No comments about Selling the Sunshine State: A Celebration of Florida Tourism Advertising.

1 comments about RAND MCNALLY FLORIDA KEYS, FLORIDA (Rand McNally Streets Of...).

1. This map, more than 2 by 3 feet in size, features the Florida Keys on 12 panels, and has an exhaustive street index. On a map of more than 17 square feet (two sides) however, Old Town, the heart of Key West, is depicted on a bit more than 2 square inches. You need a magnifying glass in order to identify streets and features. The map is fine for coming down the Keys, but there is the annoying folding thing, made worse by the wonderful sea breeze.
   
   Buy the Rand McNally Fabmap, or pick up one of the excellent (and free!) street maps when you arrive in Key West.
   
   Marsh Muirhead - author of "Key West Explained - a guide for the traveler."

1 comments about Travellers' Wildlife Guides Florida (Travellers' Wildlife Guides).

1. This book is a must for every Flordian and Florda visitor who wants to explore the "inside" of a fascinating state. The authors provide a short, but very interesting summary of the geography and geology of the state as well as of the biology of plants and animals and their habitat.
   I personnally liked the section on "parks and reserves" which provides insider recommendation which are not found in any other Florida tourist guide. My family and I have explored several of the recommended sites and have truly found some of Florida's gems. The book is full of links to other interesting web-sites and provides telephone numbers for many information sites.
   About 400 pages are dedicated to the identification of plants and animals in Florida. The plants and animals are classified as "native" and "non-native" ("native" and "introduced"), which I found very interesting. Further information about clasification, ecology and behavior and conservation status is provided for each organisms. The habitat and the region of occurance is clearly described.
   This is the best book about Flroda's nature I ever came across and I would like to highly recommend this volume of the "Ecotraveller" to anyone coming to visit or live in Florida. - This book truly highlights the gems of wild Florida.

1 comments about Streetwise Orlando Map - Laminated Center City Street Map of Orlando, Florida - Folding pocket size travel map (Streetwise (Streetwise Maps)).

1. This is a great map when visiting the sites of Orlando Florida. I love how it shows the locations of the various Disney hotels. Best map I have seen in any book store. The only minor downside is that this map is not updated every 2 years.

4 comments about Plan Your Walt Disney World Vacation In No Time.

1. I loved this book! It had great information to help me plan our family trip to Disney World. I loved the Notes and Tips throughout the book. I also liked the To Do lists that were in each section. I have read other Disney vacation books and this one was fun to read, and made it easy to plan our trip. I especially liked the index cards provided. I was able to plan ahead and use them when we got to the park. I just marked which rides we wanted to go to and had a game plan when we got to the gate! It saved us from going to a ride that I knew my kids were to short to go on and them being disappointed when we had to walk away.
   I would recommend this book to anyone planning a trip to Disney World.



2. The author did a great job helping my wife and I plan our first trip with our young children to WDW. The book made it easy to look things up in each park and evalute what might be appropriate for us to do. We took special notice of the hints he provided and tried to hit some of the many extra's that were listed. Included is an easy rating scale based on ages on each attraction.
   
   Overall, our trip would not have been the same without this book!



3. I love all books about WDW, and this book is no exception. WDW in No Time does exactly what it claims - to give you the essential knowledge and understanding you need to know before you go to WDW. A simple, easy to follow format gives you the basics about rooms, the parks, attractions and beyond. It does not pretend to be anything it is not. If you're looking for in-depth descriptions of every little detail, this is not for you. However, my wife, who has accompanied me on dozens of trips since we met, picked it up and immediately said, "This is the book for me!" Plus, it has great callouts of tips and tricks, and some money-saving ideas as well. It is a fun, fast read, and one i highly recommend to first-time visitors, those who may be visiting for the first time with children, as well as those people who are looking to enhance their vacation, without having to go through a book that has so much information that it becomes overwhelming. Well done!



