Mousejunkies!: Tips, Tales, and Tricks for a Disney World Fix: All You Need to Know for a Perfect Vacation (Mousejunkies: Tips, Tales, & Tricks for a Disney World) [Paperback]

Bill Burke (Author)

Book Description

Series: Mousejunkies: Tips, Tales, & Tricks for a Disney World | Publication Date: June 9, 2009

Far more than one obsessed travel writer’s take on Walt Disney World, Mousejunkies! is a collection of amusing travelogues and savvy insider’s tips gleaned from a group of seemingly rational adults who find themselves inexplicably drawn to the Magic Kingdom. It covers all the essential topics — when to go, where to say, what to do, and where to eat — as well as experiences not found in other guides. Readers learn how to indulge in an all-day beer and football orgy at the resort, how to extract the family from Fantasmic with sanity intact, where to catch a mid-afternoon catnap, and how a Disney cruise can go very, very wrong. Packed with useful information, from touring plans to restroom reviews, these funny, affectionate personal accounts paint a vivid portrait of a creatively engineered world where unexpected surprises create lasting memories.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Bill Burke is a veteran newspaper reporter and editor. He is a columnist for Parenting NH Magazine, has spent 11 years at the Boston Herald and its Web site and is currently the assistant features editor for the Boston Herald. He has traveled to Walt Disney World countless times over the years. During his 18-year journalism career, he has covered marathons and murders, and written everything from business features to comic book scripts. He has interviewed musicians and actors and worked as a travel writer. Bill has been traveling to and writing about Walt Disney World for the past ten years.

A dyed-in-the-wool New Englander who recently came to the conclusion he hates the cold weather but can’t live without good fried clams, Bill spent portions of his childhood living in different parts of the country and traveling throughout the United States. His family then returned to the northeast where he remained until discovering the joy of having his meals served by adults dressed as fictional characters. Now he flees to the warm embrace of central Florida whenever time and finances allow. Or even if they won’t.

After trying out a number of different career options ranging from installing concrete foundations and digging ditches to working as a bouncer at an oceanfront nightclub and selling sci-fi collectibles, he stumbled across journalism.

Bill plays bass guitar in a blues band, Irish music on the tenor banjo and mandolin, and bagpipes when he wants to annoy his wife of thirteen years. He has considered moving to Florida, but has been told that the region lacks good Chinese food. He lives in southern New Hampshire with his wife, Amy, and six-year-old daughter, Katie.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Travelers' Tales; Original edition (June 9, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932361669
• ISBN-13: 978-1932361667
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #408,767 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Refreshingly different, August 30, 2009

By 

S. Sharpe (New Zealand) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mousejunkies!: Tips, Tales, and Tricks for a Disney World Fix: All You Need to Know for a Perfect Vacation (Mousejunkies: Tips, Tales, & Tricks for a Disney World) (Paperback)

