Friday, August 8, 2008
Obligatory Excuse Post Number Two
My apologies to all three of my loyal readers. Things have been, to put it mildly, hectic over the past four weeks, thanks to everything I had to do related to the NFFC Convention and everything I had to do at work after getting back. Things have now returned to what passes for normal around here, so I should be able to return to my regular schedule. But enough of my groveling...
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Shameless Plug for My Club
Speaking of places to find Disney collectibles, next Sunday (July 20th) the NFFC, a club of devoted Disney fans, will be holding its biannual Strictly Disneyana Show and Sale at the Crowne Plaza Anaheim Resort in Garden Grove. A lot of folks will be there selling a lot of fun Disney collectibles - new and used - and you never know what you might find. You may even find me, since I'm a member of the NFFC's board of directors; if you read this blog and recognize my name on a nametag as you shop, please stop me and say "Hi"; it's always nice to know somebody's reading this stuff besides me. :)
More information on the Show and Sale, including a coupon for $1 off admission to the Show and Sale, is available from the main page of the NFFC website, www.nffc.org. Hope to see you there!
More information on the Show and Sale, including a coupon for $1 off admission to the Show and Sale, is available from the main page of the NFFC website, www.nffc.org. Hope to see you there!
Speaking of 25th Anniversaries...
Disneyland: The First Quarter Century. Walt Disney Productions, 1979; 122 pp.
I was looking back on my blog posts and I realized I hadn't reviewed any out-of-print books in a while! Oops. Today, we'll be taking another trip back into Disneyland's past with Disneyland: The First Quarter Century, a souvenir book issued in celebration of the Park's 25th anniversary.
Now, you may remember from our look at the first Disneyland guidebook in one of my first posts in this blog (and if you don't, may I refer you to the blog archives?) that Walt's little park only had a few attractions back when it opened in 1955. Disneyland did a lot of growing and changing from then until 1980, and this book's anonymous author (if anybody knows who the author might be, please let me know) does a wonderful job of chronicling that growth, and delves into what the Park meant to Walt and what it means to its many visitors today. The book is broken up into a couple of sections, such as "From Dream to Reality", where the author tells the story of Disneyland's conceptualization and initial construction, "The First Quarter Century", a chronicle of the Park's history, and "The Many Worlds of Disneyland", where some of Walt's quotes are combined with some scenic images of Disneyland and shots of guests enjoying the Park.
The book's an interesting read, but let's be honest here - most people who pick up this book are going to give the text a cursory glance at best and go straight to the pictures! And in my opinion, you're perfectly justified in doing so. The shots of the Park in this book - a combination of publicity photos and photos from Walt Disney Imagineering from throughout the years, plus what I assume were a few new professional shots taken just for this book - range from cute to stunningly beautiful. I especially enjoyed all the construction photos of the Park's attractions - I don't think it wasn't all that common to see construction photos in the media back then. I also had a fun time playing "Name That Imagineer!" as I looked at the photos of the folks at WDI (well , back then WED) working on creating some classic Disneyland attractions.
So, are there any drawbacks to Disneyland: The First Quarter Century? Well, if you're a devoted Disneyland fan, you're probably not going to learn anything new about the Park from this book ; if you're looking for a good official history of the Park with more information about what went into creating it, I'd recommend a book that came out from Disney a couple of years after this one called Disneyland: Inside Story by Randy Bright. A lot of the photos in this book are going to look familiar - many of them have been used often in the 24 years since this book was published in other publications and exhibits (in fact, I realized as I re-read this book for this review that I've seen several of them in the Disneyland: The First 50 Magical Years pre-show exhibit). Overall, though, I love this book - I think it set a standard for the Disney souvenir books that has been hard to match (although the most recent Disneyland souvenir book, Disneyland: Then, Now, and Forever, comes close).
Disneyland: the First Quarter Century is a wonderful photographic trip through the first 25 years of Disneyland's history. If you're just starting a Disney book collection, I'd recommend making this book of your first out-of-print book purchases; the book comes up for sale in used bookstores and for auction on eBay and other auction sites pretty frequently, and the price is usually fairly reasonable. If you've been collecting Disneyland memorabilia for a while now and you don't have this book, you've got a fairly big hole in your collection - start looking for a copy! Either way, be prepared to spend a couple of hours looking through this book once you open it up.
