Back-pocket guidebooks
So you’re planning your trip to your favorite U.S. Disney resort over the holidays and you’re bracing yourself for the crowds and the long, long (long) lines. Lots of time going nowhere. You’ve got your usual deck of Trivial Pursuit cards, puzzle book, MP3 player, magnetic chess set or other favorite attraction-queue entertainment all packed, but your heart doesn’t seem to be in it any more. You’ve done that many times before, and it’s just getting a bit tired.
Never fear! I’ve got some really great suggestions for books designed to slip easily into your back pocket, and virtually guaranteed to enhance your Disney theme park experience at the same time, regardless of which coast you’re heading for.
Hidden Mickeys Guide to WDW
First up is the latest from Dr. Steven M. Barrett, better known as Steve Barrett, Hidden Mickey hunter extraordinaire. The recently-released third edition of Hidden Mickeys: A Field Guide to Walt Disney World’s Best Kept Secrets (link) is bigger than ever, now sporting over 700 Hidden Mickeys.
What is a Hidden Mickey, you ask? A Hidden Mickey is defined by Barrett as a partial or complete impression of Mickey Mouse placed by the Imagineers and artists to blend into the designs of Disney attractions, hotels, restaurants, and other areas.
At MouseFest 2005, I participated in one of Barrett’s organized Hidden Mickey Hunts, where participants examined some disputed Mickeys and voted on whether they were actual Hidden Mickeys or just wishful thinking. I also ran into Barrett and some other friends on my latest Walt Disney World trip, and ended up trying to help verify a Mickey at the Italy pavilion that was submitted to his Hidden Mickeys Guide Web site by a fan. I explain this as a way of showing the amount of work that Barrett puts into trying to ensure that his book is complete and accurate.
[Disclaimer: I am listed in the Acknowledgements section of the book after being credited with providing proof of a Mickey overhead in the queue for The Seas With Nemo and Friends (link). It’s a 3-pointer in the book, number 64 in the Epcot chapter, and the lower photo on the page linked above.
For an in-depth interview with book author Steve Barrett, check out yesterday’s MouseStation podcast.
As an added bonus (and this I have not had a chance to personally verify, though many have written about it), Barrett has used his Walt Disney World knowledge, embodied in his earlier book, The Hassle-Free Walt Disney World Vacation (link)—which itself has a new edition coming out—to structure the Hidden Mickey hunts in the book to steer you along a path that will allow you to avoid much of the crowds in the parks.
The book is not so much an encyclopedic reference as a tour of the parks with a focus on the Hidden Mickeys to be found throughout. For example, at the park opening of the Magic Kingdom, he sends you to Frontierland to grab a Fastpass for Splash Mountain, ride Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, then return to Splash Mountain to use your Fastpass before walking to Adventureland to ride Pirates of the Caribbean. Along the way, by the time you finish at Pirates, he has also provided clues for you to look for 12 Hidden Mickeys and one Hidden Tinker Bell. Sure sounds like a good touring plan to avoid the hordes that head for Space Mountain first thing in the morning while enjoying the details along the way.
While you can look up any specific location in the handy index in the back of the book, this is not really an straight listing of Hidden Mickeys. If you’re looking for a reference tome, you’ll be much better served to head for the book’s companion Web site, HiddenMickeysGuide.com, where you can look up any location in any park.
This book is designed to slip into your back pocket, where you can grab it while standing in a queue to see where you might be able to look for Hidden Mickeys around you. And if you can’t find a Mickey while looking for it, there’s a “Hints” section behind each “Clues” section. But the book is really not recommended for first-time visitors to Walt Disney World, as focusing on such a small portion of the wonderful details all around the resort would detract from the wonder that can only be experienced by a first-time guest.
Disneyland Guide
For years, Disneyland fans have been writing to Barrett asking him “What about us? Where’s our Hidden Mickeys Guide?” Well, following some West Coast research time and contributions from dozens of fans, the first edition of Disneyland’s Hidden Mickeys: A Field Guide to Disneyland Resort’s Best Kept Secrets (link) was released earlier this year. A much slimmer volume that its East Coast companion, this book sports over 170 Hidden Mickeys.
