Maps of the Disney Parks

As a self admitted map nerd, I’m fascinated by Disney parks ones in particular. I just find it so interesting which landscape features artists choose to feature, how lands transition, and what new rides emerging does to change the overall look from above. So imagine my excitement when I found a book on shopDisney focused entirely on that very subject.

PREMISE

This book takes a journey through time by way of maps, from Disneyland’s earliest days all the way to Shanghai’s final layout. From page to page, you’ll explore the physical worlds of Disney and have a new appreciation for how vastly different they each are, with their own distinct designs and features.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

From the publisher:

Kevin Neary has coauthored The Hidden Mickeys of Walt Disney World (2016) with his wife SUSAN and four Disney trivia books (1992-2000) with Dave Smith for The Walt Disney Company as well as two baseball books (Major League Dads: Baseball’s Best Players Reflect on the Fathers Who Inspired Them to Love the Game, 2012, and Closer: Major League Players Reveal the Inside Pitch on Saving the Game, 2013) with Leigh A. Tobin for Running Press. Kevin has also written 715: Reflections of Hammerin’ Hank & the Home Run that Made History (2015) for Skyhorse Publishing. His next baseball book will be The Manager: Rules of Engagement and will feature a collection of interviews and stories from fifty of the game’s best managers over the past fifty years.

Vanessa Hunt is a Walt Disney Imagineer and a lifelong Disney aficionado. Her education is in art history, and she is part of the group responsible for the more than 160,000 pieces of original artwork preserved in the Walt Disney Imagineering Art Collection. She has been curator of several Imagineering exhibits featuring many of the works from the Art Library collection, and has consulted for The Walt Disney Family Museum. Vanessa is also the coauthor of the wildly popular Poster Art of the Disney Parks (2012) and Maps of the Disney Parks (2016) as well as the designer on Marc Davis in His Own Words: Imagineering the Disney Theme Parks (2019).

MY REVIEW

The book’s premise and layout is quite simple – if you enjoy park maps, you’ll love it. If you don’t care about those things, this book has nothing to offer you. The images within are really clear and you can spend a long time absorbing each page. Some pages have more of the “artsy” maps, while others are more literal like you’d get from a physical map at the park gates.

One comment I would make, and I don’t think it’s a criticism; this really isn’t a book designed as a resource. If you’re a park historian, or hoping to get a complete timeline of how the maps changed and parks grew, this book isn’t for you. Instead, it’s more of a collection over time, and there are certainly gaps in the timeline.