Customer Rating: 
Summary: Don't leave home without it
Comment: The myriad of dining options at all four parks is mind-numbing. The Birnbaum guide helped us get the most of our visit--and avoid some of the less worthy places... My advice: go heavy on the walk-up dining. I fed five people lunch every day for under $40. This guide helped me make that happen.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Comparing Best Disney Dining Guides
Comment: Birnbaum's Dining Guide is a fun little book to have for your Disney World dining experiences in 2009. Like most in the Disney community, there are 2 main books to rely on for all of your Disney Dining, Food and Menu information: Birnbaum and The Healthy Guide to Walt Disney World 2009: How to Eat Right and Stay Fit in Disney - The NEW Diet, Dining, Food, Fitness and Complete Weight Loss Book.
After buying and reading the 2009 edition of each book, here are some thoughts I have on how they compare:
1) Best Dietary Information: The Healthy Guide.
With its great chapters on nutrition, organic foods, dietary tips, special need and menus suggestions, The Healthy Guide comes out on top. It seems no matter what diet you are on, this guide is invaluable to any Guest in WDW.
2) Best Food Information: The Healthy Guide
The Healthy Guide has the best Dining Plan strategies and suggested Menu items at each Disney restaurant. It also has a number of fascinating Disney food tidbits.
3) Most organized: Birnbaum Guide.
Each Disney eatery is easy to find and is given a brief summary.
4) Most fun to read: The Healthy Guide.
With its witty writing, funny style and blunt restaurant reviews, you'll be laughing out loud as you read through it.
5) Best info on Kosher, gluten, special needs: The Healthy Guide.
By a mile! It spends chapters talking about the best places to satisfay your ditary needs and nutritional requirements along with all kinds of helpful specs that other books ignore.
6) Most up to date: The Healthy Guide.
Disney is so complex that it is always updating its restaurants and menu items all the time. To satisfy the Disney community's need to current info, the Healthy Guide updates its book several times throughout the year to give the reader the most current info on menus, prices and restaurants.
So which one's best? The Healthy Guide is a joy to look at and read and is just amazing in its amount of useful information on Disney foods and eateries. Birnbaum's index is more complete and organzed. The Healthy Guide is more thorough in its coverage about everything healthy inside of Disney and offers so much "cynical" insight that it just can't be ignored, and it has the best Disney Dining tips and even fitness info. I recommend you buy both and start making your ADR's!!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good take-along guide to have while at Disney
Comment: If you're looking for a small guide to take along with you while in the parks and roaming Disney World, this will prove convenient. This book gives basic information for each restaurant throughout all of Disney World, including the parks, resorts and entertainment areas such as Downtown Disney. It includes:
- Price ranges
- Meals served (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks)
- If they're on the Disney Dining Plan
- If they're fast food or table service restaurants
You'll find an overview of the food served in each location. It also includes some Walt Disney World recipes for those who want to bring Disney home to their own kitchen.
Since Birnbaum is the official guide of Disney World, you can be pretty certain that everything in their book is accurate. Of course things change frequently at Disney, so the book should be accurate up to the approximate time of publishing.
The book is small enough to take along into the parks with you. It's set up in a way that will make it easy to locate individual restaurants and quickly determine the basics of what you'll find there.
In my book, Walt Disney World® with Disabilities, I recommend in-depth research prior to going to the parks. This will help you make the most of your vacation. If you're looking for more detailed descriptions of restaurants, you may wish to look at The Unofficial Guide Walt Disney World 2009 (Unofficial Guides). For most restaurants this book contains more in-depth information including reader survey results, service ratings, hours of operation, setting and atmosphere, house specialties, etc.
Another option is The Luxury Guide to Walt Disney World Resort, 2nd: How to Get the Most Out of the Best Disney Has to Offer (Luxury Guide to Walt Disney World Resort). Cara Goldsbury goes into depth regarding the better restaurants at Disney. [...]
Finally, I would say that this book fills a big need for a quick and handy reference guide, especially while in the parks. The parks are huge and can be overwhelming when you're unfamiliar. It's likely that you're going to get hungry and finding the right place for you can be challenging. If you're looking for something to help on the spur of the moment, this book will do the trick!
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