Category — The easy Guide

The easy Guide to Your First Walt Disney World Visit co-authors Josh and I, plus the contributor of the “Jim’s Gem’s” vignettes in The easy Guide, Jim Korkis, will meet our fans–if there are any–and sign our books next Monday.

We’ll be in Epcot outside the Liberty Inn in the American Pavilion Monday, April 20 from 7p until the line for Soarin goes down a bit.

We’ll sign pretty much anything but especially one of our (or Jim’s) books.

We’ll also have some giveaways, especially for those who are around right at 7p.  Some books, likely, and for sure some other loot donated by my friends at Destinations in Florida!!

(Nothing for sale though–if you want to get the book, you are stuck with Amazon. Amazon will deliver to your hotel, in appropriate plain brown packaging so no one else will know…)

That’s me and Josh on the left from December, and on the right Jim as Merlin at the Magic Kingdom from a while ago.

Meet us at Epcot, just outside and to the left of the Liberty Inn in the American Pavilion Monday, April 20 from 7p until the line for Soarin goes down a bit!

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More details will come later, but so that you can hold the date and start yearning in your diary, here’s the scoop:

The easy Guide to Your First Walt Disney World Visit co-authors Josh and me, plus the contributor of the “Jim’s Gem’s” vignettes in The easy Guide, Jim Korkis, will meet our fans–if there are any–and sign our books in April.

That’s me and Josh on the left from December, and on the right Jim as Merlin at the Magic Kingdom from a while ago.

We’ll be in Epcot outside the Liberty Inn in the American Pavilion Monday, April 20 from 7p until the line for Soarin goes down a bit.

Follow yourfirstvisit.net on Facebook or Google+ or Twitter or Pinterest!!

On March 10, an updated version of The easy Guide to Your First Walt Disney World Visit became available for sale.

Soon, we hope, older Kindle versions will be updated to the March 10 version via Amazon’s “Automatic Update” program.

SO WHAT’S THE EASY GUIDE?

For those new to The easy Guide to Your First Walt Disney World Visit, here’s the recap:

Co-authored by me and Josh Humphrey of easyWDW.com (that’s us below), the 2014 edition of came out a little more than 9 months ago, and the 2015 edition came out about 4 months ago.

Between them, the two editions have had almost 140 reviews on Amazon—of which 131 (95%) gave five-star ratings. With an average rating of 4.91, The easy Guide is the best-reviewed Disney World guidebook in history.

The easy Guide is short, has a big type size, and emphasizes very specific advice for those on their first—especially those on perhaps their only—visit to Walt Disney World.

But with its expert advice on how to use and optimize FastPass+, when to go, where to stay, what to do, and where to eat, it’s also tremendously helpful to returning visitors.

Anna and Elsa like it too…

The easy Guide is available in both paperback and Kindle editions.

Those who buy the paperback get the Kindle edition for free through Amazon’s “Matchbook” program.

This is important, as when we update the book, if Amazon decides the update is significant enough, it will also update the Kindle versions already downloaded. As a result, The easy Guide is the most up-to-date Disney World guidebook available.

KEY CHANGES TO THE 2015 EASY GUIDE

Our publisher Theme Park Press just updated The easy Guide with more than 20 pages of changes and updates from me and Josh.

Anyone who buys it for the first time will get the updated version—the most up-to-date Disney World guidebook available; those with an older Kindle version of the 2015 edition will have it updated if and when Amazon decides to issue an “Automatic Update.”

Here’s examples of some of what’s different:

• Multiple changes, especially in Chapter 4 (When to Go), to reflect recently released details for the 2015 offerings and dates of Star War Weekends, Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, the Epcot International Food and Wine Festival, and Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party.
• Multiple changes to Chapter 5 (Where to Stay) including a better sense of when the Polynesian Village main pool might be re-opening and more details on its new DVC offerings, and updates on five-person spaces at Caribbean Beach and in the Studios at the Beach Club and BoardWalk Villas.
• Multiple updates to Chapter 6 (How to Spend Your Time), including new FastPass+ locations for Wishes and the parades in the Magic Kingdom (and resulting changes in FastPass+ priorities), changes in FastPass+ kiosk locations, and other updates.
• Multiple changes to Chapter 7 (Where to Eat), including the shift of Be Our Guest quick-service lunch from FastPass+ to advance reservations (a first for a quick/counter service offering), new pricing at Victoria and Albert’s, and the opening of Trattoria al Forno (which Josh and I have each reviewed—Josh here, me here).
• Multiple changes, especially in Chapter 8 (Which Tickets to Buy and What to Budget), to reflect the new Disney World ticket prices released in late February 2015.

Curious about The easy Guide? Learn more here, or buy it on Amazon here.

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Every other Wednesday from 8p-9p Eastern a Facebook group called “Disness Meetings” has a live Disney World Q&A on Facebook.

Think of it as like a radio call in show, except typing, and everyone asks their Disney World questions (and gets them answered) at the same time.

