Customer Reviews

Fodor's Around New York City with Kids (Around the City with Kids)

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4 star:		(1)
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Thanks to this book, we were able to figure out just the right bites of the big apple to take. We also were prepared for when we'd have to wait in line, and we saved big bucks through the author's tips on Broadway on a Budget. We used the author's fun facts to impress our kids. For example, if you were to look at every piece of art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it would take more than four years to see it all! We used several guidebooks. This one was by far the best!

"New York City with Kids" is a great travel reference guide but it certainly is not comprehensive. The guide mainly includes those well-known tourist attractions that New York City is known for but anyone who has been to NYC knows that this fabulous city has more to offer than just the museums, parks and tourist attractions. My kids, for instance, had as much of a blast just going through FAO Schwartz, and the flagship stores for Toys R Us (the ferris wheel, 2-story Barbie doll house and huge dinosaur are tourist attractions by themselves), the American Girl Shop and Build-a-Bear Workshop during our visit. Or grabbing lunch and yummy dessert at "Serendipity." Since this tour guide deals mainly with actual tourist attractions (e.g. Statue of Liberty, Museum of Natural History, the Intrepid) references to these also noteworthy (at least in my kids' eyes) "sights" are not included.

In short, I think this book could benefit from going beyond the tried and tested tourist attractions and also explore some of the shops, cool restaurants, pastry / candy or dessert parlors, etc. that make New York City such an amazing place to visit for kids and their parents. If you're traveling to NYC with kids, get this book but also pick up another more comprehensive book on New York (like the Frommers, Fodors or Michelin guides, which usually have a chapter or sections devoted to kids) to really experience the best of what New York City has to offer.

68 Fun Things to Do -- from Jones Beach to NBC Studio Tour, with the usual destinations as well. New York is so extraordinary that a lot of guidebooks try to be all too thorough. But really a short and sweet book can do the trick. If your young visitors are age seven and up, give them Melanie in Manhattan too, a novel about a New York girl. (Warning Melanie and her brother Matt the Brat have a favorite museum game called Point Out the Naked People. Their art teacher mom has no idea....)
CAROL WESTON melaniemartin.com