Birnbaum's Walt Disney World: Expert Advice from the Inside Source

Having just returned from WDW last night I am writing this with a well-beaten copy of the Birnbaum's guide in front of me. It is worth every dime I paid and I highly recommend getting one prior to going to WDW. It is "Pro-Disney" as the official guide but we never found anything untrue or over optimistic. In fact, in many cases, they "undersold" the advice. We quickly found ourselves leafing through to the "Hot Tips" since they really are good ideas. The guide helped us plan prior to leaving and adjust our plan once we got there. The ability to read ride descriptions before walking across the park and finding something was inappropriate for younger/shorter/easily scared children was worth the cost alone. We looked at some of the "unofficial" guides and have no regrets about the Birnbaum's. We are already planning our next trip and putting more wear on our guide doing it. Some things we will do for next time:Stagger early rise and late to bed days. If you stayed up for fireworks don't try to be the first family at Epcot the next day!Whatever the price difference for staying on Disney property is, I will gladly pay. My time is worth way more than $20-$50 an hour when I am on vacation and the traffic on I-4 the day we left convinced me that I didn't want to drive in from an off Disney location ever!! That $50 a day extra for a room on Disney might be money well spent.Best advice we got from one of the unofficial guides was to drive to the parks other than the Magic Kingdom from Ft Wilderness where we were staying. Parking is free for WDW resort guests and it saved us the bus to TTC to park to TTC to cabin cycle. Since we were already on Disney property, it never took us more than 20 minutes from our cabin to the parking lot.Get your Fast Passes early and often. Since you can get a new Fast Pass as soon as your window opens on your last one, you can spend most of your wait on a ride if you plan carefully. Having the guide let me know the length of a ride or show and I could adjust Fast Pass pickup.The guide is great but the free Disney supplements are essential for the most up to date information about park openings and show times. Finally, get the propaganda video tape from Disney (free). We watched the tape, checked the guide and then went to the park and it was great. Put them together and you will have a much more enjoyable time at Disney.

This is THE BOOK to bring with you to Orlando, and WDW! We travel there each summer to stay for 35 days, on property! We always buy the Birnbaum's guide, just to see all the new happenings and insider info! It has spectacular colored pictures of the attractions, and the resorts. It lists current specials and prices, just about everything you'll need to know is inside this book. In the back of the book, is a page of valuable coupons! Using the coupons-makes the book FREE! It's also a wonderful souvenier to keep and look back upon...after your wonderful journey into the "magic" of the WORLD that is DISNEY! If you are even "contemplating" a trip to the most popular vacation spot in the Country...you'll be wise to buy this book. P.S. "Have a Magical Day"

I first used Birnbaum's guide to WDW for a 1994 vacation and have purchased the book every year since then just to keep up with any changes made to the resort. For the average person wishing to haul their family across the country to the world's favorite tourist spot, Walt Disney World is extremely overwhelming and I've spoken with many who didn't really enjoy their experience. Each of those situations could have been avoided with the use of this book. It includes every piece of information one could possibly need to know for a few days in Orlando and then some - anything to the general weather conditions, park crowds, Disney resort hotels as well as other hotels, and even blow-by-blow synopses of each show, ride, and attraction that Disney has to offer. After my visit in 1994 and on subsequent visits, I have found most of the information laid out in the Guide to be accurate and very helpful. If it sounds like a glowing review of Disney World or just a paid advertisement, perhaps it's because WDW really is a "practically perfect" place to take a family vacation!

I have been using the Birnbaum WDW books since 1995 and have always found them to be filled with accurate information. I plan our family trips totally around this book and it has proved to save us a lot of hassle and frustrations. From what the weather will be like, to what to expect in a ride, to where to find the Characters and where to share a meal with them, this book has it all. It offers a whole variety of information. I cannot stress enough how awesome this book really is. I am waiting on the Birnbaum 2000 as we have a vacation planned for Christmas '99. Disney World is a family favorite and I am so glad I have the Birnbaum Book to help me plan the most magical vacation possible every time we go! Remember too, it is the "Official Guide." There are other books out there but NONE compare to this one. If you are planning a WDW trip, don't make the mistake of doing it without Steve Birnbaum!

Your initial reaction to Birnbaum's Guide to Walt Disney World may be, "This is more than I ever wanted to know about the place!" While the book is dense (in the sense of being information-filled, not in the sense of being a Herman Melville novel), it is also an easy-to-use and comprehensive guide to the Walt Disney World experience. Do not attempt to absorb all the information in one sitting, the night before you leave for Florida. Rather, you will find it most useful as a planning guide which you consult well in advance of your trip. In fact, if you are unsure about the bare bones (when to go and how to get there), this book should become your immediate companion. Among its many useful tips is the name and location of a motel which is five minutes from the Main Gate, with rooms at $23-47 per night. Birnbaum's guide is organized in color-coded sections, starting with "Getting Ready to Go" and "Transportation and Accommodations." There is a thorough guide to each of the three parks, and a brief preview of the new Animal Kingdom. Birnbaum then devotes a chapter to "Everything Else in the World," with information on the Disney Institute, Downtown Disney (an ever-growing part of the WDW experience), and the various water parks which add to the family-fun experience. The "Sports" chapter lists opportunities for tennis, golf, fishing, horseback riding, etc. The final section ("Good Meals, Great Times") is an extremely useful list of what might otherwise be a bewildering quantity of eating establishments. Restaurants are organized alphabetically by area, with price guidelines to help you avoid any nasty surprises. While any book of this nature will have some inaccuracies (price changes, time changes, etc.), we found them to be minimal. In fact, we were surprised by the frequency with which we referred to this guide during the duration of our stay. The book does have a few disadvantages. Its size makes it portable only in the sense that it fits in a capacious purse or back-pack (fortunately, I have the former). And its dismissal of vacation packages in a four-paragraph aside is neglecting an area which we felt was very important. Birnbaum's logic (that there are too many packages to allow for thorough coverage)is a bit specious - there are nearly two hundred eating and drinking locations in Walt Disney World, but the guidebook gave at least minimal information on all of them. In our experience (four vacations at WDW to date), the right package can make the difference between an affordable vacation and a credit card nightmare. Also, more emphasis should have been placed on the eating plans available as part of packages, since the food is one of the most expensive parts of a Walt Disney World vacation. In spite of these caveats, I would certainly recommend that you buy this guidebook. If you are a devoted "book person," it goes against your grain to highlight passages or dog-ear pages - but these activities are mandatory to getting the maxim