The Unofficial Guide Walt Disney World 2010 (Unofficial Guides) [Paperback]

Bob Sehlinger (Author), Len Testa (Contributor)

Book Description

Series: Unofficial Guides | Publication Date: August 31, 2009

• In 2008, combined Walt Disney World Resort© theme park attendance reached over 51 million, with the Magic Kingdom alone drawing over 17 million visitors. (Orlando Convention and Visitor Bureau)
• Despite signifcant downturns in the economy, Disney theme parks have maintained attendance rates and made gains in attendance at some parks.
• Walt Disney World Resort theme parks are rated best in the world. earning high marks for things outside of the traditional theme park experience. Epcot's International Food & Wine Festival, which takes place for six weeks every fall and showcases food from twenty-five countries, was rated by Forbes Traveler as one of the Best U.S. Food and Wine Festivals.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Test Your Disney Smarts!
Amazon-exclusive quiz from author Bob Sehlinger

1. Which restaurant has the best view at Walt Disney World? A. LakeView Restaurant, B. The California Grill, C. Cindarella’s Royal Table

2. Afternoon milkshakes for two kids will cost you: A. $5.72, B. $8.38, C. $12.59

3. Disney Kids’ Meals are available for children of what ages? A. 3-9, B. 3-11, C. Under 18

4. When is the best time to take the kids on Dumbo the Flying Elephant? A. Before 10 a.m. or after 9 p.m., B. Immediately following lunch, C. At exactly 3:15 p.m.

5. Which Disney theme park is five times the size as the Magic Kingdom? A. Disney’s Hollywood Studios, B. Epcot Center, C. Animal Kingdom

6. The best time to visit Walt Disney World is: A. On your child’s birthday, B. The day of your child’s final exam in math class, C. During the period between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day

Answers: 1)B, 2)B, 3)A, 4)A, 5)C, 6)A

Five Unofficial Ways to Prepare For Your Trip to Walt Disney World
Amazon-exclusive content from author Bob Sehlinger

1. Select the time of year for your visit: Walt Disney World is busiest Christmas Day through New Year’s Day. Thanksgiving weekend, the week of Washington’s birthday, the first full week of November, spring break for colleges, and the two weeks around Easter are also times when visitation can peak at 92,000 visitors in a single day. The park is far less crowded during the off season, but be advised that the parks often open late and close early during that time. You can find detailed charts and info on the best times to visit in The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World.

2. Shape up: Visiting Disney World requires levels of industry and stamina more often associated with running marathons. As you plan your time at Disney World, consider your physical limitations. It’s exhausting to rise at dawn and run around a theme park for 8 to 12 hours day after day. Every Disney World vacation itinerary should include days when you don’t go to a theme park and days when you sleep in and take the morning off. Plan these to follow unusually long and arduous days.

3. Formulate your park plan: First-time visitors should see Epcot first; you’ll be able to enjoy it without having been preconditioned to think of Disney entertainment as solely fantasy or adventure. See Animal Kingdom second. Like Epcot, it’s educational, but its live animals provide a change of pace. Next, see Disney’s Hollywood Studios, which helps transition from the educational Epcot and Animal Kingdom to the fanciful Magic Kingdom. Also, because DHS is smaller, you won’t walk as much or stay as long. Save the Magic Kingdom for last; it’s the park that epitomizes Disney World for most visitors.

4. Create your touring plan: Which rides and attractions appeal most to you? What are you willing to forgo? Planning your day in advance can save you up to four hours of waiting time in line. We have developed a hierarchy of categories that will help you evaluate each ride and plan the best way to enjoy them all. For example, SUPER-HEADLINERS are the best attractions the theme park has to offer – and they usually have the longest lines. MINOR ATTRACTIONS are midway-type rides, small “dark” rides (cars on a track, zigzagging through the dark) and walk-through attractions—which can be a lot of fun, without the long wait. Remember that bigger and more elaborate doesn’t always mean better. See examples of touring plans (and create your own) in The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World.

5. Getting hungry?: There are three lessons to learn before you dine in the parks. One: Theme-park restaurants rush their customers in order to make room for the next group of diners. If you want to linger over your expensive meal, don’t order your entire dinner at once. Order drinks. Study the menu while you sip, then order appetizers. Tell the waiter you need more time to decide among entrees. Order your main course only after appetizers have been served. Dawdle over dessert. Two: If you’re dining in a theme park and cost is an issue, make lunch your main meal. Entrees are similar to those on the dinner menu, but prices are significantly lower. Three: Disney adds a surcharge of $4 per adult and $2 per child to certain popular restaurants during weeks of peak attendance, including Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and in 2009 every day from Memorial Day through July 4.

