Shopping for a Bargin Vacation

So you are shopping for a bargain vacation. The Internet has been a blessing and annoyance in this regard. The Internet lets the average person book their own vacation and have access to a vast amount of information about their options. The downside is that it can become a part-time job to get the vacation booked. Travel Zoo and Trip Advisor are great places to start. They have done much of the work for you gathering information from other sites and posting in depth information about locations, hotels and airfares. But the bottom line is you still need to visit a lot of other sites to get the best deal. If you are looking at a Caribbean vacation, one site that always pops up with the best deals is http://www.cheapcaribbean.com/. At first blush, they do have very exciting deals. But my personal experience with that site is that it is always the most expensive in the end. At the very end of the booking process, they tack on these "taxes and fees". I have never really been able to ascertain what they are. But they are a lot of money! The last trip I priced there, those fees added about $500 to the cost of the trip. Since I couldn't figure out what those fees actually were, I took all of the information about the vacation and plugged it in to Travelocity. The cost was $500 less. Same time of travel, same hotel, and same airlines. Then I tried plugging it in to Expedia. It was $800 less! Guess which one I booked? On another vacation planning venture, I went through the same process, again starting with CheapCaribbean. That time, I actually found that by booking the entire Caribbean vacation through the airline website, I got the best deal by far. So watch for those hidden, unexplained fees. Moral of the story is that in order to get the best deal, you have to shop around and don't just click on what appears to be the best price at first glance. What tools have you found to be most helpful in planning a family vacation?