I am one of the people who got a rate of $59/night on Priceline for the Swan hotel. However, I got this rate back in Feb., when the Swan and Dolphin were coming up a lot on Priceline. Apparently, these hotels will come up for a brief time, then disappear for a while. Unfortunately, they are not coming up right now. You can research what hotels are coming up on the Orlando hotels board of
www.biddingfortravel.com . I've had very good luck using the information on that board. To answer your original question, I put in "resort" level and "WDW zone" to get the Swan. However, if you do that right now, you will most likely get an off-property hotel. You run that risk no matter what, but the S+D don't seem to be coming up at all right now, so the risk of an off-property hotel is much higher now.
One thing that you CAN do right now is the special that someone posted on these boards yesterday where you use 4000 Starwood Rewards points plus $60 to book a room at the Swan or Dolphin now through July 31st. If you don't already belong to Starwood Rewards, you can sign up at
www.starwood.com . Also, I believe that you can get bonus starwood points for signing up for their Amex card., so maybe you could get enough points for one night at $60 just for getting this cc and using it once. You can also request automatic Starwood Gold level once you get the Starwood Amex, and if you're a silver, gold, or platinum member of another hotel program (Marriott, Hilton, etc.), Starwood will match that level as well I understand. HTH!