Friday, June 27, 2008
A Passport to the Happiest Place on Earth
Passporter Disneyland Resort and Southern California Attractions (First Edition), By Jennifer Marx and Dave Marx. Ann Arbor, MI; PassPorter Press, 2006; 282 pp.
Just for the sake of variety, I thought I'd do a review this week of a guide to the Disneyland Resort. Now, being a native southern Californian and having been to Disneyland so many times I can't even begin to count, I need a Disneyland guidebook like a fish needs a bicycle (sorry, Gloria Steinem). But if I did need a guidebook for a visit to Anaheim, I'd most likely choose this one.
Several years ago (no, I don't know how many - I'm not going to ruin my blog by doing silly things like research!), Jennifer and Dave Marx came up with the first of a unique series of travel guides. The PassPorter guides provide a lot of great information about Disney destinations, but they provide a lot more - a planning workbook, a easy-to navigate reference, and a keepsake/souvenir of the reader's vacation. A couple of years ago, with an excellent guide for Walt Disney World under their belt, Jennifer and Dave decided to create a PassPorter guide to Disneyland and southern California. If there was any concern that the original PassPorter was some kind of fluke, they've dispelled those concerns with this book.
Jennifer and Dave have created a great guide for planning a southern California vacation with an emphasis on Disneyland. They cover almost everything you'd need to know in a thorough yet concise manner, all organized for easy access. From accommodations to attractions to dining, the PassPorter Disneyland Resort provides the information you need to plan your vacation, and provides honest opinions on what you'll see and experience. Jennifer and Dave have included lots of references to websites (including theirs), so you can explore your options further and gather additional information; they also provide some of the nicest looking and most useful maps I've seen in a Disney guidebook (and that includes the Birnbaum guides). And it's all presented in a manner that doesn't leave you feeling either overwhelmed or like you've missed something.
But the neatest part of the PassPorter is that it isn't just intended to help you plan your trip - it can also be used to document it. Behind the guidebook text is a series of "PassPockets" that you can use to organize and plan your trip before you go and to record your expenses, photos and recollections of the days' events; the PassPockets even include sleeves where you can store items like receipts, ticket stubs, and other items you might want to save. When the planning's all done and you're on your way, bring the book along -- you can add a few autographs, notes, and photos to your PassPorter (there are pages for that, too), and when you get back home you can fold over the flap in the back of the book, close it up with the elastic band, and now you have a memory book of your vacation.
My problems with the PassPorter Disneyland Resort are very few. First off, if you're planning a trip to Disneyland later than a couple of months or so from now, I'd recommend holding off on purchasing the PassPorter until the new edition comes out in a few weeks; since the book was written in 2006, several items are out of date. Of course, guidebooks begin to go out of date almost from the minute they're published, and most of the book's tools for planning and preparing for a Disneyland vacation are as valid now as they were back in 2006, so if you're going sooner, don't give the PassPorter a pass (pun intended).
Second, if you're searching for optimal touring plans, you'll probably want to supplement this book with another book or website that emphasizes touring plans, like the Unofficial Guide to Disneyland; the Marxes provide one touring plan per theme park, but don't provide plans optimized for certain age groups or for varying lengths of stay. But both of these are very minor complaints.
The PassPorter Disneyland Resort is an excellent, thorough, and unique guide for planning and enjoying a trip to southern California; like its counterpart for the Florida theme parks, it'd be one of the two or three books I'd recommend to anyone making their first trip to experience the Disney theme parks. Now, how about we take up a collection to send Jennifer and Dave on some research trips to the overseas parks so we can have some great guides to those places, too?
Just for the sake of variety, I thought I'd do a review this week of a guide to the Disneyland Resort. Now, being a native southern Californian and having been to Disneyland so many times I can't even begin to count, I need a Disneyland guidebook like a fish needs a bicycle (sorry, Gloria Steinem). But if I did need a guidebook for a visit to Anaheim, I'd most likely choose this one.
Several years ago (no, I don't know how many - I'm not going to ruin my blog by doing silly things like research!), Jennifer and Dave Marx came up with the first of a unique series of travel guides. The PassPorter guides provide a lot of great information about Disney destinations, but they provide a lot more - a planning workbook, a easy-to navigate reference, and a keepsake/souvenir of the reader's vacation. A couple of years ago, with an excellent guide for Walt Disney World under their belt, Jennifer and Dave decided to create a PassPorter guide to Disneyland and southern California. If there was any concern that the original PassPorter was some kind of fluke, they've dispelled those concerns with this book.
