Customer Reviews

Frommer's National Parks with Kids (Park Guides)

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

 

 

This book gets an A+ with one caveat.

First, for the parks included in the book, the reviews are comprehensive and detailed. After trying to plan my southwest vacation using just the web (and getting that "glazed over" look in my eyes), I found this book helped me immensely. It's become my "travel bible". He really does focus on the family part of "family vacations".

He presents a good arguement for the benefits of taking children on "natural" vacations, no matter what the age.

The one caveat...he only reviews 16 national parks! (There are over 300 in the National Park System). Granted, reviewing smaller parks that don't qualify for "family vacation" status wouldn't make sense, nevertheless I was disappointed to see that none of the South Dakota parks such as Mount Rushmore and the Badlands nor Glacier in Montana, Shenandoah National Park in VA, or any of the Alaska Parks were included. Obviously, this book is so good that it has left me wanting for more.

Before purchasing this book I would make sure that the park you want to visit is included.

This book was great on my family trip to the Grand Canyon. Not only did I learn a lot of history, but it was also very practical. It included things like safety, restrooms, facilities, when to go, and how much time to allot. It also offered reviews of camping accommodations and gave ideas on activities ranging from biking, nature walks, horseback riding, swimming, and tide pooling. My kids enjoyed everything I planned.

I found the information in this book much more useful than any other travel guide I have purchased. The lodging information for Yellowstone, for example, describes the state of specific room types at each location!

This book's one failing is its skimpy selection of parks.

There are probably a jillion books about National Parks, but this one has the information a family with growing kids needs to make the most of visits to them. With this book as a guide, we have already visited over a dozen East Coast parks, and it has been of great assistance, especially in helping maximize the experience for the parks we only had a limited time to enjoy. We continue to use it to help map out our trips, we will be hitting 3-4 more parks this summer.

I really like this book. While it is supposedly geared for kids, I think it's very useful for finding interesting things to do at National Parks for everybody. I don't know why I didn't know this - but when I looked at the table of contents I realized just how few National Parks there are in the East. One side effect of reading this book is that it's made me realize what a precious resource these National Parks are to all of us, and it makes me wonder why there aren't more of them.

National Parks with Kids was invaluable for my family. I took my kids (7 and 4) on a cross country trip and visited 10 of the parks in the book. I found the descriptions for the campsites and food were perfectly accurate. Kurt Repanshek's writing fit my style and expectations for what I wanted my cross country trip to be. It was to avoid chains, find age appropriate activities and see a lot of beautiful stuff - not just the obvious attractions - but to get off the beaten track and see things that not everyone takes the time to see. This book couldn't have helped any more. Looking forward to hitting a few more parks this summer!

Helpful in making comfortable but affordable reservations. Would be most helpful for those with strollers, helpful for us to get started. Glad I purchased it.

I'm currently reading this book to get information on an upcoming trip, and I'm finding it full of well written historical and geological information on the various national parks. However, the author is very anti-commercialism, and makes snarky comments throughout the book relating to that. I find this odd in a family oriented book, since balanced vacations with children often involve nature experiences, as well as enjoyable times at a commercial venue, such as a water park or mini-golf. He also tends to be merely critical towards crowds in the natural areas, rather than give you tips on how to avoid them, or ways to enjoy the area in spite of the crowds. Overall, I recommend the book based on the quality of the background information on the parks, but for practical tips on planning my trip, I plan to look elsewhere.

The writing in this book is friendly and informative; it's helpful in coming up with ideas if you are not a well-experience National Park visitor, especially with kids. Lots of good suggestions for planning, packing, where to go, off-track things to see, and where to stay. My only complaint is I would have liked to see more parks listed--sometimes you can't get enough, and this book leaves the reader chomping at the bit for more information on other parks not mentioned. But the ones selected are excellent and certainly whet the appetite for a doable vacation with the entire family.

The good thing about this book is the depth in which Wohlforth goes in describing the parks. I especially appreciate his rating of the campgrounds based on his personal preferences. However, like some other reviewers, I was disappointed in the limited number of parks reviewed.