Universal Orlando with Kids, 2nd Edition: Your Ultimate Guide to Orlando's Universal Studios, Citywalk, and Islands of Adventure

I ordered this book to get an idea of what we could expect at Universal. This is a great book to have before and while you are there. We saved time and money with the book. There are a few minor errors but things change so I will assume that is why. We travel with 4 kids ages 2-13 so planning is important to say the least! A great time was had by all and we definitely would not have had such a successful vacation without the preplanning this book allowed.

I love this book series and consider it to be the most helpful type of book for families traveling with kids under the age of 12. Our family has gone to Disney World many times but just recently began adding trips to Universal to our vacations as well. Our kids are 6 and 10. It helped a lot that the writer prepared us for the fact that Universal rides are louder and scarier than those at Disney world. I think otherwise we may have made some choices that would have flipped out our younger child - the signs in Universal are all cartoon like and very misleading.The book also helped us to decide to stay in one of the Universal hotels, the Hard Rock hotel. I think I might have skipped this for another type of hotel both becuase I would have thought the Hard Rock wasn't for families or because other hotels in the area were less expensive. But the book convinved me that since we were going in summer we would need the front of the line privledges that people get when they stay at a Universal hotel. Boy were we spoiled! we saw every ride we wanted at both Islands and Universal without waiting at all and rode some things more than once. And the Hard Rock was a great, friendly hotel where the kids were treated very nicely. A helpful book!

I spent two days at Universal last week with my 15 year old son and 3 year old daughter. To put it mildly, they were not interested in doing the same things! This book helped us plan in advance which rides he wanted to ride, places in the parks she would enjoy, and the things we could all do together. By the way she writes, you can tell the author is a mother herself and has realistic ideas about toddlers and teens. My son ended up taking the book and going to some of the roller coaster type rides by himself while I stayed in the play areas. Without a good sense of what to expect, I'm not sure I would have let him split off from us like that, but this book helped us feel like we knew the park before we got there.

I disagree with the review above. I found Wiley's book very helpful. Granted, she didn't print full menus, but as the mother of three kids I care more about the rides and ways to save money and save time than real specific info. I liked the fact the book was small enough to tuck into my purse....her ride descriptions were accurate and gave a lot of information on how scary the rides were. (Very important, since the rides at Universal are much much scarier than anything at Disney!) She was also right about the way Universal sort of tricks you into buying too many souvenirs by where they put the stores.

I've searched for a guide to Universal and up until now have found nothing. The parks are great but information about them is usually squeezed into the back of travel guides. This book is well-researched and through, with information about the rides, area hotels, places to eat. Since I have three kids, ages 3-11, I appreciated the fact she rated the rides by age categories and gave lots of information about what is too wild or scary for very young kids.