Customer Reviews

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

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

 

 

This is a companion book to the "Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World," for those who decide to venture beyond Disney's realm in central Florida. The authors do a fine job rating attractions (rides, films, displays, etc.). They use star-ratings coupled with their assessments and readers' comments, along with a healthy dose of humor--all of which will be familiar to readers of the "Walt Disney World" book. It's all-too familiar in the case of Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. In fact, it's simply a verbatim extract of the "Walt Disney World" text. Worse yet, it omits one of the best features of the Disney book: the touring plans.

If you're planning a trip to Universal Studios, and/or Islands of Adventure, stick with Sehlinger's Disney book: it contains more and better coverage. Sea World receives better coverage here. And this is the only "Unofficial Guide" coverage of the other parks.

Beyond Disney is meant to be used as a second guide when planning a trip to Orlando. They assume that you have purchased a guide for Walt Disney World 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 The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2008 (Unofficial Guides) and that material is simply dropped in here with no additions. So if you have the 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. This is the only book in the Unofficial Guide series where you'll find that material 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.

We just got back from our Orlando vacation. I had read and re-read this book before going, even made notes. It was the best preparation I did. We were ready for everything and I we did everything we wanted to do by taking the author's advice. I recommend buying it before visiting the Orlando area.

A real handy guide to help plan not only your day, but what rides to hit and what rides to miss depending on what you are looking for. Very accurate and easy to work with

It was a very good book to have when we went to Florida. SeaWorld it told us alot about it. We did SeaWorld 2 times. Universal we did not do when we were there. Universal we really did not have time for it. If you like to go on rides then Universal is for you.