The Unofficial Guide: The Color Companion to Walt Disney World (Unofficial Guides)

560 full-color images prove that a picture is worth 1,000 words!

The Color Companion is perfect for pairing with The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World ("the big book") or it can stand alone to provide you with what you need to know in a flash when you're visiting the park. While the Unofficial Guide gives you more than 800 pages of highly detailed information on planning, staying and surviving your visit to Walt Disney World, The Color Companion also takes the "Unofficial" approach, but SHOWS you where you'll be staying and what you'll be doing -- in a trim 360-page book, perfect for tucking into a backpack or totebag.

This unique visual guide that lets you see how wet you'll get on Splash Mountain® (p. 166), what the crowd conditions are at different times of day in Fantasyland® (p. 34), and how the parks are decked out for various holidays (p. 280). Hundreds of fun full-color photos make this book a perfect keepsake, as well as an incredibly useful on-the-ground resource. The Color Companion provides reviews of all the Walt Disney World® resorts, including pictures of the guest rooms, swimming pools, and resort themes. As with the Unofficial "big book", attractions and resorts are rated based on surveys of thousands of Walt Disney World® guests and the proven, firsthand advice will teach you how to plan and save money on your Walt Disney World® vacation. As always, The Unofficial series is completely independent. If a restaurant serves lackluster food or an attraction is not worth the wait, we'll tell you.

Check out The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World®, the bestselling independent guide to Walt Disney World® and the perfect companion to this full-color guide.

The Unofficial Guide Guerrilla Research Tactics
Amazon-exclusive content from the authors

What makes The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World so “unofficial”? There’s madness to the methodology – the detailed research that goes into the Unofficial Guides is just as quirky as the guides themselves.

• 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 an off-site 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 station when his shift ended.

• We also test pillow fluffiness using a measurement process we invented. We were going 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.

• We’ve dined at every sit-down restaurant multiple times. 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. I think we’ve tried every counter-service food item in every 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.

• A few dozen hearty readers per year participate in something called The Ultimate Magic Kingdom Touring Plan, which is a computer-optimized guide to seeing every ride, show, live performance, parade and fireworks in the Magic Kingdom (between 50 and 60 separate attractions, depending on refurbishments) in a single day. The current record is 55 attractions in 11 hours, 38 minutes. The average wait in line per attraction is less than 2 minutes. Despite sounding more like an endurance race than a vacation, families love it. A few have sent photo albums chronicling their day.

The Staff
Data is analyzed by a professional statistician, who helps us build models of park wait times.

The person who helps us figure out the best Disney deals is a PhD economist at their day job.

The person who explains key points in theme park architecture for us is a professional urban designer with experience on a number of Disney projects.

Our advice for children comes from a nationally-recognized child psychologist.

Len wrote his Masters thesis on how computer programs could create efficient touring plans for theme parks. He was awarded a U.S. patent for this research, which was also published in academic journals.