mrxow

I have no idea, but I made a post last night about a 3.5 star for $99 on those dates...

The place is called the Majestic. Apparently it is being reopened after a remodel. I got a travel email today that mentioned a South Beach hotel for $99 per night for the months of January, April and May, so I thought I would check it out. I needed a hotel in south Florida next week. It looked like a good deal, so I thought I would post about it. I went ahead and booked it myself, as bids up to $80 for 3* next Friday night did not work. The deal is $99 any night in January, April or May. This is for a non-ocean view room, so if all those sell out, you might have to pay $119 or more for an ocean view room. The ad said the price was $129 midweek in Feb. and March. Reservations need to be made by January 23rd. There are some blackout dates around holiday periods. With taxes and fees, they charged my card just over $114. There is apparently some sort of $7.50 resort fee, too. By itself, this price may not be all that fabulous, but they claimed to offer some extras that caught my eye. First of all, they said that free drinks at their sister hotel, the Carlton, were included. They also claimed that free VIP passes to area clubs were included. I'll have to see what value these passes have, but if we end up having a bunch of free drinks then get to check out a few clubs for nothing, that seemed to me to make the offer very good. My stay is on the 25th, so I will not be able to post about what I actually got until after the reservation deadline passes, unfortunately... They also have free continental breakfast and beach towels and chairs (free if you ignore the resort fee...) The travel email took me to a site called bookit.com I am not sure if it could be booked on another site where the board would get credit. It appeared some of the extras might only be available by booking on that site, but I don't know if that is true. I also don't know if there is a link to that site somewhere on this board. If there is, maybe somebody could make it known. http://hotels.bookit.com/florida/miami/maj...hotel/#specials

Your personal car insurance should cover you when you rent a car, though possibly not if the rental is for business reasons. Many higher end cards provide a secondary insurance on the car in that they cover what your primary (personal) insurance does not, such as a deductible. I actually did have a minor accident one time in a rental car and the credit card insurance reimbursed me for my $500 deductible on damage to the rental car. Having the right card, I suppose, might cover you even on a business rental, though. There is usually no extra fee for this coverage. I recently got a Spirit airlines card despite the fact that I have too many cards already. If you make a purchase every month, you are automatically enrolled in their $9 fare club and get full mileage on all your flights. Normally people who don't fly with them a lot only get 50% mileage. There have been other threads on Spirit. They have some ridiculously low fares if you are flexible and keep an eye on their sales which change every few days. Being from San Fran is not as good as being from LA and Vegas and traveling to Florida a lot like we do, but if you can get yourself to Florida, Spirit can get you all over the Caribbean, Central and even South America for ridiculously low prices. We got round trip fares out the door to Guatemala from LA for $181, Ft. Lauderdale to Cancun for $144, Fort Lauderdale to San Juan for $92 and Fort Lauderdale to Vegas for $68!! Round trip, taxes included! Most of the cost of these tickets was taxes and fees, actually. Having their card means all those flights accrue full mileage toward free flights with no blackouts, too. They waive the annual fee for a year and give you 15,000 miles for signing up, too. If you are able to book it fast, you can get from San Fran to Ft. Lauderdale on Skybus for $81 R/T out the door when they open their booking dates. You only have a matter of hours to get that rate, though.

There is a site called fairfieldgetaways . They are part of a timeshare program. They have an affiliate program, too, and kick back ten bucks to sites that send people. If you are willing to do the usual 2 hour timeshare presentation at some point during your trip, they offer 3 nights midweek in a 3 star, often in that area, for $199 and give you 50 bucks in casino chips, too. The Imperial Palace is a place they set people up in. Tuscany Suites, too, is just a little further off than the Westin and is apparently an option. While that may be a busy week and they might not have availablity, they need new meat every week and they block out rooms to feed their sales machine... If you are willing to deal with the sales BS, you might want to give it a try.

What is your budget? The best area for me depends on what is there and how much I have to pay for it...

I have never booked multiple rooms, so I don't know the answer to that, but you might consider figuring out who will be there first and book in their name. I think I saw posts from people who said the credit card used to pay for the room did not need to be in the same name as the person checking in, so it seems you could do the bidding and payment and still have another party check in.