Review

"Find out how to avoid queuing and pay less in... Frommer's unofficial guide books to Disneyworld and Disneyland." ("TNT Magazine," Monday 5th November 2007)

Find out how to beat the queues, which rides to avoid, where to shop and dine, and how to cut costs." ("Junior," February 2008)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 880 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 5 edition (August 31, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470460261
• ISBN-13: 978-0470460269
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.2 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (119 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #255,318 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #91 in Books > Travel > United States > States > Florida

More About the Author

Bob Sehlinger, a Lowell Thomas Award winning journalist, is best known as the creator and producer of the Unofficial Guide Series published by Wiley Publishing Inc. and sold worldwide.

He is credited with being the first to apply research techniques from the fields of operations research and statistics to travel guides. Among other projects, he was able to develop mathematical models that could save theme park patrons more than three hours of standing in queue in a single day.

Sehlinger and his research team (pictured) have had numerous adventures and developed some unusual methodologies. Here's a sampling from research for The Unofficial Guide To Walt Disney World:

"We've slept in every Disney resort multiple times and more than 80 Orlando-area properties. Only once did we wake up covered in bugs. (It was a non-Disney hotel.)"

"We test hotel room soundproofing using a sophisticated digital sound meter and a copy of The Who's Greatest Hits."

"The first time we did Orlando spa reviews, one of our researchers had an eyebrow burned off during a waxing that went horribly awry."

"We once logged more than 700 miles in one week on buses to test Disney's transportation system, and never left Disney property. The bus drivers got so used to us being on board that one forgot we were there and took us back to the bus garage when his shift ended."

"We test pillow fluffiness using a measurement process we invented. We intended to use a fake human head as part of the test, but worried about getting it through airport security. We settled on a gallon jug of water, which is about the same size and weight as an average adult's noggin."

"When we test counter-service restaurants, we order at least one of everything on the menu, and break up in to small teams to sample each thing. We've tried every counter-service food item in every American Disney theme park."

"Our crowd prediction models take in to account everything from the day of week and time of year, to the vacation schedules of the fifty largest school districts east of the Mississippi, to weather phenomena including temperature, rainfall and humidity."

Bob Sehlinger is founder and co-owner of Keen Communications, a book publishing company that includes Menasha Ridge Press in Birmingham, Alabama; Clerisy Press in Cincinatti, Ohio; and Wilderness Press in Berkeley, California. The author of twenty-seven books, Sehlinger is a past president of the Publishers Association of the South, and has served at the invitation of the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Information Service on educational missions for publishers in Hungary, Romania, and Russia.

Before becoming involved in writing and publishing, Sehlinger was CEO of SAGE, inc., a wilderness arts teaching and expeditional company that produced courses in kayaking, rock climbing, survival, and backpacking (among others) for high schools and universities in a 7-state area. During this period Sehlinger served as president of the Eastern Professional River Outfitters Association. Sehlinger makes his home in Birmingham, Alabama where he continues to be an avid river runner and mountain biker.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE Definitive guide to WDW, January 11, 2010

By 

Brian Curran "hibricc" (Dennisport, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: The Unofficial Guide Walt Disney World 2010 (Unofficial Guides) (Paperback)

Purchased the Unofficial Guide for our previous Disney visit way back in 1997, and loved it. So naturally, bought the 2010 version in advance of our just-completed trip - and loved it AGAIN!

Contains all the information you could possibly want about each park and individual attraction/show. Book purchase includes access to their website and customized online touring plans, which we printed and brought to the parks each day. Didn't follow the plans step-by-step, mainly because we could never make it there in time for opening. But the plans gave us an idea of what order to see attractions in, when to use FASTPASS, etc. And it helped to have an idea about which attractions were "musts", and which could be skipped.

Plus I LOVE the way the book is written, with a combination of wry humor and frequently hysterical reader comments. The authors love WDW, so they don't pull punches when they feel let down by poorly conceived attractions or outright money-grabs. I even kept reading after we returned home, because it was such an enjoyable read!

I also purchased The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World with Kids (Unofficial Guides), but found that it's a "companion" to the big book (doesn't contain all the info of the big book) - and once I had the big book, I didn't really need 'For Kids'.

The only downside to this book is its size. At over 800 pages, it was simply too hefty to carry to the parks, though others might disagree. Of course, it HAS to be big in order to be so comprehensive, so it's not really a fault.

To sum it up, this is the ONLY book you need for a Walt Disney trip, period.

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Most Complete Guide to WDW, August 27, 2009

By 

Joseph Boone (Irvine, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (2008 HOLIDAY TEAM)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: The Unofficial Guide Walt Disney World 2010 (Unofficial Guides) (Paperback)

The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World is by far the largest guidebook for the area. Weighing in at a whopping 850 pages, you would expect, or at least hope, that it would be the most comprehensive and informative of all the Orlando guides. To help readers decide for themselves, I've broken my review down into sections by subject so you can focus on what matters most to you.

Hotels:
Disney hotels receive exhaustive coverage with floor plans, rating on many factors such as room quality, noise level, pool facilities, value, and more. There is a lengthy write-up discussing each hotel including their strengths and weaknesses. They even provide guidance on specific rooms to ask for and which to try and avoid when you make your reservation.

