Customer Reviews

ROUTE 66 DINING & LODGING GUIDE - Expanded and enlarged

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

When I was young my dad loved to drive and always traveled an old road off the main highways..I couldn't believe some of the places we ended up. Little did I know later in my life I too would take my daughter and travel that same road.. the OLD RTE 66.Because of this Dining & Lodging guide we had so much information at our fingertips and knew exactly where we would end up at the end of each dayand where we could eat.Very informative, detailed and accurate. I highly recommend this guide to everyone who sets out on this adventure. I have not found a better guide to eating and places to stay on the Mother Rode...

The Route 66 Dining & Lodging Guide is a great resource for finding places to eat and sleep while exploring Route 66--or when traveling through the areas covered by this guide. It's truly an invaluable supplement to road maps and/or turn-by-turn guides to 66.

Something to keep in mind is that the Guide isn't meant to be a Zagat's or a "what's most popular" guide to Route 66. Rather, the Guide is a reference which can be used both in the planning stages of a Route 66 trip and while actually out on the road.

Unlike some reviewers of the previous editions of this book, I enjoy the idiosyncratic viewpoints in each section of the Guide. Listings based on online popularity contests result in bland, homogenized recommendations which cater to the lowest common denominator. The fun of exploring Route 66 comes from experiencing the unusual, the unexpected, and the unknown.

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Check out some earlier editions:
Route 66 Dining & Lodging Guide, 11th Edition
Route 66 Dining & Lodging Guide - 12th Edition

M. Siperek's comments come from a person who doesn't understand Route 66, let alone, the guide. One of the purposes of the guide is to help you find the vintage places that don't always look like sparkling Holiday Inns on the outside but are clean, comfortable, friendly and a fraction of the price of Holiday Inns. To discard the guide based on the experience he/she states, tells me he/she should have stayed on the interstate all the way to Vegas.

My wife and I just returned from a 13 day trip traveling Rt 66. The cozy, nostalgic inns and hometown cafes listed in this book were amazing. The author gives ratings and general descriptions of the food and lodging establishments. If a true experience of Route 66 is the goal, this guide is a must!

We were excited about the book because of the user-friendly format. Unfortunately, it misled us time after time!
--Strike 1: The first night led us to a dirty, smelly, smoke-filled restaurant in Lebanon, MO; the guide said that there was smoke-free dining there. We left.
-- Strike 2: In western Oklahoma, they suggested an overpriced Mexican restaurant that didn't have a touch of Route 66 nostalgia to it; as a matter of fact it looked like it had been built in the 1990's. It would have cost our family of 2 adults & 2 kids about $90 for dinner, partly because the kids' menu was for ages 8 and under! That's moderate to you?? We left and found a tiny diner on our own that was nostalgic, priced fairly, had good homestyle food and had the friendliest owners ever; this place was NOT listed in the guide and we loved it! After that, we quit using the guide.
-- Strike 3: Wait, no we gave it one last try when we needed to find lunch quickly in another small town. This time we were treated to a restaurant that smelled bad and didn't have a single clean table (even though it was rather large and it was midafternoon, with only 3 tables being used). We sat at the counter and ate very overpriced food. $8 for a bowl of chili? We spent $50 for lunch with just ordering the basics (like just drinking water) and still left hungry. No nostalgia here except for the one lone Route 66 sign and the postcard stand.

Just to note, we're from Chicago which isn't exactly known for budget restaurant dining; we don't ever spend $50 on lunch even here! This book was a waste. Sure it had the Route 66 classics like the Big Texan. But we knew about those places without using this book. Maybe if it had kids' guide it might be better... But that still wouldn't clear the smoke in restaurant 1, make restaurant 2 actually exist during the Route 66 heyday, or clean the tables and lend us money in restaurant 3. The places are reviewed and updated by locals, which made us wonder if favoritism is shown with at least some of the selections. We didn't even try to use it for hotels -- to much of a risk after the first restaurant fiasco.

What a great reference book this is. We had no idea so many lodging places were available as the information we get from travel agents in Australia is geared toward their selected venues only. We have now decided to freelance our way along Route 66 using this book as one of our "bibles". Some of the dining places sound awesome and we cannot wait to visit them and soak up the atmosphere. I will defintely do a follow up on this review in May 2012 when we return from our trip so as we can compare the actual experience with our anticipated one.

It just arrived and is very nice: you can find every kind of place you need to enjoy the travel along the Mother Road

This was a Christmas gift for my husband and he just loved the book. We want to travel Route 66 from California to Chicago and we can't wait to be able to use this. I would reccomend this to anyone.

The book has a lot of information and very detailed about the places to stop. I wouldn't make the trip without it.

Just returned from a month long tour, equipped with this book. After our first lodging flop using this book, we looked for AAA aggreement with the book's ratings. We opted to put the book away after the second time we used it to find lodging. Fortunately we decided to do a "Look and See" before making a reservation that night and were forever thankful for this. Quite frankly, the highly recommended lodging was a dive on the outside! Be afraid, very afraid. My friend and I wondered what the criteria for exceptional was?