I love the
people from the Unofficial Guide. I listen to every single episode of the WDW Today podcast that often has people from Unofficial Guide/Touringplans.com and think they give good advice, so I don't think there's any bias here... but I do not like that book! I do not like the way the information is arranged and I think the book could use a good editor; there are
literally 500 pages of book before you get to the section where they talk about the attractions in the Magic Kingdom. It does include Universal in the same book, though, I will give them credit for that. They also have more info about off-site hotels and dining than any other book I've seen. If you're going to stay or eat off-site, I think it's probably worth the money just for that info. The classifieds in the paper have better graphics, though. Also, the park maps are laid out in such a way that the middle of the park is in the middle of a two page spread, and the book is so thick that you can't see half the park! The Magic Kingdom is probably the worst in this regard: right down the middle of MSUSA, Fantasyland and the castle. Two color pages.
I like the Passporter. It's a guidebook in the front and a scrapbook in the back. The guidebook is pretty self-explanatory. Their maps are on fold-out pages, so you can see the whole park easily. Everything is laid out in a very straightforward way. It has full color. The restaurants and I believe the attractions are color coded into different groups to make them easy to find. It has diagrams of all of the room layouts so you get an idea of what you're paying for in the different resort categories. The scrapbook pages in the back have space for you to write what you did that day, what you ate, what you bought. There are questions for every day, like the funniest thing you saw, the weather, your favorite thing you did that day, etc. The pages have pockets to store little mementos like receipts or wristbands from the Halloween or Christmas parties.
Here's the
2012 version
The 2013 version comes out on December 11th, so it would definitely arrive by Christmas.
I also like the
Complete Walt Disney World. It doesn't get into the nitty gritty of planning as much, but it does still have lots of info and it is an absolutely beautiful photo journal.
Edit: if you watch passporterstore.com, the two-years-back version goes on sale for $1 plus shipping. The 2010's are out of stock, but the 2011's should go on sale once the 2013 version comes out. We buy the old versions just for the scrapbook pages.