4. Plan Your Walt Disney World Vacation In No Time by Doug Ingersoll is a book I wish we had had before we spent a week at Disney World and came away wishing we had done this or skipped that to make the most of our wonderful vacation. This book is well laid-out to walk you through three stages: Part 1 gives advice on how to plan getting there and where to stay. Giving basic vacation planning strategies such as how to budget realistically, where to search on the Internet, which exits to take from highways, how to rent a car, etc., this is NOT an advertisement for specific properties or businesses but names each with the price range and outlines amenities, transportation, etc. The same is listed for restaurants in the area. This section alone will save you lots of money and exhaustion and frustration once you arrive at your dream destination. In the second section you will find each area of Disny World mapped,and a basic description of each ride or performance. There are some MUST SEE notes and for each place there is a rating of 1 - 5 for each age group from pre-schoolers to seniors. At the back of the book are trip cards so you can make notes of which attractions to do and which to skip, placing these cards in your wallet for on-site use. There is a section to help you plan what to do after dark and the final section is devoted to other attractions in the area outside Disney World. Using this book before you go will assure you make the very most of your money, time, and energy on this trip of a family dream.

2 comments about Key West & the Keys, Fl (Z-Map).

1. We used this small folding map as we walked around Key West. It served its purpose well, but it lacked a lot of details that would have been useful along the way. All in all, we're happy with it.



2. Folded, this little map is about the size of a playing card, unfolded, 12 by 18 inches. Two cover panels make the map easy to fold and unfold. The map covers the basics, but Old Town in Key West is featured in a 2 by 2 inch space -- not enough for helpful details.
   
   It's okay, but there are wonderful free maps all over Key West, placemat-sized, with clear and helpful details. I own the Fabmap (Rand McNally) which is an excellent, small, fabric map!
   
   Marsh Muirhead - author of "Key West Explained - a guide for the traveler."

5 comments about Seasons of Real Florida (Florida History and Culture).

1. The book's editors (Mormino & Arsenault) invite us to sit down with Florida delectables, like orange juice, to read this book. My plan was to snag some recipes from Randy Wayne White's "The Fishing Guide's Guide to Tropical Cooking." Alas, Klinkenberg's book was in my custody for only a day when relatives spotted it on my table top and hauled it away for their reading pleasure. My half-a-book review: gimme my book back, I love this author!
   "Seasons" real value is in the future when we read its stories of people and places and look back wistfully at Florida as it was. And it reminds me that Florida today is still full of charm. And charming writers like Jeff Klinkenberg.



2. If you want to know what real Florida is like, what it looks like, feels like, smells like and even tastes like -- fall through summer -- this is the book for you. Klinkenberg is a true original, a natural resource as valuable as the panther, manatee and black bear.



3. Jeff Klinkenberg has been out in his car on the back roads and he's found the reason everyone moved to Florida in the first place. When my great aunt moved to North Miami in 1927 her house was on stilts (floods and alligators); now it is surrounded by 6 foot chainlink fence topped with barbed wire (urban animals!). Jeff talks to people who tell him the stories in between those extremes. Excellent read for anyone who wonders what was there besides the weather.



4. I spent Winter '08 visiting my dad in urban Tampa, and looking for Old Florida, decidedly hard to find. Jeff's terrific narratives about so many interesting people and places augmented and often replaced my futile search.
   I'm a hard-to-please reader, and this one completely satisfied.



5. The interesting Florida history written about in Peter Matthiessen's book, "Killing Mr. Watson" prompted further reading on the subject. Jeff Klinkenberg's stories capture that wonderful Florida background. Each chapter describes a different and quite unique Floridian person, place or thing, all spun into delightful true tales. Mr. Klinkenberg aptly chooses Florida history that displays "sense of place" so well. Like another reviewer, I'm a hard to please reader too. I couldn't put this book down, and I've never been to Florida. The cover photograph, "Loxahatchee River #30" by Clyde Butcher is so haunting, lovely and appropriate for this book. Fortunately Mr. Klinkenberg devotes an entire chapter describing the one-of-a-kind Clyde Butcher. This book is funny, very interesting and highly educational.

5 comments about Frommer's South Florida: With the Best of Miami & the Keys (Frommer's Complete).

1. Wow. I used to think that South Florida just meant Miami and palm trees. This book proved to me and my husband that South Florida is much, much more. I got the book on a bet with my husband, who insisted that So Flo was a lot of fun and not just laying out at a pool kind of fun. This book proved me wrong and I lost the bet, but boy was I glad to be a loser in this wager! This book is a must have for anyone who thinks that a trip to Florida can be hot and boring. Quite the contrary!! Thanks, Frommer's. We'll be back to So Flo very soon.



