Review: The Complete Walt Disney World 2011
By Dave Shute
OVERVIEW: THE COMPLETE WALT DISNEY WORLD 2011
I still remember my shock when I opened the first (2007) printing of this series.
Such gorgeous photos, and so many of them! So many details and so much trivia! And such a nice typeface and design—albeit with a remarkably tiny font (though a size not uncommon in travel guides).
All other Disney World guidebooks—including my favorite, The Unofficial Guide Walt Disney World 2011
–immediately looked 20 years out of date after Julie and Mike Neal published theirs (Julie is the writer, Mike the photographer).
Their latest update, The Complete Walt Disney World 2011,
came out in late March 2011.
It shares the strengths of the previously published installments of the series—gorgeous photos, nice design, and tremendous details. It also shares their weaknesses: uneven material, and just too many inaccuracies.
For first time family visitors to Walt Disney World, I don’t recommend it. For repeat visitors, it’s a near-essential part of a Disney library.
REVIEW: THE COMPLETE WALT DISNEY WORLD 2011
The 368 pages of The Complete Walt Disney World 2011 are divided into more than a dozen major sections, including very useful sections on “Activities,” “Walt Disney World A-Z,” and a “Character Guide.”
The book’s “Internet Directory” has the flaw of most such printed listings–it omits the websites of its competitors–but is otherwise nicely comprehensive.
But the heart of the book, with almost exactly half of the work’s pages, is its material on the four theme parks.
These sections are the strength of the book, in particular their discussions of the attractions. Attraction material typically has one to three pages of photographs and text including quick overviews, extended discussion, history, fun facts, trivia, hidden Mickeys, etc.
It’s the depth of this material and the quality of the Mike Neal and Disney photographs–almost always at least one per page in these sections, and often more–that will appeal in particular to readers.
Julie Neal’s writing is with few exceptions sprightly, concise, clear, and fun. An example from her material on Hollywood Studios: “…this theme park has no backlot and therefore offers no tour through it.”
I don’t always agree with her opinions–e.g. the high regard in which she holds Mickey’s Jammin’ Jungle Parade (personally I don’t find rickshaw after rickshaw of fellow park guests that compelling a visual spectacle)–but they are mostly well within the range of sensible response.
Writing lapses where they exist seem governed by space–too much or too little space to fill.
Most of the attraction material is exactly one, two, or three complete pages long. (The treatment of the pavilions of Epcot’s World Showcase is an odd but welcome exception.)
With photos taking up varying amounts of this space, the result at times is the need to fill out 3 pages that should have ended at two and a half pages, or cut material to get a review to one page that should have been one and a half.
The result is inconsistent treatment of topics and levels of detail, not always justified by the merit of the attraction (why 3 pages on Tower of Terror and 2 on Rock N Roller?).
There’s also filler and padding, for example much of 156, especially the discussion of the modulo function, incomplete anyway without reference to other National Science Foundation-approved random number generators…or perhaps the words after “generator” here should have been cut. Another example is most of the suggested family conversations in the “Family Matters” section, which too often sound like bad story ideas for NPR.
I suggest that Julie follow in the future the model she uses with the Epcot World Showcase pavilions–having each attraction’s material be as long as it needs to be, not longer or shorter as forced by the need to fill out full pages–and also to cover the same topics in each review.
There’s a bit of an imbalance in the number of pages spent on each park–the Animal Kingdom gets relatively too many pages, and Epcot too few. (Epcot at 37 pages has the fewest pages among the theme parks; the Animal Kingdom at 45 has the most other than the Magic Kingdom’s 61.)
The issue isn’t that the Animal Kingdom material is too long–other than the filler issues noted above, Julie Neal’s treatment of the Animal Kingdom is far and away the best I’ve ever seen in any Walt Disney World guidebook.
Her love for this park shines through, and translates into among other things uniquely helpful maps (e.g.174).
Rather, it’s that the material on Epcot is too short.
NOT FOR FIRST TIME VISITORS
This review continues here.
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