Should leave fans of Mickey smiling from ear to ear. -- Chicago Tribune A thorough overview, with inside tips, facts and quizzes. With more than 400 color photos, it also makes a nice souvenir. -- Boston Globe May be the most colorful, visually stunning and deeply researched guidebook on the market. A warm, loving portrait of Disney World, for people who want to love Disney World. -- Orlando Sentinel Endless tips and trivia. -- Knoxville News-Sentinel There are dozens of guides to Disney World, but I like this one by a husband-and-wife team who visited Disney World more than 700 times. They're not affiliated with Disney, but received much inside access by the company to provide very detailed descriptions of each ride, show and attraction. Among the gems are fun facts, suggested itineraries and little things to look for. -- Florida Times Union Offers an in-depth history of the attractions and the parks themselves... and the most in-depth run-down of the two Disney water parks. -- Budget Travel Book Description The best-looking Disney World guidebook, The Complete Guide to Walt Disney World 2008 is also the most interesting. Its spectacular photography grabs your eye, then its fantastic wealth of information keeps you glued to its pages. Every aspect of Disney World becomes easy to understand, as color-coded chapters lay out everything one subject at a time, and gorgeous full-color images bring it all to life. Packed with details you just can't find anywhere else, every chapter is so helpful you'll find yourself sticking post-it notes everywhere. The Planning Your Trip chapter offers a seven-step process to organizing your vacation, then a gold mine of practical information. As for theme parks, each ride or show gets its own article, many of which run several pages. Water parks are covered the same way, which makes the book the only real guide to Blizzard Beach and Typhoon Lagoon. Even diversions such as parasailing, stock-car driving and surfing lessons are fully described and illustrated. A new restaurant chapter is a collection of 88 reviews. The accounts are descriptive and honest, and include useful details such as which character meals can usually take walk-ins. The accommodations chapter covers each Disney resort with a photo-packed article as well as a comprehensive At a Glance sidebar. The combination gives you a nice overview of each complex, but also makes it easy to scan them all by price, amenities, location, or other criteria. Supplemental Material Like the most complete DVD set, the book is packed with bonus features. The best are the background articles on Disney's theme park attractions. For example, three side stories describe the history, science and set design of The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Other columns cover the histories of Space Mountain and It's a Small World. An animal guide describes the odd behaviors you can witness at Animal Kingdom, from the forearm-licking of the park's kangaroos to the stick-sharing rituals of its exotic birds. Breezy feature articles cover the wacky histories of the Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella fairy tales. The result is a hugely entertaining book, but one that doesn't flinch from the frustrating realities of a Disney trip. It acknowledges the long lines, the challenge of getting key restaurant reservations, the cluelessness you have on how to get a front-row seat to the High School Musical street show... and provides the magical solutions. Tip bars run across the bottom of most pages. Fitting the visual beauty of its subject, The Complete Guide to Walt Disney World 2008 is printed on gloss paper in full color. The book is fully updated, with the latest park and resort information and current prices and policies.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
A nice balance of fun and useful information and lots of photos:
An excellent guide. Unbiased (unlike some guidebooks that are really produced by the Disney folks) AND well illustrated with lots of photos (unlike some popular unbiased guidebooks on the market). The best of both worlds. Nice little touches like the section about the animals of Animal Kingdom make it a guide I will actually carry with me into the parks.
Great Book:
The Complete Guide to Walt Disney World is a great guide. My husband and I just took our children to Disney World (for the first time) during Thanksgiving. The book gave very helpful tips about each ride and show. I found it very helpful and would recommend it to others who are new to Disney World.
Great Book!:
This book was a great purchase & it really helped me on my recent trip to Disney World. There's tons of info on the hotels, parks and restaurants. It even gives details about the rides there - explaining what you may find scary about them, which I appreciated. I also liked the info on The Haunted House & Twilight Zone Tower of Terror rides. I was surprised the author didn't list "The Carousel of Progress" as a favorite attraction. It was very important to Disney and it started out at the NY World's... more info
Nice to have as a second source of information.:
I bought this book only about a week before leaving for Disney. I also purchased The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2009 which was the source I used the most. The Complete Guide had many nice photographs which our children enjoyed looking at and described each ride in better detail, but we found the Unofficial Guide's touring plans invaluable and overall provided all of the information we needed. I traveled with a group of 13 ranging in ages from 3-64 and having a plan at each park was a necessity.... more info