I joined the Facebook group (you have to join the group to take part) a couple of weeks ago and attended the February 18 meeting–intending just to lurk, but I answered a bunch of questions anyway. It was a lot of fun!!

I’ve been asked to be the “special guest” at the next one, this Wednesday March 4.  So there’s that…you can probably block me….

Much more important, there’s prizes given away over the course of the meeting, and the grand prize Wednesday night will be a free signed copy of The easy Guide!!

The easy Guide to Your First Walt Disney World Visit is the best-reviewed Disney World guidebook in Amazon history, the easiest-to-use Disney World guidebook, and the first Disney World guidebook written from scratch for FastPass+!

Plus Elsa likes it…

So join the “Disness Meetings” Facebook group, and come along and visit Wednesday March 4 from 8-9p!!

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The latest edition of WDW Magazine, which focuses on guidebooks for Walt Disney World, is now out!

The magazine is available on iTunes, for Android, and on the web.

(You can also sample a free issue here.)

The edition covers many guidebooks (and a bunch of other fun topics too).

As you can tell by the cover, it particularly focuses on the Official (Birnbaum) and Unofficial (Sehlinger and Testa) Guides, but it also covers a number of other great guidebooks…

…including The easy Guide!

You’ll find a couple of items from me in this month’s issue.

• One is a discussion of what it was like to write a guidebook.
• Another is advice for first timers on which guidebooks and websites to focus on.

Want to know what I recommend?  Then check out this months’ issue of WDW Magazine!

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THE BEST OF DISNEY WORLD GUIDEBOOKS FOR 2015

There’s all kinds of great material about Disney World on the web (especially on this site 🙂 ) but many will prefer to supplement, or even replace, websites with guidebooks about Walt Disney World.

Affordable luxuries, guidebooks let you circle key concepts, fold over pages to insure you return to them, make notes on the inside covers. Kindle versions let you search them incredibly efficiently. Some guidebooks (like mine!) even are backed by a website and give you the Kindle version for free if you buy the paperback, so that you have the best of both worlds!!

Moreover, any great guidebook will almost assuredly be better organized, better edited, and shorter than an equally good website, just given the nature of the two publishing environments.

The core tests of guidebooks are the quality of their material on when to go, where to stay, and how to manage your days.

• When you go drives everything from waits to prices to weather, and is the most important issue.
• Where you stay is the biggest variable in your budgeting, as hotel rooms are available for from less than $100 to four figures, and is traditionally the weakest part of guidebooks, as it is so expensive and time consuming to keep up.
• How to spend your days is partly a question of picking the right parks on the right days, and partly a question of having great plans for that day–which now also means the optimal use of FastPass+

There’s really only five guidebooks worth considering, of which I recommend three*:

RECOMMENDED WALT DISNEY WORLD GUIDEBOOKS

Dave Shute and Josh Humphrey’s The easy Guide to Your First Walt Disney World Visit 2015.  

Our book is the shortest, most up-to-date, and most reliable guidebook out there.  (It’s also the best-reviewed Disney World guidebook series on Amazon in history.) Combining my unmatched experience with the resorts with Josh’s world-beating expertise on how to manage your days, it’s also the first guidebook to be written from scratch for FastPass+.

Weaknesses include that it only covers Walt Disney World and has no color pictures (there’s thousands on our sites, of course).

For more on The easy Guide, see this.

Bob Sehlinger and Len Testa’s The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2015.

The Unofficial Guide is the most comprehensive guidebook for an Orlando visit available, with material on not just Disney World but also many other Orlando hotels and attractions.

Weaknesses include enormous length, tiny type, and no color pictures. Its Disney resort material gets better every year, but there’s still more errors/outdated info than I’d like to see.

Julie and Mike Neal’s The Complete Walt Disney World 2015.

The greatest virtue of the Complete Guide is its wonderful color pictures. Midway between The easy Guide and The Unofficial Guide in length, and with a distinctive voice and perspective, it’s an especially good second choice for people buying one or the other of these books.

The main weakness of the Complete Guide is some inaccurate/out of date/misleading resort info.  The type is tiny, and some of the perspective expressed verges on the idiosyncratic. There’s no website backing it up.

WHICH DISNEY WORLD GUIDEBOOK FOR YOU?

The easy Guide is the best choice for first-timers, and for returning visitors whose main concern is picking a new hotel or using FastPass+…and for those with eyestrain.

The Unofficial Guide is the best choice for those who want to stay outside of Disney World, or visit parks, shopping or restaurants outside of Disney World… and for those who need an upper body workout.

The Complete Guide is the best choice for those who, unwilling to look at photos on the web, must have color photos in their guidebook…and for those off the grid.

*The other two are Birnbaum’s, no better than the Complete Guide, and Passporter’s, whose 2015 edition is not yet out, but whose 2014 edition had too much out-of-date or inaccurate stuff for me to recommend it.)

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