Jennifer and Dave have created a great guide for planning a southern California vacation with an emphasis on Disneyland. They cover almost everything you'd need to know in a thorough yet concise manner, all organized for easy access. From accommodations to attractions to dining, the PassPorter Disneyland Resort provides the information you need to plan your vacation, and provides honest opinions on what you'll see and experience. Jennifer and Dave have included lots of references to websites (including theirs), so you can explore your options further and gather additional information; they also provide some of the nicest looking and most useful maps I've seen in a Disney guidebook (and that includes the Birnbaum guides). And it's all presented in a manner that doesn't leave you feeling either overwhelmed or like you've missed something.
But the neatest part of the PassPorter is that it isn't just intended to help you plan your trip - it can also be used to document it. Behind the guidebook text is a series of "PassPockets" that you can use to organize and plan your trip before you go and to record your expenses, photos and recollections of the days' events; the PassPockets even include sleeves where you can store items like receipts, ticket stubs, and other items you might want to save. When the planning's all done and you're on your way, bring the book along -- you can add a few autographs, notes, and photos to your PassPorter (there are pages for that, too), and when you get back home you can fold over the flap in the back of the book, close it up with the elastic band, and now you have a memory book of your vacation.
My problems with the PassPorter Disneyland Resort are very few. First off, if you're planning a trip to Disneyland later than a couple of months or so from now, I'd recommend holding off on purchasing the PassPorter until the new edition comes out in a few weeks; since the book was written in 2006, several items are out of date. Of course, guidebooks begin to go out of date almost from the minute they're published, and most of the book's tools for planning and preparing for a Disneyland vacation are as valid now as they were back in 2006, so if you're going sooner, don't give the PassPorter a pass (pun intended).
Second, if you're searching for optimal touring plans, you'll probably want to supplement this book with another book or website that emphasizes touring plans, like the Unofficial Guide to Disneyland; the Marxes provide one touring plan per theme park, but don't provide plans optimized for certain age groups or for varying lengths of stay. But both of these are very minor complaints.
The PassPorter Disneyland Resort is an excellent, thorough, and unique guide for planning and enjoying a trip to southern California; like its counterpart for the Florida theme parks, it'd be one of the two or three books I'd recommend to anyone making their first trip to experience the Disney theme parks. Now, how about we take up a collection to send Jennifer and Dave on some research trips to the overseas parks so we can have some great guides to those places, too?
Saturday, June 7, 2008
What A Mouse Can Teach You About Customer Service
Inside the Magic Kingdom: Seven Keys to Disney's Success, by Tom Connellan; Austin, TX: Bard Press, 1997, 193 pp.
Sometimes I'm so enthralled by the Disney magic (or the wizardry that makes the Disney magic) that I tend to forget that the Disney theme parks are a business. Needless to say, they're a very successful business, so inevitably the question comes up: Why are the Disney parks such a big success, and is there anything people could learn from that suceess that could apply to their own businesses?
In Inside the Magic Kingdom, Tom Connellan uses a fictional narrative of a group of five businesspeople who go on a business retreat to Walt Disney World to learn seven lessons about Disney's approach to customer service. Along the way, they learn that every customer service experience impacts perceptions of their own company's customer service, they learn how many little details combine to make up the Disney guest experience, how everyone and everything at the parks works together to enhance the guest experience. They also learn how Disney depends on many types of guest feedback to measure their success at pleasing guests, how Disney recognizes, rewards, and celebrates outstanding customer service, and how everyone - even people who don't deal directly with guests - can make a difference in providing excellent guest experiences.
I'm not a big fan of the "here's how to do it" type of business books, but Tom's done a pretty good job with Inside The Magic Kingdom. Tom's not going to win any awards for his characters - they're pretty much superficial creations intended to show how different types of businesspeople have different approaches to customer service - but his protagonists help to quickly get across the key points of the narrative. As the plot progresses, Tom introduces additional characters to share anecdotes about how Disney applies the lessons he's teaching, and he has his main characters share some interesting"Disney details" - some that you've probably have heard many times before, a few that may be new. Tom even has one of his characters go through the cast hiring process so they (and we) can experience a little of the Disney approach to hiring and training new cast members - an element of the park experience that we seldom hear much about in books about the parks. Best of all, the book is a quick read considering the amount of information you learn - I was able to finish the book over the course of a few hours over two days.
