Review: The Color Companion to Walt Disney World, 2nd Edition

THE COLOR COMPANION TO WALT DISNEY WORLD AS A STAND-ALONE GUIDEBOOK FOR FIRST TIME VISITORS

Long time readers of this site know that I don’t think guidebooks are necessary for first-time visitors, but for those who want them anyway I recommend a few of the hundreds that are out there.

One I’ve always recommended is Bob Sehlinger and Len Testa’s The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2012 (“TUG”). I’m keen on and influenced by it, and by most of the other efforts of the TouringPlans.com team.

TUG’s influence is both positive and negative: I admire and try to follow the fact-based and objective approach of the work, and the home page of this site was inspired by the difficulty of pulling out of its almost 900 pages a simple and straightforward approach to building a first visit for families who may never return.

Sehlinger and Testa’s recently-released The Color Companion to Walt Disney World, 2nd Edition is positioned both as a “companion” to TUG and also as having “more than enough information…to plan your Disney vacation” (xii).

For returning visitors, I’m OK with that second point, but for first-timers I can’t recommend it. The issue is less the quantity of information, which is adequate, although alternatives are better on some dimensions–rather, it’s that just a little too much of the information is wrong or misleading.

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR FIRST TIME VISITORS

The first edition of this work came out a few years ago, likely inspired by the jewel-like photos in what was then a new competitor in the Disney guidebooks world, The Complete Walt Disney World.

The approach of The Color Companion is to narrow the topics and reduce the text of the material in TUG, and supplement the result with hundreds of photos–more than 600 in the recently released 2nd edition.

Viewed from the “companion to TUG” positioning, the result is largely a great success.  The detail of TUG is supplemented nicely by the photos, some of which illustrate and others of which make a point.

For example, there’s a nice photo-essay (see the image to the right) on the impact of location on your view of Wishes.

This material (by Tom Bricker, I’m guessing; the photo credit page is unreadable to anyone other than the photographers’ moms) shows how visuals can at times communicate so much more clearly and convincingly than words.

However, viewed from the “more than enough information…to plan your Disney vacation” (xii) perspective, it falls short for first time visitors.

As a standalone shorter guidebook, The Color Companion competes in a well-populated category.  One competitor, The Complete Walt Disney World, has slightly better material on the resorts, an equivalent number of slightly better photos (on average) printed with much higher resolution, and much better material on the attractions.  Another competitor, PassPorter’s Walt Disney World, has much better material on the resorts than the Color Companion, is equivalent to slightly better than the Color Companion on rides, but doesn’t have near the same wealth of images.

The weakest part of the Color Companion–both in treatment and accuracy–is the resorts material.  Picking a Disney World resort takes several decisions: deciding whether or not to stay on site; deciding which of the resort price classes represents the best choice for your family; and then picking your resort within these price classes.  The Color Companion is thin on the first two issues, and problematic on the third.

For example, I don’t understand why the values and moderates get an average of less than a page each, while the deluxes typically get two pages.

(See the image for examples of moderate resort reviews.)

There’s many more rooms in the first two categories, in all but one case many more rooms per resort, and these resorts are nearly as complicated to think through as the deluxes are. Surely the length of the treatment isn’t guided by relative price?

Even more of an issue are the inaccuracies.  I’ll come back to these in a second, but for now note that the Wilderness Lodge is not a monorail resort (93), Caribbean Beach does not have queen beds (61) and Port Orleans Riverside is not on Bay Lake (347).

SOME ISSUES WITH THE COLOR COMPANION TO WALT DISNEY WORLD

For first-time family visitors, there’s just a few too many problems with the Color Companion for me to recommend it as a stand-alone work.  (You can find links to the team’s own corrections here.)

Note that any guidebook to a place as complicated and changeable as Walt Disney World will have some inaccuracies, some out-of-date material, some questionable judgments, and some layout problems–I’ve got plenty of all these on this site as well.

The question is how many, and how much they might derail a family on its first, and perhaps only, visit.  In my judgment, the Color Companion has simply too many…examples of the ones I noticed follow:

Questionable interpretations

• In the context of a book like this, it makes no sense at all to describe the BoardWalk as “half a theme park” (348). “Half an arcade,” or “half a midway,” maybe
• The use of the em dash in the pool ratings on 348 comically implies that the pool at the Treehouse Villas is the 4th best at Disney World
• Material on 25 implies that 9 a.m. is a “late” opening rather than by far the most usual opening time, and also that it’s not unusual for the Magic Kingdom and Epcot to close at 6p—which happens maybe once or twice a year…10a opens are noted as “rare” on 34—they are not rare, but rather extinct, and ought not even to have been mentioned
• “Amazingly reasonable prices” in the tip on 40? Where? This threatens to set off the Occupy Fantasyland gang…
• The description of the outfitting of the Cabins at Fort Wilderness should have used “range,” not “oven”—it helps people to know there’s a stove (59)
• Mention should be made on 66 that Caribbean Beach is the only remaining standard moderate with full-size beds
• Many Yacht Club and Beach Club rooms also include a daybed, not just two queens (72)
• The size of Animal Kingdom Lodge standard rooms should be listed as a weakness (70) as it is for the identically-sized rooms at the Wilderness Lodge (78)
• “Wishes” is not on the “Not to be Missed” list (152) but “Living with the Land” is (201)?

Inaccuracies

• The fishing section (347-348) can create great confusion about the relationship of the various resort hotels to Bay Lake and the Seven Seas Lagoon
• 58 is filled with errors—“camping fare” food at the Wilderness Lodge? Art of Animation suites are “two standard rooms connected by a door”? Values no longer all have only “open air” corridors… “Suites” and “Villas” are completely different and unrelated room types
• The image on 60-61 is cool, and the overall sense it creates of the total size differences among these room types is really helpful.  However the deluxe silhouette is too wide (not many deluxe rooms are that much wider than the almost 13′ of width of the moderates), the bath/dressing area proportions are wrong (they are about 6’ long at the values and moderates (other than the Cabins), but 10-12′ or more at the deluxes), and the text claim that the moderates have queens is also wrong (most do, but Caribbean Beach and the Cabins don’t). See this for an alternative
• Multiple errors on 62 ranging from the number of stories in the hotels to the Family Suite design.
• If only the Wilderness Lodge were a monorail resort (93)
• Seven Dwarves opening date has shifted from 2013 to 2014, but I don’t think it was ever 2012 (183)
• Small Word does not board at a rate of 9 people/minute (178)

Out-dated material

• Been a while since the Country Bears put on a special Christmas show (166)
• The Animal Kingdom’s parade route is out of date (275)
• The order of ideas in the Fantasmic material (290) is the reverse of what it should be, and in many readers will create the impression that only 2 shows a week is still the routine schedule
• I doubt that the Hollywood Studios parade is Len’s favorite any more since its changes more than a year ago (316)

Technical issues

• Text layout problems on 264 and 338
• Box on 74 has floated down
• Lost the last word—“Floridian”—on 80 (Never mind, my mistake, not theirs!)
• Rare image quality issues—e.g. 161, 163

I really like the Color Companion as a supplement to TUG, and fixing the problems it has would make it competitive as a stand-alone book with  The Complete Walt Disney World and PassPorter’s Walt Disney World (space for expanding the moderate and value resort material could be found by killing enough of the joke-photo pages.)

But until these problems are fixed, I can’t recommend it as the sole guidebook for first-time family visitors who may never return.

Disclosure: this site is an affiliate of TouringPlans.com