Melissa5

I recommend you avoid staying downtown, because downtown San diego is confusing and annoying even for us locals...there is traffic, no parking, and a lot of one-way streets.

You will be fairly centrally located if you stay in Mission Valley or Hotel Circle areas, although remember you will run into a lot of work traffic in the mornings and evenings.

I don't know about prices, but hotels in the Mission Bay area are also well-located for you. (Don't confuse Mission Bay with Mission Beach. Mission Beach is out of the way. It is Mission Bay area that is convenient.)

Have fun!

Heavens

Do you have Triple A? That can bring prices down a bit when you book. It helps us at a lot of hotels.

bbjj109

Reconsider learning how to use Priceline. I booked the Red Lion Hanalei for 3 nights in early March for $62/night +tax.

paulg

So that brings up a good point, and maybe this is not the right place for this, but here goes. I have never used it before, but have played around just a bit. Enough to see that it seemed very 'uncontrollable.' You can't control which hotel, correct? You just put in an area of town, a target hotel rating, and a target price? Then they find a hotel to match. But it could be right away or it could be last minute? Educate me if you can do so in a few sentences.

Heavens

The main drawbacks to PL, IMO, is that you don't really control the hotel. If you go on biddingfortravel.com you can see what hotels and for what prices, dates have been awarded lately and that can give you a gauge, but not much more.

The other drawback is that they don't "guarantee" two beds or bed choice. So if it is your honeymoon and you must have a king bed, you could wind up with two doubles and vice versa (family of four in one bed). Other than that, it is pretty cool for the money you can save.

We have gotten luxury hotels for under $100, off season of course. So, if you like to gamble a little, and are a little flexible, it can work out great.

We have used PL about 15 times, gotten hotels for as low as $50 and as much as $150. Some have been great bargains, some only a marginal savings.

You control the bid, so if you set a rate that you will be happy with and get it, then you win. If they keep telling you that you have to go up and you do and then aren't happy with the hotel pick, well, not so good.

Personally if the trip is not a big deal, then I find it kind of fun. We have stayed in hotels that we wouldn't normally pick and saved some bucks. Hope this helps.

paulg

Trip Report: We had a blast! San Diego is a great town ... it's got everything that a big city has, but it doesn't feel like a big city. Much like Austin feels to me. We stayed at the Old Town Inn on Pacific Highway right near the 5/8 intersection, and right across the street from Old Town. I hate to rub it in, but we are SOOOOO glad we didn't take some of the advice on this thread and stay in the Mission Valley/Hotel Circle area. We drove through that area a few times and ate at a couple of places in that area, and it is exactly what we thought it would be and exactly where we didn't want to stay. The motel was nice (see my review on TripAdvisor from May 14th), though a bit noisy (but not from the highway). It's a great bargain for those looking to stay cheap in San Diego. And the area around the motel, though industrial, was not at all dirty or scary. The Lockheed-Martin SPAWAR facility across the street was rather interesting. We spent a full 7 days there and visited Sea World, Zoo, Wild Animal Park, Scripps Aquarium, La Jolla (beaches, seals, tide pools, caves, coves, etc), downtown, Seaport Village, and Old Town (nice Cinqo de Mayo celebration our first day there). We didn't get to see much of Balboa Park and the other museums, unfortunately, but all in all we did a ton of stuff. Interestingly, the weather was not what I expected. I do a lot of research before vacations, and I have to admit that I completely missed the fact that May is the least sunny month of the year in SD. I new the temps would be 65-70, but I didn't know it would be overcast most of the time, which made for a bit chilier weather than I was ready for. But no matter, we still had a great time.

- Paul

mikemo

In Spring '04, we stayed at the US Grant - both the location (I don't like to stay downtown) and the hotel were disappointing, and the then Shelter Point Hot and Marina - it's now The Kona Kai resort. That area and the hotel we liked much better.
The traffic around the airport can get a bit heavy at rush hour, but we managed to get everywhere we wanted fairly easily (FD: I lived in University City in the '70's).
Kona Kai's rates are $114. for 2/2 - 2 queen beds during the week in late May and early June.
Perhaps if someone has stayed there since the change in name (and I suspect ownership), they might comment.
BTW, they charged for parking on the Hot. grounds, but there was plenty of free, safe street parking along the Bay.
For that price, it's def worth a look.
M