On-the-spot Vernazza accommodations

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To answer your last question, NO, just showing up is no longer a "good way to find a great room". It may still be possible in some cases, but you may have to pound the pavement in all the towns just to find anything, and you may get just whatever is left over. The Cinque Terre has become enormously popular in recent years, and for some reason Vernazza tends to be more sought after than the other towns. The higher price could be as a result of "supply & demand", as well as the yearly prices increases that would be expected in the decade since you were last there.

Gone up that much? It's been ten years and goodness knows how many people reading about the Cinque Terre.

We stayed closer to La Spezia and took the train to Monterosso for about an hour, then left because we felt like sardines.

Can't imagine showing up without a reservation in Vernazza is a good idea at all.
End of April might not be the busiest time but the forum is full of people complaining how Vernazza is packed wall to wall with tourist in all times of seasonable weather. More so than the other 4 towns even.
There are very few places to spend the night.
In my experience the best places may be booking 12 months in advance for the busy periods so showing up amounts to hoping there was a last minute cancellation.

With such a small town and increased desire to visit a good plug from Rick Steves, or even just your ranking boosting in TA over a year's time let alone 10 years could allow a propitiator to raise their rates substantially and still book quite easily. It is unfortunate her website seems out of date on the pricing, the lowest rate published may be for a single room for a single traveler.

It seems like a lot of the people packing into the town are cruise shippers on a day trip, as opposed to people who actually stay the night...that being said, I still wouldn't want to show up without having something booked unless I didn't mind spending 3-4 hours looking for something in my price range and standards...

I know early Sept is much busier than April and my desire for a room may be a little more involved but I had 2 potential dates in mind.
I also needed a large room (2 adults and young child) and wanted something with water view or balcony in Vernazza
Explored most every option in town and found 3 with the type of room I wanted and were well reviewed.

In late October 2015 I emailed my top 3 choices both date ranges for the stay and not one of them had availability for me. That is almost 11 months in advance and they were booked at least for their best rooms for early Sept. 2016 in October 2015.
I ended up modifying the date a little to mid-Sept in Nov. and emailed them back, all 3 then had the rooms free so I booked one of them without delay.

I was there May 2015, and saw many people wandering looking for rooms because they had not booked. One group was a family with children who ended up in another town (I saw them the next day). It is not worth it to me to waste my vacation time trying to find a room, nor do I need the stress. BTW, I booked in January for mid-May.

My husband and I used to "fly by the seat of our pants" a lot in Europe. It can work but it eats up a lot of your time to find lodging when you roll into a new town. It seems to me that Europe is becoming more and more crowded each time we go (every 2 years) and I would be very nervous about not having a reservation in a small place like Vernazza.

With the explosion of the Internet and booking sites like booking.com and many others, it is so easy for everyone to make lodging reservations, I don't think I would ever waste my time and energy arriving in a popular place, only to have to go around, with my luggage, trying to find a place to stay. At the very least, and even this could be frustrating, find a place on the Internet and make reservations a couple of days in advance, probably through booking.com or the like.