it is as easy to get to Dussledorf as it is to get to Excel. I left the show at 3pm GMT and arrived home at 9pm. I didn't experience any particular delays or traffic. I don't live particularly far from the airport so I would suggest that this must be a fairly typical travel time allowing for getting to the airport on time etc etc. For some in the far flung parts of the UK, it may take 6 hours or longer to get to Excel so you probably have a point, but for the majority I suspect Excel is much quicker and easier to get to by car.

In short, I am very glad that I went to see what it was all about, but would I go back? Probably not. Would I recommend it? Probably, as a one off just for the experience, but not as the must see show of the calendar every year.

All the above is IMHO so please don't shoot the messenger. Just trying to help provide a balanced review.
 
BartW said:
Jeremy, Jez, Martin / wife,
good to meet you Guy's !

Dusseldorf boat show gets more interesting year by year
when you can meet new mates, collegues or friends :)
Click to expand...

Hi Bart & Jeremy & Jez,

Yes it was good to meet up and we really enjoyed the show.

The 627hp outboard motor was particularly extreme, as well as the 44ft RIB which seemed a bit pointless IMHO. The pedalo section was also quite amusing, not something one usually sees at a boat show!

Taking issue a bit with the poster above, I found the segregation of all the separate boating elements into motor, sail, accessories, tourism etc etc much better than UK shows because it means we didn't have to waste time looking at the rags & sticks if we weren't interested in them. At the UK shows everything is more mixed up and you have to go round the whole show including the bits you're not interested in to make sure you don't miss a hidden gem.

The Friday was much quieter than Saturday and easier to get around and see everything.
Yes, Saturday was crowded but if you stayed off the main drag that went directly between halls and went to the next aisle along, progress was much easier. It was only really crowded in some aisles in some halls.

Not quite as many things to buy directly at the show as in UK shows I thought, other than clothes maybe, but a great experience nonetheless.
 
.... one hall of Excel at 43,664m2

The challenge of course is that LIBS no longer uses all of one half but less.

You are being more scientific than I with your measurements and my measure was approximate. We could settle on 6 times as big, but boy is that big.

Apart from the sail boats I looked at the lot. Surprisingly I was interested in river boat charters. About every 2-3 years I do an upper thames charter - here I found I can do rivers in Berlin, Netherlands etc ... for less money ( obviously!!! :-)

Getting home took me about 4 hours door to door but it is no doubt further away then Excel!

I suppose at the end of the day it is DIFFERENT. Goto SIBS and LIBS ( other than Sunseeker moved from the middle ) and the shows are identical. This is new so you see more. I only attend LIBS and SIBS to see people I know ( other than 2 years ago buying a new boat somewhat be accident ... the power of Trevor Betts ..), so would I head to Dusseldorf next year ... it would only depend on who else was going to be honest!

I enjoyed it and there is really no doubt that there are far far more boats and brands to look at than either of the London shows.
 
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