Friends of mine stopped at the Magnum and had no problems. I've been there quite a few times and it seems ok. Good area , lots around and good restaurants.

Don't know the Alor..

I have stayed at both. If I have to choose between them it would definitely be the Magnum although having said that neither would be my first choice if the Highland Beach were available.

Alor Grande - worst hotel I have ever been in. Rooms dark and depressing with bars on the windows and unless you get one around the pool, it will be at the back and your "view" will be other blocks of rooms. It is used a lot by Indians and Russians and therefore very noisy. Avoid at all costs.

Magnum - stayed there once and had a front room overlooking the street. Was noisy in the morning as the traffic started up but it was very entertaining to sit on the balcony and watch the Goan world go by. The pool is very small but this did not matter to us as we are beach people. Never ate there because we always get our breakfast down at the beach. Rooms kept clean but like all Goan 2* hotels, very very basic. We found it perfectly adequate.

Candybabe

Wow, Candybabe - you sound exactly like me!

Alor Grand (it was the Dom Franscisco when we stayed there in Nov 2004) is the one hotel that my husband refuses to go back to - to quote him:
'I don't care how good a deal it is, I'm not staying there'.
Your description of it is the same as ours - dark and dingy rooms.

We stayed in the Magnum in Feb 2005 and were quite happy with our street/side facing room.
It was spacious and clean.

However, we were speaking to some people a few weeks ago who were staying there and they said it was dirty.

We'd go back to the Magnum (depending on what we thought about current reviews of the hotel, bearing in mind that every review is subjective rather than objective) but definitely not the Alor Grand.
Polly

We stayed in the Magnum Xmas/New Year 2006 & 2007 and thought it was fine this time we had an apartment as we were there 10 weeks, but recommended some friends who were coming over for our wedding to stay there, unfortunately it seemed to have gone down hill and the bathroom in particular was all mouldy, the room not particulary clean and the pool dirty, saying that they still had a great holiday but none of us will be staying at the Magnum again, which is a shame as we loved the front facing balcony watching the world go by whilst having a couple of honeybees

Thanks very much to everyone! Thats a great help!

just in case you haven't seen them, we have reviews of both here