p.s. I went to Tripadvisor.com and the reviews of the Beach Plaza Hotel are so bad! Oh, man. But I'm dying to at least stay there for a couple of nights to see it (I'm supposed to check out the furniture--long story).

What if I stayed 2 nights at the Beach Plaza and 2 nights at the Eden Roc? Is that the height of wishy-washiness or what? No wonder I travel so well by myself. yikes!

The bus stop is across the road right at the property line of thr FB/ED.
If you stay in that area try the deli that is across the bridge just south of FB. 5 min.walk, good breakfast

Melissa, if I can give you a peice of advice about South Beach hotels.

They have a glutton of 5 star boutique hotels which has pulled up the standard of other hotels all over South Beach. You can't put a Hampton Inn in South Beach without spending millions to renovate and restore.

There are also a plethora of 4 star and 3 star hotels that could be 4 and 5 star accommodations anywhere else.

The result is that there really aren't any middle of the road reasonable price accommodations that you want to stay in.

If the Beach Plaza gets dismal reviews across the board, I'd listen.

Did you try priceline? I know people have gotten the Royal Palm Crown Plaza for between $80 and $100 recently.

The Holiday Inn isn't bad but the Days Inn is frightening.

The South Seas is a great little hotel as are the Marseilles and the Doubletree Surfcomber however the Surfcomber has gotten pricey lately.

Have you looked at hotels on Collins and Washington south of 14th Street?

Sorry to hijack a few weeks after the fact but I was just looking for Miami advice and I saw that GoTravel went on a Carnival cruise? Can I ask which one? I am sort of dreading my Carnival cruise but I was outvoted...

ck, I went on the Carnival Fascination with about 35 of my close family and friends and had a blast! I'd do it again in a heartbeat!

That's the cruise we're planning to go on - 9/26 to 9/30, Key West and Cozumel. Glad to hear you had a good time since the reviews I've been reading are a little iffy...this will be our first cruise and it looks like we have about 8 people going. Plus 2 days before in South Beach and 2 days after in Fort Lauderdale...of course, this is not definite and will probably change another 10 times before we book, but that's another story...

We spent three or four days before in South Beach and then went on the cruise. It was too much fun.

The only down side of that cruise was it was like drive by vacationing.

I got a lot of help from CruiseCritics.com message boards.

One caveat, DO NOT stay at the Bayside Marketplace. There isn't anything there but the arena and Bayside which caters to people headed out on a cruise.

Even though Carnival states embarkation doesn't start until 1:30PM, we checked in at 10:45AM and were on board drinking a festive cocktail by the pool by noon. At 2PM the line to embark was out Carnival's door. You can usually board much earlier than they tell you.

South Beach is very close to the port of Miami.

Instead of Ft. Lauderdale, check out Lauderdale-By-The-Sea. It is a great place for some post cruise R&R.

Meant to add, I never did figure out what all the bad reviews were about.

We bought a cheap cruise and got a lot more than what we expected. Do book an outside cabin.