For those hotels outside of the resort, the coverage is less exhaustive but still comprehensive. A map shows the location of well over 100 area hotels, there are charts grading them on room quality, overall ratings, and cost. Information is also provided on how long it takes to get to each Disney theme park from the hotel. Some of the better hotels get full write-ups.

In addition to coverage of specific hotels, there is general advice as well. A few of the topics include advice on how to get deals on your room, discussion of the pros and cons of staying inside the confines of Disney World Resort, and an explanation of how the Disney hotels are classified. All told, there are more than 175 pages devoted to accommodations and none of it is wasted. This is not only the best coverage of hotels for Orlando, it's the best I've ever seen in any guidebook.

Dining:
Full service restaurants all receive a full write-up with detailed descriptions and ratings for food quality, value, and an overall score. Brief summaries are presented for the places offering counter service. In addition to the opinions of the authors, reader survey scores are reported so you can see what percentage of readers liked that restaurant. This is extremely helpful and any place I've tried that scores well on both fronts has always been a winner. Note that all of the above is limited to coverage inside of Disney World. There are also recommendations for the some of the best restaurants of various types outside the resort and brief coverage of the options in Universal's City Walk.

Theme Parks:
Full coverage is offered for The Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Disney-MGM Studios, Animal Kingdom as well as Disney's water parks, Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach. Universal is also covered with Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure getting equally comprehensive coverage. Sea World is covered, but only briefly. Busch Gardens in Tampa is not covered at all. In fairness, no guide to Disney World offers detailed coverage of these two parks. You can purchase Beyond Disney: The Unofficial Guide to Universal Orlando ,SeaWorld and the Best of Central Florida (Unofficial Guides) for this information if you're interested in visiting one or both of them.

So what constitutes full coverage of all the parks listed above? There's general background and information followed by a map and advice on orienting yourself. And then there are full descriptions and ratings for every attraction in each park. Separate ratings are provided for a number of age groups to help you evaluate the potential entertainment value for your group. Live entertainment is covered as well as advice on where to watch fireworks and parades. Finally, there are the touring plans. These are detailed itineraries designed to help you save hours of waiting time by visiting attractions in a certain order. This is only necessary if you go during summer or other peak tourist seasons. But if you do, they can be invaluable.

One final word on the theme park coverage. This guide, and many others, provides detailed descriptions of each attraction. Think about how much you really want to know before reading these. If you haven't visited Orlando before, you can rob yourself of a lot of pleasant surprises by reading all of this material. I would recommend using the ratings and reading just enough to get a vague idea of the attraction but not to go further.

Misc. Sections:
In some respects, this is almost the best part of the entire book. It's hard to overstate how diverse the information presented in this book is. There are tips on avoiding/healing blisters on your feet, how to find cheap airfare, what time of year to visit, going with kids, going as a couple, advice for pregnant women, seniors, and much much more. Common activities like golf and shopping are also covered. It's almost endless... if you can think of it there's a good chance that it's in this guide.

To sum it up, the authors did indeed produce the most comprehensive and informative guide for Walt Disney World and the Orlando area. No other guide even comes close to providing this much detail. Indeed, the most common criticism of this guide is usually that it's too much information and some people find it overwhelming. If this is your first impression upon opening the book, I would recommend focusing on those sections containing the information you're most interested in and get to the rest when you feel up to it. If you are anxious to see more photos than the 16 pages presented here, you might want to pick up The Complete Walt Disney World 2009 (Complete Walt Disney World) (Complete Guide to Walt Disney World). It doesn't have anywhere near as much detailed information, but it's packed with great shots and beautifully presents the visuals of the area.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't go to Disney World without it!, January 12, 2010

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LVG - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Unofficial Guide Walt Disney World 2010 (Unofficial Guides) (Paperback)

This guide was invaluable... it made the trip so much more hassle free and enjoyable. We visited a different Disney park each day and were able to do all the things we wanted to in the least amount of time(except for Fantasmic at Disney Studio park... because it is only available two nights a week - and one of the nights was when we had to watch the BCS Championship... being loyal Longhorns - choke,sob.) . We were fortunate that it was not peak season, but even so, we would not have been able to do all we did without the guide. The only time we had any problem was on our Epcot day because we ignored a couple of steps in the plan and got off schedule. We then ended up missing several things that day...but was OK b/c we had an extra day of time and on our pass to come back there.

The most useful aspects of this guide were the overview, the on-line guide to best days to visit each park, and the "one-day plans" for each park. We tore out the chapters for each section to bring with us each day... but kept the one-day plans along with the and event/ride and resturant one-page overviews available at all times. (Note, were I doing this again, I would make back-up photocopies of those one-day plans. We would have been sunk without them). I know some people don't want to be so regimented, but if you want your money's worth in terms of experiencing the parks - this is the way to do it. Also, the guide has great info for non-Disney activities as well. (as an aside.. if you have time and are an art lover - don't miss the Morse Museum in Winter Park..which is a neat area of Orlando. The Tiffany work will take your breath away!)