Category — q. Reviews

This is the second page of this review.  For the first page, click here.

CONTINUED: THE 2012 EDITION OF THE UNOFFICIAL GUIDE TO WALT DISNEY WORLD: REVIEW

Known errors and things that just change because Disney changes them are tracked here (most of the below have been incorporated into this errata list since I first published this page).

However, there’s still a few more errors and typos in The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2012 than I believe reasonable (and frequent readers of this site understand that I am an expert on creating an unreasonable number of errors and typos).

POSSIBLE TYPOS AND ERRORS IN THE 2012 UNOFFICIAL GUIDE

My issues here include the following:

Typos

• Page 138, discussing the Polynesian, has two slightly different versions of the same paragraph (“Bathrooms are…”). The first was meant to replace the second, as the second’s reference to a moment in time (‘during refurbishment) is no longer needed.
• Page 146, on Bay Lake Tower, skips directly from studios (“Studios sleep…”) to two-bedroom villas. The third sentence of the two-bedroom para refers to one-bedrooms (“As with the one-bedrooms…) which suggests a para on one-bedrooms was inadvertently dropped.
• In the discussion of Coronado Springs Club Rooms on p. 183, the words “more than regular rooms” were dropped between “night” and “depending” in the phrase “These rooms cost around $100-$130 per night depending on the season.”

Minor Errors

• There are several errors on pp. 116-117 in the layouts of the DVC resorts. The Wilderness Lodge does not have Grand Villas (117) and the occupancy limits of the room types noted at the bottom of 116 are out of date given the multiple locations with occupancies of 5 in one-bedrooms and 9 in two bedrooms.
• The Art of Animation Family Suite floor plan on 118 is wrong. The correct floor plan can only be guessed at, but Disney had given enough details well before the publication date to know that Art of Animation would not be a copy of All-Star Music’s Family Suites. For the same reason, the room description of Art of Animation on 193 is wrong.
• On 147, while Grand Villas at Bay Lake Tower do have sleeping spots for 14 (as do many Grand Villas), the maximum occupancy is 12, as it is for other Grand Villas (and as 116 correctly notes.)
• On 169, the occupancy of 9 at the Treehouses is no longer “one more than ….at the other DVC resorts,” since Kidani Village, Jambo House, Bay Lake Tower, and Old Key West two-bedroom villas now sleep nine as well.
• On 170, the beds description of Old Key West one and two-bedroom villas is out of date, as it leaves out the convertible chair.
• Page 180 incorrectly claims that Kidani one and two bedroom units can hold “one more each than corresponding units at Jambo House,” since the Jambo Villas (other than the “value” villas) also have the sleeper chair.
• Re page 392—it’s been a while since buses at Old Key West and Saratoga Springs “often run every 45-50 minutes.” (388-389 get this right.)
• On 518, the “average wait in line per 100 people ahead of you” on It’s a Small World is a good bit less than 11 minutes.
• In the discussion of the Wishes Fireworks Cruise on 534, either the 180 days should be 90 or the 95 days should be 185, or I am very confused.
• In the discussion of Epcot operating hours on 547, Future World no longer “usually closes before World Showcase.”
• Hollywood Studios either takes 10 hours to tour (616) or three quarters of a day (619), but not both.

