Gleff and Thereuare, Thank you both for your quick replies! Let me try to clarify what I am looking for. First, we are flying in from Utah leaving Wednesday night at 10pm and we will get into San Juan about noon on Thursday, so it will be a long trip just to get there. We wanted as much time as possible to unwind and acclimate before our port intensive cruise leaving late on Saturday, although the "where" isn't too important and we won't mind a longish drive to get to the hotel if the destination is great. We have done lots of "budget" travel in our younger days, but now that we are older--mid-forties ;-) we prefer quality over quantity. We are mostly fairly frugal homebodies during the year so that when we go on vacation we like to go top shelf as much as possible, and really appreciate elegant surroundings, fine food and great service. That said, and while I believe you get what you pay for, I like to feel that I have done my homework and got the best value for my money. Also, we have several years of experience in the hospitality and retail industries and know that paying full price or rack rates is just silly. If it was just my husband and I, I would look for a small unique boutique experience, but as our 12 year old son (who is a water rat even though we live in a desert) is also coming with us, a resort environment will be much more fun for him. A great pool and nice beach are his requirements! I did look at El Conquistador and the only down sides there were the need to shuttle/ferry down to a beach and limited dining choices. I am a little concerned about the airport noise at El San Juan but otherwise it seemed to fit the bill. Given the rack rates for both places, I would be thrilled with either at anything near a $200/night rate. Then I could better justify an extra spa visit or one more really good bottle of wine at dinner with the savings ;-) Reading so many Priceline postings, it seemed that people like burbunny and yourselves had this bidding thing pretty much down to a science :) I do understand the consequences but I thought that if I could narrow the requirements sufficiently I had a good chance of getting a resort and saving some money. It won't ruin our trip if we don't stay at one of the two I mentioned, and if I got Caribe or Hilton that cheap I would still feel great. RCCL is charging us $279 (with transfers) per night at the Condado so the difference saved would buy ALOT of wine. If either of you have any additional advice, I would really appreciate your time and effort. I will check out Hotwire as Theruare suggests. I don't even mind the Wolverine thing too much, even though I am a loyal Badger alumni. Beating the Spartans yesterday was very pleasant though. Thanks for your help, Laurie
