Summer is quickly approaching, and if you're anything like the customers I meet every day in my store, you're already planning a vacation. By far, the most common destination that customers want books about is Walt Disney World in Florida. Since I travelled there last year, I have some suggestions. I bought two books to help plan my trip--one to use before we went, and one to use while we were there--and I bought a third book as a treat to remind myself of the fun I had.
The first book is The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2009 (Unofficial Guides Series). I used this in the months leading up to my trip to decide what my family and I would do once we got to Orlando. This book is full of helpful information. It comes with maps, charts, and detailed reviews of hotels, attractions, restaurants, and stores. Two things set it apart from the official guide put out by Disney. First, the authors have the ability to be critical; if they don't think something is worth seeing, they'll tell you. Second, they have information about attractions that aren't located on the Disney property. If you want information on Sea World or Universal Studios, or just want to know about hotels that aren't owned by Disney, you can find that information here.
The most helpful part of this book, though, was the detailed touring plans. There is so much to do at Disney World that it can be overwhelming trying to decide what the best way to do everything is. This guide gives several suggestions about how to get the most out of your time in the parks, showing you what order to see things in and at what times of the day. This made planning much easier, and helped prevent a lot of arguments in my family about what to do first.
Even with all of that planning, we still needed help once we got into the parks. We ended up seeing many things that looked interesting to do once we got there, but hadn't read about ahead of time, so we needed to have a way to learn about it on the fly. Unfortunately, the Unofficial Guide mentioned above is almost two inches thick (with all of the great information in there, it would be hard to be any thinner), which makes carrying it around in the Florida heat unappealing. That is why I also picked up a copy of the Zagat Walt Disney World Insider's Guide, a slim book that is very easy to carry around. If you've ever used a Zagat guide before, you know that they ask for feedback from actual consumers and compile that information into number ratings and a brief review. It doesn't have as much information as the Unofficial Guide, but it still covers all of the rides, attractions, restaurants, hotels, and stores that you could want. Most helpful to me were the number scores given to rides and attractions that are broken down into three categories: adults, children, and thrill; this last one was especially helpful since we were travelling with a couple of people who hate thrill rides. Those ratings are also compiled into lists at the beginning of the book where that are ranked highest to lowest, so that if you want to know what the most popular rides are for adults or for children, you can find them all in one place.
Although I wouldn't have used this book to plan the whole vacation, it made it very easy to make decisions on the fly. I'm glad that I decided to buy both guides.
The final book that I would recommend is not actually a guide to Walt Disney World, but rather a children's novel set there. Disney After Dark is the first book in The Kingdom Keepers series by Ridley Pearson. It's about a group of kids who are chosen to serve as holographic guides in the Magic Kingdom, and who are the only people who can stop the powers of evil from taking over at Disney World. It's a fast-paced adventure story that would be good for kids ages 10-14. The best part about the book is that the characters spend most of their time in the Magic Kingdom. It's a lot of fun to read about someone trying to escape from Splash Mountain when you just rode it the day before. I highly recommend getting this book for your kids and letting them read it on the plane ride home from Disney.
