A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Magical Meals, a new book about dining at Disney World. It does a good job helping readers discover ways to find value and stick to their budgets when they plan their meals at the Mouse. Another new book, The DFB Guide to Walt Disney World Dining, covers cost-conscious and practical issues such as budgets and restaurant reservations as well, but it also focuses on the dining experience with plenty of recommendations about where and what to eat at the vast resort.
Author AJ Wolfe writes with great authority when she makes her recommendations. She is the person behind the Disney Food Blog, a unique online cornucopia of reviews, photos, recipes, news, and other info about chowing down at the Disney parks and resorts. The DFB Guide is presented as an e-book and is packed with handy links to content within the book, to the DFB site, and to third-party resources. It also includes interactive worksheets to help readers make their Disney World dining plans (although the PDF-based budget forms didn't tally items as I anticipated they would).
The 256-page book is loaded with charts such as Disney World's top five underrated table-service restaurants (I couldn't agree more with the top pick, Sanaa) and intriguing tips. I've been covering Disney World for a long time, and I never knew about Epcot's World Showcase Wine Walk ($20 for a sampling of six wines) until I read Wolfe's book. Wolfe deconstructs the "Disney Dining Plan," Disney World's somewhat convoluted dining packages, to help readers determine whether any of the options might make sense (and save cents) for them. She also offers a restaurant-by-restaurant overview of the many places to eat at the parks, hotels, and throughout the resort.
The book is easy to navigate, fun to read, and incites Pavlovian responses with its mouth-watering descriptions and images of Disney dishes. If you're heading to Disney World, you really should make a dining plan as part of your preparations. The DFB Guide is a comprehensive, invaluable plan-making resource.