"Long Live The Guidebook" - BA

I think the first travel guide I ever read was The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World. It was packed with practical information on how to best navigate to beat the crowds. From then on I've been hooked on travel guides. My wife and I have a date every Sunday morning at our neighbourhood Tim Horton's coffee shop and we bring travel guides as we plan and dream about future adventures. If I had to rank my favourites;

1. RS Guides. Like the Unofficial Series, I am hooked on them for the practical information. Rick's info was invaluable for our first few European adventures.
2. Insight Guides. I usually start with these when we've decided on our next trip. I love the photos as I'm leafing through looking for sites that might be of interest.
3. Eyewitness Travel. Same reasons as #2.
4. Eyewitness Travel Top 10 series. Along with the RS guides these are the most likely I'll bring with me on a trip. Compact and organized for quick reference.
5. National Geographic Traveler. I love the comprehensive history it details of a location.

Some of those BA-recommended guidebooks look interesting, others a little too idiosyncratic to be very useful. The NY Times "36 Hours" articles are mostly about places to eat and drink at high-end prices. If I didn't have a higher opinion of the Times' integrity I'd suspect it was getting kickbacks.

My first guidebook was Arthur Frommer's Europe on $5 a Day, over 50 years ago when you could actually get by with that amount, at least if you were young and flexible and didn't mind a level of austerity that most of us wouldn't accept now. I recall that he often described places as "wonderfully cheap," which gives you an idea about his priorities.

Unofficial Guide to Disneyland is great. I went to Disneyland well over 100 times growing up and never accomplished as much in one day as when I used that guide. I picture them having a bunch of UCLA grad students standing in line and recording their wait times at different times of day to compile the book.