While Inside the Magic Kingdom is a pretty good business book overall, I have a few minor quibbles. The book's biggest problem is that it's starting to show its age; it mentions several senior Disney executives who are no longer with the Walt Disney Company, and there have been some changes to the Magic Kingdom since the book was written. (Admittedly, most businesspeople reading this book aren't going to notice, but Disney fans will.)
While Tom's narrative style for the book is fun, the plot's kinda weak at a couple of points. One character's transformation from confirmed grump to customer service fanatic is a bit of a stretch, and appearances by former CEO Michael Eisner are just plain unbelieveable. Also, if you're really fanatical about discovering Disney details, you may decide that Tom's telling you a lot of things about Disney you already knew. But I consider myself pretty fanatical about learning useless Disney trivia, and even I learned a couple of things I didn't know by reading this book
Inside The Magic Kingdom is a fun way to learn a little about how the Disney theme parks make the guest experience a little more special and how Disney creates and maintains a corporate culture that's fanatically devoted to customer service. If your boss asks you to recommend a book to add to the office's collection of training materials, you may want to have him or her take a look at this one, or maybe you can pick up a copy for yourself and sneak it in there when nobody's looking! Perhaps it'll inspire someone to add a little of Disney customer service magic to your workplace.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Tangent Review: The Afterlife of the Queen
Destination Long Beach: The Queen Mary Story (2007 Edition), by Renee B. Simon; Long Beach, CA: RMS Foundation, 2001/2007; 124 pp.
This week, I'll be doing the first of what I call "tangent reviews". A tangent review is a review of a book whose primary topic is about something other than the Disney theme parks, but contains some mention of Disney theme parks and resorts. Why do tangent reviews? Because sometimes you'll find interesting bits of information about Disney theme park history in a book about something other than the Disney parks. (This also allows me to review books that I thought had a connection to the parks, but actually had next to nothing about them. Yeah, it's sneaky and it's lazy. So sue me.)
Believe it or not, I have other interests besides the Disney theme parks. (Shocking, I know, but true.) Chief among these interests are the theme park and amusement industry, transportation (mainly trains and ships), and 20th century history. Today's book covers a subject that has all of these things rolled into one very large package: the RMS Queen Mary.
For 31 years, the Queen Mary ferried passengers all around the world - mainly across the North Atlantic, but she made her way to other places as well. When she was in service, she was the epitome of luxury and speed, but sadly the world passed her by, and in 1967 Cunard, her operator, put her up for sale. Most histories of the Queen Mary end with The Last Great Cruise, her voyage from Southampton to Long Beach, California, to be turned over to the City of Long Beach, and a brief mention that she's now a hotel and tourist attraction. But the Queen Mary has been in Long Beach for almost 41 years and has been a tourist attraction for 37 years - both longer than she sailed for Cunard - and there's not a lot out there about what happened to the Queen after she came to California. That's why I was happy to see that the RMS Foundation, the attraction's operators, commissioned a book about that part of her story.
Destination Long Beach is an informative book about the long, strange history of the Queen and her adopted home, from the efforts by the city to buy her and bring her to California, the grand plans to turn her into a museum, hotel, and tourist destination, to the disappointing result of the plans going awry and a glimmer of hope that her unlucky situation might be about to change for the better. Along the way, we get to see how the City of Long Beach bought her almost on a whim, how it created a tangle of operating responsibilities that would have almost guaranteed problems even if the attraction had been as successful as they had expected, and how folks like hotelier and real estate tycoon Jack Wrather got things going in the right direction. We briefly see the Walt Disney Company take control of operating the ship as part of the deal where Disney reclaimed the Disneyland Hotel , the hope of a grand new theme park in Long Beach allowing the Queen to live up to her original expectations, and what looked like the end for the attraction when the idea for the park fell through and Disney decided that they didn't want anything more to do with her. Finally, we get to see a new regime take over operations, which initially brings the hope that the person now in charge will be able to make the Queen Mary do what she's never really been able to do the whole time she's been in Long Beach - be a popular place to go and to turn a profit - and then see her future again called into question when the relations between the new operators and the city turn sour. It's a fascinating story, and one that really deserves to be told.
