Realityland: True-Life Adventures at Walt Disney World
by David Koenig
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Book Summary Information
Author: David KoenigEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2007-10
ISBN: 0964060523
Number of pages: 334
Publisher: Bonaventure Press
Book Reviews of Realityland: True-Life Adventures at Walt Disney World
Book Review: Entertaining but flawed assessment of Disney World
Summary: 3 Stars
The inherent flaw in a book of this type is that an author MUST be a fan of Disney in order to devote the time and energy to writing an entire book on Disney. So, while the book has fun details and information, it also drags down from the wealth of information presented. For example, in the middle of the book, Koenig simply chronicles all of the injuries and resulting lawsuits that occurred at Disney World. It gets really boring fast and detracts from the otherwise chronological account of the book. But, the details on how Walt settled on Florida and the preparations made were very interesting. The expansion of Walt Disney World into Epcot was a little long and drawn-out. MGM Studios and Animal Kingdom seem to be almost afterthoughts to Koenig.
Overall, the book gave a good and rather balanced view of the Disney World history. Clearly, Koenig dislikes unions but sympathized with Disney workers striving their best for the company. And while Koenig attempts to be balanced, clearly he is a huge fan of Walt Disney (the person) and generally hates Michael Eisner.
A couple pet peeves I had with this book: (1) There were a number of grammatical errors that should have been edited out. (2) There we almost no maps. I understand that--being an unauthorized account--Disney may not have loaned official maps of the parks, but some maps of the area would have been helpful. Descriptions with no visual references were tough to follow. It has been a number of years since I was at Disney World and really do not recall all the places that Koenig assumes the reader will know and understand. (3) Way too many people are listed and quoted. I started to lose track of who was involved and why they were significant. Between quotes and references, I just didn't care anymore who said what, just what the story behind it was. (4) The end just ended, without really any wrap-up or conclusion
Overall, this was an interesting book that sagged in the middle and suffered from its own overwhelming amount of information, but it was well-researched and generally fun to read.
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