Product Description

The Unofficial Guides are the "Consumer Reports" of travel guides, offering candid evaluations of their destinations' attractions, hotels, restaurants, shopping, nightlife, sports, and more, all rated and ranked by a team of unbiased inspectors so even the most compulsive planners can be sure they're spending their time and money wisely. Each guide addresses the needs of everyone from families to business travelers, with handy charts that demonstrate how each place stacks up against the competition. Plus, all the details are pulled out so they're extremely easy to scan.

Who better than the Unofficial Guides to bring you an behind-the-scenes look at how the Disney empire runs? The essays in this fascinating, completely updated guide reveal how the parks were created, how Walt Disney and his successors have run the company, what it's like to be a Disney character, what imagineering is, and much, much more. If you love Disney and Mickey or pop culture in general, this is the book for you.

Other Unofficial Guides to Disney and the rest of the central Florida parks include The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World, The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World for Grown-Ups, The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World with Kids, Mini Mickey, and Beyond Disney: The Unofficial Guide to Universal, Sea World, and the Best of Central Florida.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #220400 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 214 pages

Back Cover Copy
From the publishers of The Unofficial Guide® to Walt Disney World® "A Tourist's Best Friend!" —Chicago Sun-Times "Indispensable" —The New York Times Inside you'll learn the stranger-than-fiction history of Walt Disney World:

Customer Reviews

My, what an odd little book...
I purchased the 2000 edition of this paperback, but it actually took me until 2008 to get around to reading it from cover-to-cover. It's a perfect little book for light summer reading. You can easily devour it within a day or two, especially if you are already a fan of Disney theme parks. And ah, there lies the problem. Throughout my reading, I was constantly wondering who the target audience for this odd little book would be. It is billed as a companion to the Unofficial Guide, although I hardly think a casual theme park tourist would care about all the intricate historical and socio-economic details that the author shares. At the same time, most of the information shared would equally not be of interst to diehard Disney fans. It is either a series of poorly repeated, well known factoids; misinformation; or brief summaries of other (much better) books about Walt Disney World.

Unlike some of the other reviewers, I actually liked this book... to a point. There were a few new trivia tidbits that I had not heard previously, although I am forced to question whether or not these untold tales are true. For a book that mentions the "dinosaurs" in Spaceship Earth, highlights the "AdventureQuest" park open at Downtown Disney, and shares the old chestnut about the ring-in-the-pavement at the Haunted Mansion as an actual part of the Imagineer's story, it is no wonder that I doubt everything I read. That said, it remains an interesting little book because it is so odd in its layout and content.

The book covers, in no particular order, a very brief history of Walt Disney (the man) and Walt Disney World (the park), touching on things like the underground access tunnels, food preparation, plants and animals as found in the park. It also jumps over to an annoyingly preachy and cynical diatribe on how Walt Disney World presents a skewed and politically incorrect version of American history and then tries to deconstruct the park by exploring Walt's motivations and attitudes within the context of the time. I have seldom seen an author present contextual history and revisionist history so close together in the same book! The fact that this super serious discussion is sandwiched between a chapter detailing "Hidden Mickeys" in the parks and a chapter excessively cataloging the different types of plant life at Disney World is laughable.

I will agree with others that the book is poorly edited. Although Animal Kingdom opened in 1998 and I have the 2000 edition, the text constantly jumps around from "when The Animal Kingdom opens in the future" to suddenly sharing a personal account of riding Countdown to Extinction. This sometimes happens in the same chapter, within pages of each other. Clearly the bulk of her comments on Animal Kingdom comes from early press releases. I really enjoyed her vague discussion of the planned-but-never-built Beastly Kingdom, almost as if she experienced it firsthand.

If you can pick this book up for a couple of bucks--and if you're a Disney collector--and if you are not too overly critical--and if you have some free time in the summer (or plan to, like me, within the next eight years) then go ahead and pick up this book. Sure there are lots of others that are much better, but I have yet to find such an odd one that feels a bit like a Disney rollercoaster.

It's OK
Review from my wife:

The only reason I give it 3 stars and not 2 is that it has the basic "Behinds the Scenes" information in it that most Disney buffs know already - but a newbie would not know. So for a new person, it would be interesting for them.

Yes, there are factual errors in it and some "smugness" in certain areas. Take it with a grain of salt - all of the UnOfficial Books are like this.

It was fun to read in retrospect. It talks about future plans, etc. So that was interesting.

I read it while on the treadmill. It kept me entertained for a few 45 minutes for a few days.

Rushed and incomplete
Don't get this book if you're a Disney nut, because you're going to get a rehash of 99% of what you already know. You're not going to find much in the way of insider secrets or funny antecdotes about Disney or the theme parks. Also, the book has a number of glaring factual errors, once you come across one of them, your faith in the rest of the material isn't going to last long. Skip this one.