spoodles said:
I don't know, I still love the Guide. I do agree that it could use some visual sprucing up, and I could see some frustration over its heavily cross-referenced layout. Major overhaul? I'm not sure.
See, heavily cross-referenced isn't a problem for me. I grew up with a librarian in my immediate family, so I spent a great deal of time with books, especially reference, when I was a kid. These days, I'm more likely to pick up a reference book than a fiction work for pleasure reading than anything else - heck, I often see an old textbook at someones house and ask to borrow it just because I find it fun to read. I love minutiae.
I wish I had the guide in front of me - I'll have to bring it with me to work tomorrow. I keep the darned thing on my nightsand, so obviously - I'm a fan. However, reading this latest version I was just struck by how little of some information there is, and how much there is on other things that seem superfluous. Dining, for example. There is precious little actual information about dining establishments, yet they are presented in several different lists. I can get those lists from the Disney website - I want to know something about them beyond a one or two sentence description. The star ratings are everywhere, but I find them less than useful - not only because I might disagree with some of them, but because there is little in the way of obvious criteria.
Another beef I have is with the MGM/Universal section. It's crazy that those two are still lumped together - and that "Universal vs. MGM" section is just outdated at this point. It was one thing when they were actually going against each other (when it was the only park at Universal and MGM was new and lacked attractions), but now MGM deserves it's own section, and the Universal Parks need theirs. It makes no sense that AK has it's own at this point, and they haven't bothered to seperate MGM from the Universal Parks.
I read the section where they discuss that the guide isn't geared toward repeat readers, but that doesn't mean that a 15-year old quote doesn't need to be updated occasionally. Again, I wish I had the book in front of me, because I'd start quoting specific passages - it just feels like overall the book has gotten longer, but at this point the organiztion has allowed to become so awkward that entire sections seem out of place, or could be combined, etc.
Again, I know I'm being critical - but as someone who's spent a couple of hundred dollars on these books in my lifetime, I feel like I know them pretty well. If I were in charge of them, I'd start on page one and just start editing/combining redundant information, removing some of the less relevant (do they really need so much on off-site now that Disney has 20K+ rooms from $49/night?). They could easily get that book down to 500-600 pages, make it more accessable, and streamlined. I'm all for cross-referencing, but the book just feels like it's grown out of control, and it really needs some pruning and rearranging.
In the end, I just think the book needs to be more accessable/organized to the type of Disney-newbie it is supposed to be geared for. And, especially, for MGM to finally get it's own, dedicated section. (If you can't tell, that's my biggest pet peeve, LOL.)
Just my opinion.
AEfx