I check their offers a lot. I booked a few flights with them where the taxes exceeded the airfare. I have flown with them on two flight segments so far. While for the deals offered, I will definitely keep flying with them, I thought I'd point out a few things we have learned: Both flight segments so far we have been slightly concerned to extremely worried whether we would make it through the check in and security in time. You might want to pay more attention to the regular "get there 2 hours in advance" advice for domestic flights. Both times it seemed there were several flights leaving about the same time, so maybe that contributed to the problem. They charge for any checked baggage, so not bringing any and printing your boarding pass in advance is the way we are going to try to do things in the future. They didn't seem to enforce their carry on bag size super strictly. We didn't see huge ones, but some were definitely thicker than their quoted maximum size with nobody questioning it. They do not provide blankets or pillows, so bring your own if you want them. I do not think any of their planes have onboard entertainment of any kind. Only water is free. The seats are less than comfortable. I am tall, so that is always an issue, but these seemed really close together and they hardly reclined at all. We will fly with extra Soma on our next cross country leg...

I find priceline usually isn't worth the trouble for short rentals. I wouldn't even bother with a one day bid. You probably aren't going to save much and you're locked in. Often, I find other options for exactly 7 days to be better, too. Where priceline really shines is on the 4-5 day rentals and those between a week and two weeks. Going direct, they stick it to you with daily rates or charge you for a week when you are only using it for 5 days or tack on a high daily rate for the 8th or 9th days. Under these circumstances, Priceline often takes bids that beat direct bookings.

From what I understand, reservations can now be made up to 11pm on the check in day. That doesn't mean, though, that all hotels or zones will take bids that late. Try to make it as early as possible. 11pm Eastern Time...

Just got an email. Until July 15th. Use the link on the support page... oops, just read the fine print - it says it isn't valid with any other offer and you have to link through the email message - might want to get on their mailing list It appears you can get that price if you go directly to their site but that maybe you get the 9.99 plus $5 shipping price if you use the link... unfortunately

I wanted to mention, too, should anybody be interested in booking these flights back to back that I think they make you collect any checked baggage after each segment and check it back in for the next one. I don't know if there is some expedited way to do this or if you have to go through all the security again. And I don't know what the security lines are like at Columbus. I have yet to fly with these guys. They just started operations a month and a half ago, I think. They also charge for each piece of checked luggage. It might make sense to pack light and get by with a carry on and as big a "personal item" as you think you can get away with. I looked at the insurance they offer. I am not sure if you would need to buy insurance on both legs of your trip, but as one flight is the first one on the way to your destination and the second one on the way back, maybe you would, unless you booked all the legs independently (which it seems you could do without additional cost, just additional trouble clicking and typing) You can purchase the insurance up to 24 hours before your trip, it says, so maybe it would be prudent to keep an eye on upcoming weather. The insurance is 5% of the trip cost with a minimum of $6 per person.

they have ten seats per flight at ten bucks. airports are sometimes smaller ones and taxes are generally low. all flights go to or from columbus ohio. other airports destinations include seattle, san fran, la, san diego, kansas city, boston, hartford, richmond, greensboro, daytona beach and ft. lauderdale. I think that is it... just booked two flights, LA to ft. lauderdale with 4 hour stopover in columbus. $81.60 p/p round trip out the door. didn't take insurance (though available for $12), so gambling a little. I think you are pretty screwed if your first flight is delayed too long, but with 4 hour stopover, thought it was worth the gamble... Maybe could have just insured second leg... you cannot book LA to Ft. Lauderdale all at once. You have to book LA to Columbus, then Columbus to Ft. Lauderdale. And your price isn't guaranteed until you pay and get a confirmation. Prices jump to 20, 30 or 50 or so once the ten dollar seats are sold, depending on the distance of the flight. Should anyone see the flights open up past march 6, contact me please - these seats go fast. I would be interested in setting up something with people who would like to maybe exchange phone numbers so we can get the word out when it happens. When they added some new destinations several weeks ago, the $10 seats were gone on a lot of routes within hours...

Just wanted to mention to figure out the date you want to go to the observatory in advance and make a reservation on their site. I think it is usually just a few days wait, but just dn't wait too long if you want to go on a specific day. Also, if you stay in Long Beach and are near enough to the blue line, you can get too and from Hollywood and the Observatory shuttle stop fairly easily without having to possibly drive through traffic or pay to park your car somewhere.