Renee Simon does a pretty good job with the book. She's not shy about tweaking the noses of the people who made mistakes or questionable decisions, for the most part (more on that later), and the book contains some interesting photographs of the ship during her conversion (some would argue her demolition) and her new life as a tourist attraction. It's a fast read, as well; I was able to finish the book in a couple of hours.
So what's not to like about Destination Long Beach? My biggest issue with the book is that since the book was published by the folks who currently operate the Queen Mary, it's got a strong bias in favor of those folks, and especially the operating company's recently removed leader, Joseph Prevratil. For all of Renee's willingness to point out how many of the people who were responsible for creating the problems that the Queen Mary suffers from today, she's not willing to question anything that the RMS Foundation has done during their tenure - and I know from other research I 've done that they've made some pretty questionable decisions. I would have liked to see a lot more information about the time that Wrather and Disney operated the Queen Mary and what they did - right and wrong - while they were in charge; if we were to go simply by Renee's description in the book, the Disney tenure at the Queen Mary could be summed up as grandiose plans that they might or might not have been truly committed to, combined with general indifference. Finally, while this is a nice coffee table book with some decent photographs and text, it's still a coffee table book - the story of the Queen Mary in Long Beach deserves a more in-depth look than it gets in 124 pages full of photographs. But something's better than nothing, I guess.
If you're looking for a treasure trove of information about Disney's operation of one of Southern California's best-known (and least-visited) attractions and about the ill-fated DisneySea theme park, Destination Long Beach is going to be disappointing. But if you're interested in the challenges faced by people trying to create a tourist destination, in California history, or in learning about a little-known facet of a great ship's history, than you should consider giving this book a read. The book will also give you a reason to explore one of the great unappreciated treasures of Long Beach - figuratively and literally, since the only place I know of that you can get this book is from the Queen Mary Store on the ship. But hey, it won't kill you to spend a couple of hours away from Disneyland for one day.
This week, I'll be doing the first of what I call "tangent reviews". A tangent review is a review of a book whose primary topic is about something other than the Disney theme parks, but contains some mention of Disney theme parks and resorts. Why do tangent reviews? Because sometimes you'll find interesting bits of information about Disney theme park history in a book about something other than the Disney parks. (This also allows me to review books that I thought had a connection to the parks, but actually had next to nothing about them. Yeah, it's sneaky and it's lazy. So sue me.)
Believe it or not, I have other interests besides the Disney theme parks. (Shocking, I know, but true.) Chief among these interests are the theme park and amusement industry, transportation (mainly trains and ships), and 20th century history. Today's book covers a subject that has all of these things rolled into one very large package: the RMS Queen Mary.
For 31 years, the Queen Mary ferried passengers all around the world - mainly across the North Atlantic, but she made her way to other places as well. When she was in service, she was the epitome of luxury and speed, but sadly the world passed her by, and in 1967 Cunard, her operator, put her up for sale. Most histories of the Queen Mary end with The Last Great Cruise, her voyage from Southampton to Long Beach, California, to be turned over to the City of Long Beach, and a brief mention that she's now a hotel and tourist attraction. But the Queen Mary has been in Long Beach for almost 41 years and has been a tourist attraction for 37 years - both longer than she sailed for Cunard - and there's not a lot out there about what happened to the Queen after she came to California. That's why I was happy to see that the RMS Foundation, the attraction's operators, commissioned a book about that part of her story.
Destination Long Beach is an informative book about the long, strange history of the Queen and her adopted home, from the efforts by the city to buy her and bring her to California, the grand plans to turn her into a museum, hotel, and tourist destination, to the disappointing result of the plans going awry and a glimmer of hope that her unlucky situation might be about to change for the better. Along the way, we get to see how the City of Long Beach bought her almost on a whim, how it created a tangle of operating responsibilities that would have almost guaranteed problems even if the attraction had been as successful as they had expected, and how folks like hotelier and real estate tycoon Jack Wrather got things going in the right direction. We briefly see the Walt Disney Company take control of operating the ship as part of the deal where Disney reclaimed the Disneyland Hotel , the hope of a grand new theme park in Long Beach allowing the Queen to live up to her original expectations, and what looked like the end for the attraction when the idea for the park fell through and Disney decided that they didn't want anything more to do with her. Finally, we get to see a new regime take over operations, which initially brings the hope that the person now in charge will be able to make the Queen Mary do what she's never really been able to do the whole time she's been in Long Beach - be a popular place to go and to turn a profit - and then see her future again called into question when the relations between the new operators and the city turn sour. It's a fascinating story, and one that really deserves to be told.
