First, I loved the theme. The attention to detail while creating a southern atmosphere truly is spectacular. With the large white columned buildings and the river which runs through the middle of the resort, Disney left no detail to spare when designing this resort. Even the rooms had a certain old world charm with vintage style furniture and bathroom fixtures, but with all the modern amenities as well.

Secondly, the clientele of this resort suited us well. We don't have any kids of our own and when we go on vacation we don't particularly love being surrounded by tons of kids as well. And since this is probably the least kid friendly resort of all the budget and moderate resorts Disney has, it is great for couples. The setting is very romantic and there are very few kids running around making it a very peaceful and wonderful resort to go if you are looking for a little Disney romance!

Thirdly, we loved the fact that you could get on a boat and go to Downtown Disney. After a week of riding buses all around Disney, to be honest it can get a little old. And so it was really great to be able to jump on a boat right at our resort and get down to Downtown Disney to go to dinner or shopping without having to get on another bus. Plus, it is an absolutely pleasant ride of about 20 minutes to get there and one that I would definitely recommend taking if staying at this resort.

The only downside to this resort is that it is not terribly centrally located. It is located near the Magic Kingdom, but if you want to go to any of the other parks, especially the Animal Kingdom, it does take a considerable amount of time to get there on the Disney bus transportation system. After looking at a map, it does seem that other moderately priced resorts such as the Coronado Springs and Caribbean Beach resorts were more centrally located to all of the parks. But if you are going during the off season like we did, you will have little problem seeing everything you want to see as long as you stay long enough.

Overall, we loved our stay at Disney's Riverside Resort and would recommend it to any other Disney World travelers!

1. Travelzoo

   This is by far my favorite. It combines two great features into one site. First, it shows all of the best deals by very search friendly categories that have been researched by their team. Sometimes they are hotel deals, other times they are last minute trips to Europe, but whatever deals they are advertising on their homepage are usually hard to beat elsewhere.
   
   They have also recently added a feature called "Supersearch", which allows you to enter your travel specifics once, and then you can search multiple recommended sites without having to re-enter your information every time (which I hate!). Plus, you can sign up to receive a weekly email that has their top 20 deals of the week which are usually quite amazing.

2. BookIt

   This comes in a close second to Travelzoo for me. It works more like a traditional travel search engine, but it seems like time after time I am able to find better rates here than on the Travelocity and Expedia type engines. After using it a lot, it really focuses on tropical destinations such as Mexico, Jamaica, Bahamas, etc., so if that is where you are headed, make sure you try here first. The only drawback of this site is that it can load slowly at times.

3. Kayak

   I love Kayak first for its extremely simple interface. There are not a lot of moving slide shows or pictures of places you may want to go, just a simple place to plug in your information and search. Kayak is great because it searches over 140 different travel sites to get you the best deal.
   
   They have also added this other fun little feature that lets you see if they rates they find you are better than some of the other major sites (such as Expedia, Orbitz, etc.). Then after you have selected the item and price you want, it sends you right to the site of the provider (i.e. Delta, Alamo, etc.) to rent directly from them saving any kind of convenience or handling fee.

So next time you are looking to travel, take a break from the big travel search engines and try one of these...you might actually save some money!