As a first edition, the expectations are a bit lower. Not only are there fewer Mickeys to find, but all attractions are not covered. Truth be told, I was a bit disappointed to find that only 27 of Disneyland’s 52 attractions are listed in the book. That means that another 25 attractions either don’t have Hidden Mickeys or the Mickeys hidden there just haven’t been found. (Though 11 stores and restaurants are listed, as well.) Further, only 12 of 27 attractions at Disney’s California Adventure made the book, along with 9 shops and eateries.
Now, it’s much harder for Barrett to check out Hidden Mickey sightings in California, since he lives in the Orlando area, but I had been hoping for a bit more from this volume. Still, there’s really no competition here and this book does still give you a full day’s worth of Mickey hunting. I’d say that, if you’re looking for a fun way to pass some time at Disneyland, pick the book up anyway. If not, then it wouldn’t be a stretch to recommend that you wait for the second edition, which is virtually guaranteed to include a much more comprehensive view of the resort.
Next, we’ll take a look at another series of back-pocket guidebooks that will give you another perspective on the parks around you.
Imagineering Field Guides
The Imagineering Field Guides to the Disney parks by “The Imagineers” are a growing series of books that are actually written by Imagineer Alex Wright, though much of the artwork and the stories told come from other Imagineers, past and present. Thus far, the series includes three volumes:
Coming next summer, the Disneyland volume will join the series (link), likely followed by Disney’s Hollywood Studios in 2009 and Disney’s California Adventure (or whatever it may be called by then) some time after that.
These books have some wonderful artwork from the Imagineering archives, along with great stories about how parks and attractions were developed. Some of these stories are well-known, while others are not often (if ever) heard outside of Imagineering circles. In a podcast interview last month, Wright told me that he’s tried to strike a balance between showing new artwork that people haven’t seen yet and showing some of the classic artwork that everyone expects to see.
Wright, a huge Disney fan himself, really enjoys working on the books, and noted that it’s a great extracurricular project to be working on. He noted that the most challenging part of putting the books together has been which stories to tell in which book and to maintain a logic to what goes into each book within the context of the series, as many stories would be appropriate to multiple books in the series.
One helpful and interesting part of the books is right up front. Disney fans think of Imagineers as these incredibly talented and creative people who come up with the fabulous ideas that become Disney theme park attractions, and they’re right. But if you asked many of those fans what kind of jobs those Imagineers have, they’d respond “um, they’re Imagineers, so they all Imagineer things, right?” An eight-page section at the start of each book gives a crash course in Imagineering, including a two-page glossary and four pages of brief job descriptions of 22 different Imagineering disciplines. (My son, the budding Imagineer, loves that part, as it helped him to clarify that he wants to be a concept designer.) Wright noted in our interview that the four pages are not a complete list of the disciplines, and that each of the ones that are listed have subdivisions within them, as well.
Like Barrett’s guides, the Imagineering Guides are sized to fit into your back pocket so that you can carry them around the park. A fold-out map inside the back cover also serves as a location index, so if you’re in the park and wonder what the Imagineer’s-Eye Tour book has to say about that attraction whose queue you’re standing in, you can flip out the back cover, quickly find your page, and check out the information offered there.
It may point out the claw marks on the floor of the waiting area in Grizzly Hall, where other patrons impatiently shuffled their feet … er … paws while waiting to see the Country Bear Jamboree, or explain why the Asian water buffalo was chosen to decorate the roof of the Enchanted Tiki Room. You might even learn how Imagineer Mark Sumner used a 40-year-old Erector set to design the ride mechanism for Soarin’.
If you’re looking for historical artwork or stories of attractions gone by, this isn’t your book, as Wright focused on making it a guidebook to the current parks. Of course, since Disney parks are never finished, several changes have already taken place since the release of the books, such as the replacement of The Timekeeper with Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor (which Wright himself worked on).
In any case, these books (and those yet to come in these series) are great volumes to tuck into your pocket and carry around the parks with you or, in the case of the Imagineering Field Guides, to just crack open and enjoy anywhere.
