Review: PassPorter’s Walt Disney World 2012, Continued
By Dave Shute
This is the second page of this review of PassPorter’s 2012. For the first page, click here.
PASSPORTER’S CHECKLISTS, WORKSHEETS, AND PASSPOCKETS
PassPorter’s is a sound guidebook for any family looking for anything other than the highest level of detail.
It also has some distinct tools no other guidebook shares.
Planning a Disney World vacation–unless you simply follow this site’s instructions!–is an iterative process of making notes, assessing alternatives, setting preliminary decisions, testing them–affordable? available?–and making revisions.
This planning results in final decisions, and in schedules, notes and reservation numbers associated with them.
The vacation itself then generates additional material–tickets, souvenirs, and above all memories.
PassPorter has a unique system for helping with all of this, from possibilities to memories.
Each major section of the book concludes with worksheets and other tools for making notes, assembling alternatives, and recording decisions–see the image at the top of the page for an example.
Moreover, bound in at the back are a series of “PassPockets,” onto which you can make further notes, and into which you can insert media ranging from printed confirmations to mementos of your trip.
Pre-printed heading in the PassPockets include “Our Journey,” “Our Rooms,” “Our First Day,” “Our Second Day,” (etc.), and “Our Magic Memories.” Moreover, the team at PassPorter also provides a blank PassPocket that you can customize, and additional stick-on labels like “Our Cruise,” “My Birthday,” etc that you can use to personalize the pockets.
The result is that, more so than any other guidebook, you can easily organize your notes, your decisions, your paperwork, and your memories of your Walt Disney World trip.
OTHER STRONG FEATURES OF PASSPORTER’S
Without having any particularly good examples of it to share, I really like the tone of PassPorter’s Walt Disney World 2012. It’s professional yet friendly, and the choice of font (which is also used on the Passporters.com web site) reinforces this friendliness.
SOME ISSUES WITH THE 2012 EDITION
Here and there are some minor issues of fact or judgment. (Note that updates/corrections will be available here.)
Disney does not offer resort hotels for every “taste and budget.” (27) While it has less expensive options, inexpensive options are still missing—unless one is thinking of group camping at Fort Wilderness for $10 per person per night.
There’s some minor problems with the chart on p29. The single asterisk mark is used to refer to two different points, and the Roaring Fork food court at the Wilderness Lodge has been obliterated, as has the more minor offering at the Beach Club Marketplace.
Weekend room rate bumps can be much higher than $30/night (31)—there’s several deluxe resorts where they hit $50 at certain times of the year.
Only some of the two-bedroom DVC villas “allow up to nine’; the language on p33 may imply to some readers that they all do.
The Animal Kingdom has not been having evening Extra Magic Hours on Wednesdays for long enough now that the graphic on p34 could have been changed to show morning EMH there on Wednesdays.
Not sure how the three All-Star Resorts are “connected.” (37)
The treatment of the DVC options in deluxe resorts with paired DVC resorts is inconsistent. For example, the compare the villa types priced on p44 vs. those priced on p60.
The moderates that now have queens are correctly indicated as having queens in the text, but the floor plan illustrations on pp61 and 86 still show double beds.
I’m pretty sure the studios at Old Key West still sleep 4, not 5 (73). On the same page, the two-bedrooms sleep 9, not 8.
The first entry in “Making the Most of the Magic Kingdom” (134) reads “Take a spin around the park when you first arrive by boarding the train at the Walt Disney World Railroad station in Main Street, USA. The 20-minute journey is a great introduction to the park.”
Well, I bow to none in my love of railroads in general, and Disney railroads in particular, but this is wrong in a lot of ways.
- First, the railroad is not a good introduction to the park, as you will see very little of the Magic Kingdom from it—a little Frontierland, a little Fantasyland when the expansion opens, a little Tomorrowland, and that’s it.
- Second, if you arrive before rope drop—as you should—there’s nothing more valuable than the first hour in the park for riding the most popular rides before the crowds build. Spending 20 minutes “when you first arrive” on a B-Ticket is not the right way to deploy this time.
(288) Nights of Joy is at the Magic Kingdom, not Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
ALL IN, A RECOMMENDED GUIDEBOOK
These are mostly minor issues. Overall, PassPorter’s Walt Disney World 2012 is a wonderful choice for any family seeking a guidebook to Walt Disney World. It has a nice balance among topics, a friendly and accessible tone, and some unique planning tools.
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