Renee Simon does a pretty good job with the book. She's not shy about tweaking the noses of the people who made mistakes or questionable decisions, for the most part (more on that later), and the book contains some interesting photographs of the ship during her conversion (some would argue her demolition) and her new life as a tourist attraction. It's a fast read, as well; I was able to finish the book in a couple of hours.
So what's not to like about Destination Long Beach? My biggest issue with the book is that since the book was published by the folks who currently operate the Queen Mary, it's got a strong bias in favor of those folks, and especially the operating company's recently removed leader, Joseph Prevratil. For all of Renee's willingness to point out how many of the people who were responsible for creating the problems that the Queen Mary suffers from today, she's not willing to question anything that the RMS Foundation has done during their tenure - and I know from other research I 've done that they've made some pretty questionable decisions. I would have liked to see a lot more information about the time that Wrather and Disney operated the Queen Mary and what they did - right and wrong - while they were in charge; if we were to go simply by Renee's description in the book, the Disney tenure at the Queen Mary could be summed up as grandiose plans that they might or might not have been truly committed to, combined with general indifference. Finally, while this is a nice coffee table book with some decent photographs and text, it's still a coffee table book - the story of the Queen Mary in Long Beach deserves a more in-depth look than it gets in 124 pages full of photographs. But something's better than nothing, I guess.
If you're looking for a treasure trove of information about Disney's operation of one of Southern California's best-known (and least-visited) attractions and about the ill-fated DisneySea theme park, Destination Long Beach is going to be disappointing. But if you're interested in the challenges faced by people trying to create a tourist destination, in California history, or in learning about a little-known facet of a great ship's history, than you should consider giving this book a read. The book will also give you a reason to explore one of the great unappreciated treasures of Long Beach - figuratively and literally, since the only place I know of that you can get this book is from the Queen Mary Store on the ship. But hey, it won't kill you to spend a couple of hours away from Disneyland for one day.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
A Spoken Word CD Counts As A Book!
The Audio Guide to Walt Disney World: Main Street USA, by Lou Mongello; 2007; Louis A. Mongello/Second Star Media LLC. Audio CD; approx. 73 minutes.
Sorry for the delay in getting a new post up, folks - between the Real Job the Disney Fan Job, and a recent illness, it's been a crazy couple of weeks.
The next book I’ll be reviewing here is… a CD?!? OK, at this point a few of you might be wondering if I just hit my head with a Disney Big Fig, but stick with me, folks – this isn’t your typical CD.
A couple of years ago, I read “The Walt Disney World Trivia Book, Volume 2”, a collection of trivia questions about one of our favorite Disney destinations. I was really impressed by the book and the knowledge of its author, Lou Mongello. Well, since then Lou’s come up with another way to share his knowledge of Walt Disney World with Disney fans and casual guests – the first of a series of audio CDs where Lou acts as our tour guide on a “guided walking tour of the history, trivia, hidden treasures, and overlooked details of Walt Disney World.”
Appropriately enough, the first CD in Lou’s audio guide to Walt Disney World takes us to the first place many of us see when we first visit – Main Street USA in the Magic Kingdom. Starting just outside the entrance to the Magic Kingdom, Lou takes us through the turnstiles, under the Walt Disney World Railroad and into Town Square; Lou then takes us on a tour of Town Square’s buildings and up Main Street USA until we reach the Plaza. Along the way, Lou shares some of the history of Walt Disney World and of the buildings were visiting and passing through, as well as pointing out details that enhance the park going experience but might be missed by the average guest (and even by some devoted Disney fans like me).
If you ever wanted an easy way to get away for a visit to Walt Disney World without really getting away, this CD may just be what you’re looking for. With his narration and through the use of music and sound effects, Lou is able to put you right in the middle of the Magic Kingdom; Lou describes the sights of Main Street USA in enough detail and provides you with enough background audio cues that it’s easy for you to close your eyes and imagine yourself walking through the theme park on a beautiful day. Lou shares just enough information that even the biggest Walt Disney World fan should learn something new, but not necessarily so much that someone will turn off the CD feeling totally overwhelmed. I had a great time listening to this audio guide.