Perhaps errors, or perhaps just points of different judgment

• The Magic Kingdom hardly ever closes at 6p anymore (31)—this happened maybe 3 or 4 times last year.
• As the TouringPlans.com crowd calendar indicates, mid-August is not as good as it used to be (33) as Florida kids’ school return dates have shifted to later in the month over the past few years, and they thus no longer “go back to school pretty early.” This year, eleven of the state’s largest 14 districts returned during the last full week of August, and the three that didn’t were among the smallest of these districts. This last full week of August was the most common week for kids to go back to school in 2011 throughout the US…and thus not “early.”
• On 103, while you can indeed save “$15 to $50 per night or more …by visiting during the slower times of year,” that “more” is bearing too much of a burden, as the spreads between high and low nightly costs ranges from more than $80 a night at the values and moderates to more than $200 at the deluxes (plus tax!).
• Though an Animal Kingdom Area Resort, Coronado Springs, rather than being “not centrally located,” is actually very centrally located (112).  It’s the most centrally located of all the Walt Disney World resorts. A little work with a map, a calculator, attendance figures, and a ruler will tell you that the attendance-weighted center-point of Walt Disney World is just to the north of Coronado Springs. (Here again I geek.)
• On 198, it seems worth mentioning that the Campsites have a capacity of ten.
• On 368, the material on toll roads seems important enough to me to deserve more emphasis, and perhaps be brought to the beginning of this whole section on “Getting There”–that is, to page 363.

But these are easily fixable nits, and The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2012 remains a masterwork of its genre, and is the single most comprehensive, detailed, and consistently useful guidebook to Walt Disney World available.

Disclosure: As noted here, since summer 2011 I’ve had a business relationship with TouringPlans.com.

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THE 2012 EDITION OF THE UNOFFICIAL GUIDE TO WALT DISNEY WORLD

The crew behind many landmark resources for Walt Disney World–including TouringPlans.com, Lines, the famous crowd calendar, and The Color Companion to Walt Disney World–released in late August the 2012 edition of The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World.

Details follow below, but here’s the short version: first time family visitors tempted to buy a guidebook should choose The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2012.

(Disclosure: As noted here, since summer 2011 I’ve had a business relationship with TouringPlans.com.)
[Read more →]

(This material first appeared as a guest post on
MilitaryDisneyTips.com‘s Patriotic Disney series. Thanks, Steve, for letting me republish it here.)

This is the second page of this review; for the first page, click here.

FRONTIERLAND BEGINS IN LIBERTY SQUARE

The structures of Frontierland–rides, shops, and dining establishments–are all on your left as you walk from Liberty Square to Big Thunder Mountain.

The water–representing the great rivers that tied together the frontier, and especially the Mississippi and the Ohio–are on your right.

If you focus on the left, Frontierland begins at the Diamond Horseshoe Saloon, as the boundary between east and west.

However, if you focus on the right…Frontierland begins in Liberty Square. [Read more →]

(This post first appeared as a guest post on
MilitaryDisneyTips.com‘s Patriotic Disney series.  Thanks, Steve, for letting me republish it here in celebration of Walt Disney World’s 40th Anniversary.)

FRONTIERLAND: A MUSEUM OF DREAMS

First, consider birth and death years of three great Americans:

• 1734-1820: Daniel Boone
• 1835-1910: Samuel Langhorne Clemens (that is, Mark Twain)
• 1901-1966: Walt Disney

With just one 15-year gap, these three lives stretch from before the French and Indian wars to the Space Age.

Daniel Boone and Mark Twain both lived and mythologized the American frontier experience; Walt Disney then re-mythologized the frontier into Frontierland, combining the myths of his boyhood with the pioneer and western imagery created by Hollywood.

As Margaret J. King noted, the result is a kind of “museum” for “the most nostalgic images and dreams of a nation.”

The introduction to Frontierland in The Imagineering Field Guide to Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World is worth quoting in detail:

“Frontierland celebrates the American pioneer spirit. It is the perfect embodiment of the wonder of the unknown and the quest to discover it…Frontierland is often referred to as the most distinctively American statement in all the Magic Kingdom. It lives as a tribute to the pioneer spirit that drove Americans westward…a subject that was as near and dear to Walt as Main Street, U.S.A. and equally connected to the fondest memories from his childhood.” (51-52)

THE GENESIS OF FRONTIERLAND

[Read more →]

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This is the fourth page of this review.  See the links above for prior pages.

MORE ON THE JAMBO HOUSE VILLAS AT DISNEY’S ANIMAL KINGDOM LODGE

Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge is described on Walt Disney World’s website as an

“African lodge-style resort amidst a 43-acre wildlife preserve. The Resort offers authentic African-inspired architecture and the kraal African-village landscape design—a semi-circle design popular in Africa which offers expansive views of the surrounding savanna and its many animal inhabitants. Thatched ceilings, large beams, hand-carved golden-tone furnishings, real African artifacts and a vast mud fireplace in the main lobby surround you in the inimitable spirit of Africa.”