There is a link on this site for Entertainment Book, but I just wanted to point out some things that people who haven't used them might not know: The prices drop as the year progresses. The start date is around the first of November. If you buy one then, you pay full price, but if you wait a little the price drops. Some start at $40 or so, but right now, all the ones they still have in stock are $9.99 plus 5 bucks shipping. And if you get one through this site's link, you can contrubute a few bucks to the site. I don't know how to put the link in my post, but maybe somebody else will. It can be accessed through the Travel links at the top right of this page. One thing we use every year is the HOTWIRE coupon. There are usually a few, but we generally need a room somewhere that Hotwire can provide. The coupon has been for a $10 rebate on a hotel room. If you use hotwire now and then, this can almost pay for the book by itself. Considering the number of people who use HOTWIRE here, getting a book when they are 15 bucks seems to me a no brainer. There are also a lot of attraction discounts if you go to a tourist location. For instance, there is an attraction near Ft. Lauderdale called Butterfly World that is very popular. The coupons I have seen around are for 2 or 3 bucks, but there is a buy one get one free coupon in the Ft. Lauderdale book. It costs 20 bucks to get in there, so if you use it, that pays for the book and everything else is money in your pocket. You can go on the Entertainment Book site and see what discounts are available from the book in the area you are visiting. Another good coupon I know of is for a buy one get one at the Winchester Mystery house in San Jose. I think we got a buy one get one submarine ride in Honolulu. That was a while ago, so not sure if that is still available, but that seemed to be a much better discount than we could find elsewhere at the time. For the past few years, at least, the cards in all the books have been the same. So if you buy a book somewhere you will only be for a week, you can use the card when you get home for local restaurants. If you end up with several cards from places you go, you can usually go to restaurants you like in your area several times per year. You have to be a little careful about which numbers have been punched on each card, but usually there aren't too many conflicts. Also, you can register a card from any book online for any zone. There are a lot of coupons also available online or only available online. If you have a card that hasn't been registered, you can get these printable discounts for zones that you haven't even bought a book for. Many of the coupons in the books are for national chains, too, so the book you buy for somewhere you are going to be in for only a week will likely have things in it you can use at home. One coupon we pull out of most of our books is the hot Dog on a Stick/Muscle Beach Lemonade buy one get one. If you ever go to TGIF, you can save 5 bucks when you go most of the time. There are probably a lot of other offers that are worth pursuing that I am not thinking of. I think there is an American Airlines coupon that seems like it could be useful. There are movie coupons that would save many people the cost of the book many times over. It think you can get a ticket for $6.00 and for a little more you can go to any movie, even on opening night. It used to be that you had to mail in to get these tickets, but now at many theaters you can just take the coupon to the box office. Of course, there are always the restaurants. Some are really good and some are just OK, but when as you figure this out, having a card or a few cards can really start paying off. If you decide to try one, make sure to use the Entertainment Book link!

Thanks for posting this. I definitely would have given it a try. When I finally got around to it, though, the offer had already expired. If you see something like it again maybe say "3 DAYS LEFT!" in your description :) I didn't notice the expiration date right away... :)

Old bid still in my Priceline records - thought I'd post when I had time one night $13.86 fees and taxes $23.86 total

Old accepted bid - don't remember car received - compact to mid-size, though, not economy 7 days $48.50 taxes $160.50 total

Made this bid earlier on 6/14/07 - thought I would post accepted stuff - found this site after that time Alamo 10 days $81.80 fees $201.80 total

bid made weeks ago but thought I'd go through my old accepted bids when I had time and post them... Did not accept $14 5 days - economy car $51.88 taxes and fees total - $126.88 ended up with a Mitsubishi Eclipse with Avis At the time, this was better than what I could get directly with carrentalexpress.com

I bid on an economy car (always get a bigger one, though wouldn't care) for 7/20 through 7/24 at $14 per day. With taxes and fees, that put me at just over $100 for 4 days. I did not receive that price, but was offered a counter offer at $17, so I thought I would post that information. I did get $15 on priceline for 5 days on 7/5 through 7/10 at Avis at FLL, though. I was given a Mitsubishi Eclipse despite the fact that I booked an economy car. I did not take the counter offer as there is the same size car (and almost certainly it will be bigger) available for those dates from Sunshine rent a car for $103.57 total. I made a reservation there. It is cheaper and I can change or cancel it, too. I have also in the past rebooked reservations with these independent companies when their prices dropped... I found Sunshine on Carrentalexpress. There still is no link there on this site's support links page, but it does have an affiliate program. I have had good experiences finding independent car rental companies with this site in Vegas, Los Angeles, Orange County and Florida.

I don't know how it compares to other affiliate programs, but it says they pay $3 per referral to other sites that link to them.

I often use a site called carrentalexpress (CRX) to book cars through independent car rental agencies or to determine how high to bid on Priceline. In markets where there are affiliates to this site, expecially on short reservations or 7 day reservations, the prices are often very good. I have rented from several of these independent companies in Florida, Vegas and California and have had generally good experiences. Probably the only downside has been occasional longer wait times to get my car than average for the big companies. Right now, I am looking for an economy car (would be glad to actually get one and save some gas money, too, but they virtually always give you something bigger) for the 20th of July to the 24th in the morning in Ft. Lauderdale. It seems everywhere else the prices I get are over $150. Right now there is a company offering that itinerary on CRX for under $104. The priceline dollar amount I would have to bid to get under that is $14 per day with all the taxes and fees. They have rejected bids for $15. If anybody has any information about cheaper stuff available at Ft. Lauderdale, I am all ears. CRX has an affiliate program, it seems, so maybe this site would consider adding a link. I didn't see one on the links page.

