Customer Reviews

Beyond Disney: The Unofficial Guide to Universal SeaWorld & the Best of Central Florida (Unofficial Guides)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Beyond Disney is meant to be used as a second guide when planning a trip to Orlando. They assume that you have purchased The Unofficial Guide Walt Disney World 2010 (Unofficial Guides) or something similar and are using this one for the other theme parks in the area. This is a good idea but there are some problems with it. First, the Universal Parks are already covered in the Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World and that material is largely dropped in here with no significant changes. So if you have the Unofficial WDW book, then you don't need to see that again here.

The main value in this book lies in the coverage of Sea World and Busch Gardens. Both are major theme parks and get full coverage here. I found the Busch Gardens information especially helpful. Busch has so many attractions that you can't possibly enjoy every one in a single day and this guide will help you focus on what you might enjoy the most. This is the only book in the Unofficial Guide series where you'll find material on Busch and Sea World, and many of the other publishers ignore those parks completely. If you are interested in attending either park, then I highly recommend Beyond Disney. If you plan to stick to WDW and/or the Universal Studios/Islands of Adventure area then you can safely skip this.

The Unofficial Guide to Disney is fantastic, and well known for its great "touring plans" which give detailed park information about how to attack DWD theme parks. This book is supposed to be a guide to everything else outside of Disney World (i.e., Sea World and Universal). Yet this book does not include Touring Plans for Universal, SeaWorld or Islands of Adventure. Amazingly, these Touring Plans are in the Walt Disney World book, but not here. That is, people who buy a book on how to tour Disney get Touring Plans for Universal/SeaWorld, but the folks who buy a book on Universal and SeaWorld do not - makes no sense!

This book helped us navigate the Orlando experience minus Disney. the tips in the book let us breakfast at Sea World before it "officially" opened. We saw more of the shows and the animals because of the great directions in this book. I tore the pages for Sea World right out of my copy of the book, so I could have the information with me at the park without the problem of carrying the big book.

Kudos to the author and his research!

I bought several books for planning a trip to Orlando with my Grandson and this was the best for the planning of how we'll spend our time at Universal Studios. The format is perfect for one's understanding of the park layout and deciding which activities are best for which age groups.

Bought this for vacation to get around orlando area without having to go to Disney since it was just me and my husband, was very informative, places to eat, hotels to stay etc.

this is an excelente book for people who wants more than just disney's orlando. I just miss that there is nos travelling plans for busch gardens and sea world.

I had no idea that were so many things outside of Disney to do! I bought it basically because of SeaWorld. It tells when the busiest times are for rides and lunch/dinner. It explains how long the rides and shows last and rates them per interest per age group. Also compares hotels, gives maps, and lots of websites. I'm taking this book with me on vacation!

with The Wizarding World of Harry Potter opening, I thought a touring plan might be a good idea. The guide to Beyond Disney comes from the folks at The Unofficial Guide and Touring Plans. As I've said before, I have grown weary of The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World, but was willing to give Beyond Disney a shot. On the whole-I wish I had not bought this book.It had some good stuff, some bad stuff that wasn't their fault, and some meh stuff that is their problem.

Good things about this book. Firstly, it did have Touring Plans. They are not great, as the book was written in 2009, but they do have a few suggestions. What bugged me was that they redirected you to Touring [...] for a Disney Hollywood Studios plan, but they did not have something similar for Universal Orlando. If they had said that once The Wizarding World of Harry Potter opens, an updated touring plan would be available on their site, I might have had a different reaction to the book. However, the touring plan for Universal Studios does include guidelines for shows that only start later on in the day-I appreciated this, as on my first trip I was having a hard time fitting in all the shows I wanted to see. The book did introduce me to a new food option, Orlando Take Out Express. The deliver to non-Disney hotels from many local restaurants. Their minimum is a $15 order, plus a $4.99 delivery fee. If I'm going to be carless at Universal again on August, I may check them out-Indian or Chinese food sounds tastier than many Universal options.

The Universal Orlando section is pretty slim, but I knew when I bought it it was not a guidebook dedicated to Universal alone.

They list a number of travel deal and hotel related websites, but they do not list Hotwire as a suggested site (although they did mention Priceline). I personally think this was a large error, as Hotwire is very user-friendly to use even if you're not a huge deal researcher, and it's fairly easy to get a decent hotel, such as the Hyatt MCO, for a decent amount. As I said above, it bugged me that for their "best days" to visit included a Touring Plans link for DHS, but not for Universal Orlando. I'm sure in 2009 Saturday was a good day to see Islands of Adventure, but I don't think it will be once the Wizarding World of Harry Potter opens.

It was not enough on Sea World and that was what I was looking for so this was not helpful

J

A very valuable resource. Going in August. We thought we lost the book and were going to buy another copy, but luckily it turned up.