First I should start off by saying that I am not a "Mousejunkie". I have only been to Disney World once and it was so long ago I can barely remember it. What I am, however, is a Guidebook Junkie. I don't go anywhere on holiday without buying at least one guidebook first. I figure that this may be my one and only chance to visit each of these destinations, I may as well do them right the first time.
With this in mind, I initially regarded this book with quite a heavy dose of skepticism. It was actually a very last minute decision to take `The Unofficial Guide Walt Disney World out of my Amazon' shopping cart and replace it with this wildcard. For starters, I couldn't actually work out what Mousejunkies was supposed to be; a reference book, a journal, an advice column??? (It is in fact aspects of all three). But also I was worried that I would find the book biased and cheesy. After all it was put together by a man who visits Disney World so many times he has titled himself a `Mousejunkie'. What I was to discover was that yes, the book is somewhat cheesy (particularly the first and last chapters) and yes, it is sometimes biased. However, it also turned out to be perhaps the most refreshing and enjoyable guidebook I have ever read. Why? Because it was different.
This is not your conventional guidebook. If you know nothing at all about Walt Disney World then this is perhaps not the best place to start. Because Mousejunkies is largely full of personal stories and anecdotes, it does not have the space or time to make mention of every single hotel/ride/restaurant etc in all of Disney World. Rather, the book maintains a personal feel and places are only mentioned if they hold some sort of significance - good or bad - to the author and his friends. Likewise the book contains no photographs or maps that might help a person plan their upcoming trip. If you are after a conventional guidebook that allows you to flip to the index, look up Splash Mountain, and then flip to the page that tells you about it's wait times and height restrictions, then buy another guidebook instead. Or better yet, buy another guidebook as well as this book. Along with Mousejunkies, I also bought The Complete Walt Disney World. The Complete Guide tells me about absolutely everything that I can do at Disney World, while Mousejunkies gives me a sense of what it's going to feel like being there.
Mousejunkies is put together in such a relaxed, easy-to-read way, reading it is like being immersed in a good novel. You don't really flick through it like most guidebooks, but instead you start at the beginning and find yourself reading every page in order right through to the end. I got so engrossed that I finished the whole book in one weekend.
I enjoyed the largely adult-perspective of the book and the way the author put about as much emphasis on Disney's food and hotels as he did on the rides and the attractions. I also appreciated that despite his obvious love of Disney World, he wasn't afraid to criticize the things he thought were truly unworthy of people's time.
Like I said at the start, I might not a Mousejunkie but I am a Guidebook Junkie, and this is one guidebook that I really rate.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars More a personal journal than an informational book, July 28, 2009

By 

K. Sommers (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mousejunkies!: Tips, Tales, and Tricks for a Disney World Fix: All You Need to Know for a Perfect Vacation (Mousejunkies: Tips, Tales, & Tricks for a Disney World) (Paperback)

I bought this book two days ago as something more "offbeat" than the typical Fodors or Birnbaum's travel books. I thought I would share it with my kids to get excited about our upcoming trip. I haven't been to WDW in 25 years and my husband and kids have never been. The book is written in paragraph style, rather than an "entry" style, so it reads like a book of essays. I read it in one evening. Although it was belly-laugh-out-loud funny in the chapter about "badly behaving guests" and I enjoyed it, this is not a book I would recommend buying to use in planning a trip to WDW. It got me thinking about the trip but I did not feel that I learned anything practical or helpful. It was more like my brother,(meaning I felt right at home with the author's conversational style--it felt like someone I already knew), writing me e-mails about his subjective opinions and experiences as well as his friends' experiences, what his very young daughter liked and what scared her, and what his wife liked, their entire "buying a Disney timeshare" experience in painstaking detail (including their salespersons name!), telling me how much he liked the beer here, or needed to get to a particular new irish pub there, throwing up on the cruise, and so on. It was rambling and conversational and therefore enjoyable to read but did not come across as objective or credible. In addition, his daughter is much younger than my three kids--there was nothing in there to help me plan for older kids. The several typos were also distracting--"jut" instead of just, for example. I agree with the reviewer who gave the book one star--if the title was not so misleading I might have ranked it higher. However, the reason I chose this particular book is because I was expecting Tips, Tricks, and All I Need to Know for a Perfect Vacation. Instead, I got Tales. I probably would not have bought the book had I known. I will be donating the book to my library (AFTER I have my husband read the funny parts about guests behaving badly) rather than taking it along with me on the trip as a resource.

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I'm a Mousejunkie, too, May 31, 2009

By 

B. Kane "Gretschy" (New England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mousejunkies!: Tips, Tales, and Tricks for a Disney World Fix: All You Need to Know for a Perfect Vacation (Mousejunkies: Tips, Tales, & Tricks for a Disney World) (Paperback)

Reading through Mousejunkies was like hopping a flight down to Florida and hitting all of my favorite parks from the comfort of my couch! Planning a trip to the Disney resorts can be daunting; visitors are faced with endless dining, hotel and entertainment choices and this guide should serve me and others well when planning the next trip. This is not your run-of-the-mill travel guide; it's as much a breezy, fun travelogue as it is a collection of tips and advice. Mousejunkies is a must-read for anyone who is planning their first trip to Walt Disney World or for the seasoned WDW veteran planning their annual, semi-annual or monthly (weekly?) trip back.