We’ve talked about how Lou’s CD can make you feel like you’re spending the day in Florida while you’re sitting at home, but how does it work as a guide if you’re already there? I haven’t had a chance to try out Lou’s CD at the Magic Kingdom myself, but I turned it over to a willing test subject who was still in Florida (my lovely fiancée, who didn’t have to come back from vacation as soon as I did), and she reported that Lou’s CD was a great way to enhance her visit to the Magic Kingdom – and had the advantage of being a lot easier to carry around and enjoy than a paper guidebook.
Is the Audio Guide to Walt Disney World perfect? Well, besides not being nearly long enough to suit me, I can’t find too much wrong with it. At the time that I got that I got the CD, I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t just download Lou’s guide straight to my iPod (a situation Lou has corrected by offering the Audio Guide online at disneyworldtrivia.com). I’m also a little disappointed that the Guide CD is one long track, which means if you’re listening on CD, you’ll have to stop and start over from the beginning if you have to stop listening for some reason. But these are minor quibbles. My fiancée and I had a great time listening to the first volume of the Audio Guide to Walt Disney World, and we can’t wait for the next volume!
I'll be back to reviewing paper books in the next post. In the meantime, thanks for indulging me!
Sorry for the delay in getting a new post up, folks - between the Real Job the Disney Fan Job, and a recent illness, it's been a crazy couple of weeks.
The next book I’ll be reviewing here is… a CD?!? OK, at this point a few of you might be wondering if I just hit my head with a Disney Big Fig, but stick with me, folks – this isn’t your typical CD.
A couple of years ago, I read “The Walt Disney World Trivia Book, Volume 2”, a collection of trivia questions about one of our favorite Disney destinations. I was really impressed by the book and the knowledge of its author, Lou Mongello. Well, since then Lou’s come up with another way to share his knowledge of Walt Disney World with Disney fans and casual guests – the first of a series of audio CDs where Lou acts as our tour guide on a “guided walking tour of the history, trivia, hidden treasures, and overlooked details of Walt Disney World.”
Appropriately enough, the first CD in Lou’s audio guide to Walt Disney World takes us to the first place many of us see when we first visit – Main Street USA in the Magic Kingdom. Starting just outside the entrance to the Magic Kingdom, Lou takes us through the turnstiles, under the Walt Disney World Railroad and into Town Square; Lou then takes us on a tour of Town Square’s buildings and up Main Street USA until we reach the Plaza. Along the way, Lou shares some of the history of Walt Disney World and of the buildings were visiting and passing through, as well as pointing out details that enhance the park going experience but might be missed by the average guest (and even by some devoted Disney fans like me).
If you ever wanted an easy way to get away for a visit to Walt Disney World without really getting away, this CD may just be what you’re looking for. With his narration and through the use of music and sound effects, Lou is able to put you right in the middle of the Magic Kingdom; Lou describes the sights of Main Street USA in enough detail and provides you with enough background audio cues that it’s easy for you to close your eyes and imagine yourself walking through the theme park on a beautiful day. Lou shares just enough information that even the biggest Walt Disney World fan should learn something new, but not necessarily so much that someone will turn off the CD feeling totally overwhelmed. I had a great time listening to this audio guide.
We’ve talked about how Lou’s CD can make you feel like you’re spending the day in Florida while you’re sitting at home, but how does it work as a guide if you’re already there? I haven’t had a chance to try out Lou’s CD at the Magic Kingdom myself, but I turned it over to a willing test subject who was still in Florida (my lovely fiancée, who didn’t have to come back from vacation as soon as I did), and she reported that Lou’s CD was a great way to enhance her visit to the Magic Kingdom – and had the advantage of being a lot easier to carry around and enjoy than a paper guidebook.
Is the Audio Guide to Walt Disney World perfect? Well, besides not being nearly long enough to suit me, I can’t find too much wrong with it. At the time that I got that I got the CD, I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t just download Lou’s guide straight to my iPod (a situation Lou has corrected by offering the Audio Guide online at disneyworldtrivia.com). I’m also a little disappointed that the Guide CD is one long track, which means if you’re listening on CD, you’ll have to stop and start over from the beginning if you have to stop listening for some reason. But these are minor quibbles. My fiancée and I had a great time listening to the first volume of the Audio Guide to Walt Disney World, and we can’t wait for the next volume!
I'll be back to reviewing paper books in the next post. In the meantime, thanks for indulging me!
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