I haven't been in FL for a while, but here are some general thoughts...
Flight training operations tend to be disorganized, shady, or down-right crooked. With a few exceptions, those involved in general aviation flight training are either new to the industry and inexperienced, or are unable to get an airline or good corporate flying job...
1) Expect to deal with inexperienced, disfunctional, or crooked people.
2) The best you can probably hope for in a flight school is well-intentioned, but slightly disorganized with reasonable prices.
3) The best way to avoid crooks is to get REALLY educated on general aviation (the internet can help) before you go talk to any schools. Act kind of stupid about the industry, and see if they lie to you a lot. If so, walk away. Note: GA flight schools are often mis-informed about the airline industry (since they never got that far) so do not expect them to have accurate info about the airline business.
4) Since I think you're looking at going beyond the private level, you might want to look for schools that:
a) Do CFI Training
b) Hire their own CFI graduates
c) Do multi-engine training
5) Make absolutely certain that you talk to some instructors and students to get the real low-down. You might be able to catch them on the ramp before you talk to the sales guy...they will probably be brutally honest.
6) Some schools (usually larger) will have airplanes with new paint-jobs...this is a complete waste of money and is only done to sucker in students who don't know any better. Almost all flight training aircraft are old and beat up...as long as they maintained per the FAA rules they should be safe. Some schools actually have brand-new airplanes...this is nice, but they might want to charge you a LOT of money. You gain no benefit from learning in new airplanes if they cost twice as much. Kind of like your driver's license...did you learn in a chevy lumina or a ferrari?
7) Be suspicious of schools that look really high-dollar and slick...the economics of flight training don't support that, so they are probably going to try and rip you off.
8) You should be able to PVT, IR, COM, ME, CFI, CFII, MEI certs for $35-45K and get it all done in 8 months or less (full time). Be suspicious if they want more time or money. Make sure you understand what is NOT included in the price...there often many "extras" that you have to buy on your own.
9) You probably want to use a part 91 program and avoid part 141 training programs...these will require that you sit through a LOT of classroom training. This training will be taught by an entry-level CFI making 10/hr, but you will probably be charged $50/hr...big rip-off in most cases.