2. This is probably the best guidebook I ever read. The author has a really good writing style and it is genuinely interesting and fun to read (not that I'm suggesting you pick it over Fitzgerald or anything, just that it's a really well-written book). Her restaurant reviews are really excellent--just reading some of them made me start to drool. And while many of the restaurant listings are for priceyish places, she does list some great, fun, authentic, and in some cases, way off the beaten track yummy places to try. I trust her opinion completely!

   This is a really thorough guidebook, with good and honest hotel listings (one of the only people to vocalize what we all know--the Delano IS overrated!) and a great chapter on what to do and see if you want to do and see more than just the beaches of South Florida. The Miami coverage is awesome-- good tips on shopping, a really knowledgeable chapter on nighlife, and more.

   The Everglades chapter has a hilarious essay about how the author was reluctant to go the first time, and the coverage of the Keys, Palm Beaches, Boca, etc. are just as good. I usually expect a Frommer's guidebook to be a bit stuffier than this, but as soon as I read the intro, I knew I had to try this book, and I'm so happy I did. You will be too. It rocks!




3. Tourism generates over {$$$$} billion annually for the Florida economy, which is more than twice the entire GNP for Cuba. That is why there is a fierce fight for the Florida travel guide market. Frommer's is one of the best guides available.

   This South Florida guide is somewhat more expanded than "Frommer's Florida" Guide (see my review). If you are going to visit just MIAMI, the EVERGLADES, PALM BEACH, FT. LAUDERDALE or the KEYS, then you will find this guide more compact, lighter and a bit cheaper.

   The same great writing style that is in the Frommer's state guide is found in this more compact companion. The accommodation and dining recommendations are reliable and on the money. This guide lists the best restaurants that South Florida has to offer. A lodging and restaurant index would be a definite plus for this guide. As it stands now, if you have a restaurant you want to look up, you have to go through all the listings in the city you are in until you stumble across the name you seek or miss seeing it completely.

   The rating system is labored and difficult to understand. The explanation of the "new star rating system" is buried in the book and not indexed. It was by quirk that I found it. Strange.

   The Internet web site addresses provided for hotels could be more comprehensive considering that this is a 2003 guide. In today's world of "connectivity" you can visit the hotel sites and see the accommodations and rates prior to making reservations. And, website/email addresses are restricted to the lodging listings even though many of the restaurants now have their own websites with photos and menus and email to makes reservations.

   However, there are two significant areas in this guide that could use improvement: maps and hotels/restaurants.

   Regarding the maps: the maps in the guide are lackluster. More and better maps would greatly help the user.

   What put this guide on top of the competing guides is the clear and enjoyable writing style of the review. The introductions of the regional areas are the best of the guides I reviewed. You will do well if you have to chose just one South Florida guide and you select Frommer's.




4. Well, not really, but i've lived in south florida for 13 years and this book is a must have for anyone who lives down here or is thinking about visiting. Everyone thinks they have a true grasp of the miami scene, but this author actually does.



5. I work and travel to Miami. I think the book
   is a good guide but is insulting to adults.
   In the night life section, it is o.k. to be gay
   or lesbian but when you are an older adult the
   author will dog you and tell you that it is past
   your bed time for a good Latin music club. Hey,
   be nice and "inclusive."

No comments about Hidden Miami: Including Miami Beach, South Beach, Little Havana, Fort Lauderdale, and Palm Beach.

1 comments about The Complete Florida Beach Guide (Wild Florida).

1. "Provides information that cannot be obtained elsewhere in one source. This is info that beach guests would like to have."--Stephen P. Leatherman, (aka "Dr. Beach") author of America's Best Beaches
   
   "Florida beachgoers will find this book helpful in discovering their ideal beach. The detailed information here will give tourists and residents alike the chance to see just how many wonderful beaches Florida has."--Holly Ambrose, author of 30 Eco-Trips in Florida
   
   "Mary and Bill Burnham prove that Florida's beaches aren't just about soaking up rays. Revealing secret sweet spots throughout the Sunshine State, they've created the most detailed guide for beachgoers to ever hit the shelves. I'll keep it in my car for reference!"--Sandra Friend, author of Hiker's Guide to the Sunshine State
   
   "The University Press of Florida celebrates the diversity of the state's outstanding beaches in its broad-ranging series Wild Florida with the Complete Florida Beach Guide. Written by the dynamic husband and wife team of Bill and Mary Burnham, [this] is the most definitive work of its type."
   -From the foreward by Series Editor, M. Timothy O'Keefe