It was a busy April weekend — the height of spring break — and there was barely a hotel room to be found in all of Orlando, much less one at a bargain price.

So, how could I be staying in a three-bedroom luxury townhome — with plasma TVs in every room and a plush clubhouse within walking distance — for a mere $150 a night? That’s easy: I played the game.

If your idea of finding lodging in Orlando is doing a quick search on the Internet, then picking the cheapest option, chances are you’re paying way too much.

Dawn Meyers is thrilled to have dismounted at last from the theme park/water park summer treadmill.”When we lived in Minnetonka,” she said, “we’d spend a fortune on water park passes, Valleyfair passes, and then you’d feel like you have to go, and you’d need to get there in the car, which would take forever. And some places won’t let you take lunch in!”

Today: Not a problem. Credit River Territory, her family’s new neighborhood in rural Scott County, has its own private water park and a massive clubhouse. It’s a communal gathering place that another recent buyer, Dona Moon, describes as “like being in Colorado, at a real lodge — only it’s yours.”

Vallejo is the Bay Area’s version of ground zero for the subprime loan crisis.

A significant number of residents of the largely blue-collar city of 120,000 have taken out subprime loans — expensive mortgages issued to people with poor credit.

In 2005, almost one-quarter of mortgages in the Vallejo-Fairfield metropolitan area were subprime loans, according to the Center for Responsible Lending’s analysis of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data.

Vallejo home prices fell 8.5 percent from November to March, according to DataQuick Information Services. For people who bought in recent months without putting any money down, that means they may owe more on their mortgage than the house is worth.

THE SUPREME COURT’S 2005 Kelo ruling upholding government power to seize peoples’ houses and turn them over to private developers sent a chill through homeowners. It also sent a thrill through property rights activists who saw an opportunity to hitch the more radical parts of their agendas to ballot measures advertised simply as protection against home-stealing developers and politicians.

Last November, for example, California’s ballot included a measure to block Kelo-like eminent domain but also, by the way, to effectively end basic zoning and environmental regulation. Fortunately, voters saw Proposition 90 for the Trojan horse that it was and rejected it.