Review: PassPorter’s Walt Disney World 2012

RECOMMENDED GUIDEBOOKS FOR FIRST TIME FAMILY VISITORS TO WALT DISNEY WORLD

This site has a mixed attitude towards guidebooks. 

On the one hand yourfirstvisit.net was designed from the start to make poring through them unnecessary, and in one instance they can actually harm your first family visit to Walt Disney World: if you read in them before your visit too much about the rides themselves, and hence lose some of the mystery and drama of “what happens next.”

On the other hand, they are fun, interesting, helpful, and informative.

So among the many guidebooks out there, I recommend three:

• Bob Sehlinger and Len Testa’s The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2012 (reviewed here)
• Julie Neal’s The Complete Walt Disney World 2012 (reviewed here), and
• Jennifer, Dave and Allison Marx’s PassPorter’s Walt Disney World 2012

 All three belong in any serious Walt Disney World collection, as each has complementary strengths. 

• The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2012:
• Best for the range of issues covered, detail about them (except for rides), dining, and grouping information by topic (e.g., showing all the resort hotel floor plans over a series of pages so you can easily compare them). 
• Its weaknesses include its paucity of photos, a few more errors than I’d like to see, and its intimidating heft
• The Complete Walt Disney World 2012:
• Strengths include stunning photos, unmatched detail on the rides, and recommended websites. 🙂
• Relative weaknesses include limited material on topics other than rides.  The four Disney World theme parks account for almost 50% of the pages in The Complete Walt Disney World 2012, compared to around 17% in The Unofficial Guide and 22% in PassPorter.
• PassPorter’s Walt Disney World 2012:
• Strengths are balance, grouping of information, maps, its unique focus on organizing tools, and tone. PassPorter also has a very strong online presence, with much additional material available at PassPorter.com for free, other focused topics covered in reasonably priced e-books, and a vibrant online community. (I do have a favorite thread on the PassPorter boards.) Its heft and font size are not intimidating.
• Weaknesses of PassPorter largely follow from its strengths of balance and lack of heft: lack of depth on items (other than the parks) as compared to The Unofficial Guide, and lack of detail on the theme parks as compared to The Complete Walt Disney World. There’s also a few inexplicable errors.

The rest of this material will focus on PassPorter’s Walt Disney World 2012.

THE 2012 EDITION OF PASSPORTER’S WALT DISNEY WORLD

The 2012 edition of Jennifer, Dave and Alison C. Marx’s annual series published in January 2012.

Its 350 pages include extensive but not overly detailed treatment of the key topics of a Walt Disney World vacation.

I particularly like the balance of material. 

Like The Complete Walt Disney World, two-thirds of its material is on the key topics of the parks, hotels, and dining. 

While it is thin on the parks compared to Julie’s work, it has more detail than The Complete Walt Disney World on dining and hotels.  It does not match the scope of The Unofficial Guide on these last two topics, but because of that is less intimidating.

See the image for an example of its material on rides. The ride  detail is thinner than that of the Complete Walt Disney World, and comparable to The Unofficial Guide.

From the image you can note a couple of other key points:

• The use of color coding to provide a sense of to whom rides might be attractive
• Vertical and horizontal tabs that help you track where you are–both in the book and at Disney World in general
• Spiral binding, which helps with keeping the work flat and flexible, and allows the inclusion of “PassPockets” (more on these later)

The spiral binding creates a blank space across pairs of pages.  The only topics for which this would matter are maps, but the wonderful maps of the PassPorter are bound in to the spirals as double-sized fold outs.

The material on resorts is particularly useful for its length. 

Resort entries, typically four pages long, include maps, travel time, floor plans, photos, extensive commentary, and ratings.

See the image for a Saratoga Springs example.

I’m personally not keen on combining into one four-page entry the Yacht and Beach Club, Port Orleans French Quarter and Riverside, the DVC villas with their parent resorts, and the Treehouse Villas and Saratoga Springs, as too much distinct information gets lost.

But in this choice the Marxes are largely consistent with everybody else, so I guess I’m just a voice in the wilderness on this one.

PASSPORTER’S CHECKLISTS, WORKSHEETS, AND PASSPOCKETS

This review continues here.

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