“Just outside the main lobby, an elevated rock platform—Arusha Rock—offers up-close glimpses of the animals and a panoramic view of the sprawling grounds. In addition to animals, thousands of indigenous African shrubs and grasses—including the most recognized canopy tree of Africa, the copperpod—paint a picture reminiscent of the unspoiled African grasslands.”

[Read more →]

This is the third page of this review. For the first page of this material, click here.

GRAND VILLAS AT JAMBO HOUSE

Grand Villas at Jambo House sleep 12.

They have three bedrooms (one with a king, and two with two queens) plus a sleeper sofa.

They also have a kitchen, dining room, living room, game room (with a pool table, not the card tables indicated in the floor plan), 3 large balconies, and 4 baths.

Note from the floor plan that two baths are private to bedrooms (the king bedroom, and one of the queen bedrooms) while two others are available to all.

Note also the two entry doors–one to the living room, and one to the queen bedroom area.

All Grand Villas are about twice the size of a Two-Bedroom Villa, while having only one more bedroom.

This makes them in effect 6 bays–a bay being about the size of a Studio.

So a way to think about the livability and design problem of a Grand Villa is that it adds one bedroom but three bays to the size of a Two-Bedroom. So what to do with the other two bays?

One part of the answer is consistent across all Grand Villas–at least one of the two extra bays is used to double the size of the shared kitchen/dining/living space compared to that of a Two-Bedroom Villa.

At first blush, this seems enough, as it doubles this space while adding only 50 percent more capacity.

But as noted on the prior page, the shared space in the Two Bedrooms is too small for their capacity. Just doubling it does not leave enough comfortable chairs in the living room space of Grand Villas for 12, nor in many cases enough room at the dining table for that number.

Most DVC Grand Villas are two-story spaces, and they resolve this issue by having the 6th bay, over the living room, combine a lofted space with a two-story ceiling over the living room.

See the Kidani Village Grand Villa floor plan to the right for an example.

In the lofted space you’ll find a second convertible couch and a TV.

This adds some needed living space, and provides the option for people to sleep in this space without disordering the living room by sleeping on its couch.

Moreover, the two-story ceiling in the living room enables two-story windows, and these add drama to the design.

Unlike at most DVC resorts, at Jambo House, Grand Villas are one story spaces. (BoardWalk and Grand Floridian Grand Villas are also one story spaces.)

Jambo House Grand Villas use the sixth bay as a game room.  This neither expands living room-style space nor provides an alternate sleeping spot.

With one exception, the layout of the one-story BoardWalk Grand Villas is much better. (See image above.)

In the BoardWalk Grand Villas the sixth bay is used to expand the living space.

However, BoardWalk Grand Villas have only three baths, and the master bath is the only one accessible to guests sleeping in the convertible sofa.

Grand Floridian Grand Villas use the 6th bay as a media room, and put the last two sleeping spots there–thus making them in effect four bedroom villas while also increasing livability.  They also have four baths.

Despite the fact that I am not keen on the use of the 6th bay as a game room, I still rank Jambo House Grand Villas as the number one option for first time family visitors.

This is partly because the Animal Kingdom Lodge itself is my highest-ranked resort with Grand Villas, and partly because for reasons noted on the first page of this review all things being equal the Jambo House Villas are to be preferred to those at Kidani Village.

And I don’t see the differences between the one and two story options as so material as to overcome Jambo House’s advantages in convenience and kid appeal.

That said, a family with a size or structure that means it will be using the sleeper sofa should carefully compare the Kidani Grand Villa floor plan with that of the Jambo House plan, and make its own call…

(To each of the capacity figures above, you can add one more kid under 3 at time of check in who sleeps in a crib.)

This review continues here

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