Customer Reviews

The Unofficial Guide to Chicago (Frommer Guides)

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

 

 

This guide has ratings for the places you can visit, by age range. This is helpful so that you know it your family members will be interested in visiting there. They gave helpful hints for some of the locations. We found they underestimated the amount of time needed at some of the sites. The maps were very well laid out and showed how things were related to each other. They didn't give many parking locations, but often places to park were easy to find. Take plenty of money for parking (usually $18 and for all the toll roads). Some of the restaurants were much higher priced than listed in the book.

No discussion of pre-theater dining! When you are going to see Wicked at the Ford Theater, there is not much more you care about than where to eat first. In fact, the restaurant guide does not even mention half the restaurants that are listed online as "the" pre-theater dining places (none of which "grabbed" me online, so I was hoping this book would be more enlightening).

Also no full drawing of the various parts of the city. Small maps that show only two districts do not tell me where Bucktown is relative to The Loop. This is critical when all the hotels, restaurants, etc. are referred to by district.

Overall disappointing, because The Unofficial Guides tend to be better than other guides, and they tend to be better than this.

I have always been a big fan of the Unofficial Guides. In the past, I have used their guides to San Francisco and Las Vegas. The Chicago guide was just as informative. The book is simply organized and provides very accurate and informative ratings of dining, hotels and attractions. What I really liked about the book is the rating system that is used to evaluate restaurants, hotels and attractions. Not only do they provide an overall ratings, but also provided is a value rating. In other words, are you getting what you paid for? Or are you getting more or less?

This guide offered everything I needed for my trip to Chicago. I found out where to shop, which beaches to go to, and all about the night life in the Windy City.