Book Review

The Disney Queue Line Survival Guidebook by Kimberly Button. 2006 ed. Infinity Press. 386 p. 0-7414-3268-4 $19.95

Kimberly Button, a former Walt Disney World (WDW) and Disney Cruise Line cast member, has written a handy guide to easing the time standing in all of those lines at WDW. She states in the introduction that the book “gives you only the essential, straightforward information that you need to simply enjoy Disney’s theme park attractions along with plenty of entertaining fun and games so that your entire day, even the time spent in queue lines, can be purely magical.”

This sums up Ms. Button’s work pretty well. She has divided the book by theme park and then by individual land. Within each land, she describes the rides; approximate time of each ride, helpful hints and if there is a fear factor or other important information. The real fun and excitement begins after the ride overview. For each attraction, there are several pages of trivia, scavenger hunt items and word scrambles.

At first, I was a little unsure of the value of the book. Would I really take this into the park? Would my kids enjoy it? Would I enjoy it?

I thought back to my last trip to WDW and realized that the guide really would have come in handy while waiting for restaurant seating, downtime at the hotel, waiting for the bus and for planning the trip with the kids in mind. I am a trivia hound and often the tidbits and facts that I spout don’t seem to interest my eight year old. This book has various levels of trivia…there were questions to make you laugh and ones that befuddled me! The kids would have loved the word searches and I know that it would have been fun to help them find the scavenger items while waiting in line.

The real questions are whether I would recommend this title and to whom? Wholeheartedly! I believe that this guide does offer something completely unique and worthwhile. I would suggest taking post-it notes and marking the specific areas you are going to visit for that day. Another idea would be to highlight the correct answer for the trivia questions or make a small notation next to the answer. It will make it easier to figure out who is right while you are standing in line. Almost anyone would benefit from this book. WDW veterans will find new things to discover and first-timers will be able to use the book to keep their sanity during long waits.

The book is approximately 8”x5” and about an inch thick. It is a backpack book. I would expect it to be rather dog-eared by the end of a week long vacation at WDW. You will be shuffling it in and out of your bag whenever you find yourself with more than a 5 minute wait anywhere!