I just tested the rebid strategy I suggested and it still works. I bid the strip for a 4* and was denied, picked a random zone (call it A) and was denied. (I was denied intentionally, I bid for 30 bucks.). Then I restarted the priceline bid for the strip and zone B and was denied. Then I rebid for the strip and zone A and zone B. I was denied, but I wasn't taken to the "your bid was not placed because you have already bid this date, star level and combination of zones" screen, so I think if my bids had been high enough, it would have been accepted. Therefore, two free rebid zones translates into three free bids in 24 hours, and each free bid zone or acceptable zone or high priced zone one is willing to risk a bid at should multiply the number of bids you can make in a 24 hour period, not simply add numerically to the number of bids you can do. Time for bed.

This is going to get long... :o I looked at what you said in that thread. One point made me think. The reasoning on another seems a little flawed to me. Let me start by expanding on the free rebid concept. I don't bid for 4* hotels in Vegas. I stay at the resort in my timeshare system in rooms like I am in right now as I am typing that are 1 bedroom true suites with jacuzzis and twice the size of the big resorts, as nice or nicer than virtually any of them and far less expensive if the system is played right. (We are all about playing the system here, aren't we! :) ) For those of you who do bid the 4*'s here, though, I am pretty sure that you actually have three free rebids, not two. I will use the downtown example of this thread, and free rebid zones A and B. I am pretty sure I have done this in other places, but it was a while ago, so maybe this loophole has been closed: First you bid the Downtown Zone. Then you bid Downtown and A Then you restart and bid Downtown and B Then you bid downtown, A and B. This person is willing to stay downtown, but appears happy to stay at the strip. Even if they didn't want to stay at the strip, they could probably do this with minimal risk due to the difference in prices between the two zones. So they can continue on with the following: Downtown, Strip Downtown, Strip, A Restart, Downtown, Strip, B Downtown, Strip, A and B So all at once, they could do 55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, 85 and 90. This is great if they want to go tonight. If they want to go tomorrow, they could continue with 95, 100, 105, 110, 115, 120, 125 and 130. Good chance they are staying at the Golden Nugget this trip. If the trip is a long way off, though, consider this: You and I both want to stay at the Golden Nugget. (Apparently you wouldn't want to stay at the Golden Nugget, but humor me... :) ) You have 8 tries to get your price (because you certainly wouldn't mind staying at the strip) You start at 45 and work your way up to 80. They take your $80 bid. I am hesitant about all this rebidding stuff, so I just start at 45, get denied and wait 24 hours. On day two I try 50. On day three I try 55. On day four I try 60. On day five, inventory is added at $60 and my $65 bid is accepted. It seems to me that rebidding in an environment of changing inventory and prices could hurt you as well as help you. While rebidding starting at $60 or less would have caught the lower price on day 5, rebidding on day one PREVENTS you from ever getting to day 5 when the price drop occurs. This is the reasoning behind my suggestion on another thread that somebody not bid up all the way to their $80 limit in the first day or two of the process if there is enough time before their trip. You are right, though, that it would be best to rebid on day 5, too. To catch new low rates then, it seems the best plan, depending upon how much time you are willing to spend, how much money you might possibly save per night and how many nights your stay is for might go something like this: 45, 47, 50, 52, 55, 57, 60, 62 until you get sick of trying, then 45, 50, 55, 57, 60, 62, 65, 67 until you get sick of trying, then 45, 50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 72, 75 then 45, 50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80 then 50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, 85 50, 60, 70, 75, 80, 85, 90, 95 and so on.. This might be time consuming, but if you had several windows open at once (not sure if that works with the site links) you can do a lot clicking while waiting for bid results. It would be nice to automate some of this somehow...

"Rebids should be used from the start of your bidding so you can start low and work your way up to a win with out over bidding." What I meant was that some people might be scared about the whole rebidding proces. While you and I might know it works, I think some people new to the game might be wary about adding zones that they don't want to stay in. They might be concerned they could make a mistake and get stuck in the middle of BFE. In such a case, when you have months to go before your stay, I don't think your results will be too different if you started low, picked downtown then rebid a little higher on the strip then waited a day to repeat the process. While this will take longer, people new to bidding might be more comfortable with it. Free rebids are more critical to understand and use when you are trying to get something closer to the date of your trip.