The Living Orlando Book Review and Giveaway for the month of November will focus on “101 Things You Never Knew About Walt Disney World: An Unauthorized Look at Tributes, Little Touches, And Inside Jokes”, by Kevin Yee.

As the title states, the book contains 101 insider facts on the four theme parks at the Walt Disney World Resort, plus one fact about the resort in general. There are 41 facts about the Magic Kingdom, 25 about Epcot, 15 about the Disney-MGM Studios, and 19 about Animal Kingdom. Each of the items starts with a “to the point” sentence, followed by a detailed description and is then wrapped up with a “furthermore” section that provides details on other items related to the current fact.

As an example, here’s a fact not found in the book that’s available through Amazon.com’s “Search Inside” feature …

The Indian statue on Main Street is only one of many details and tributes imported directly from Disneyland.

The first Disney park built after Disneyland, the Magic Kingdom inherited quite a lot from its predecessor, including such obvious traits as divisions into themed lands (transitions between which are subtle but complete, including different sidewalk colorations), the tradition of honoring company officials on second-floor windows, and the Indian on Main Street. At Disneyland, this statue was originally created because there was a tobacco store right behind it, something that was never present in the Magic Kingdom. Today the Indian in Orlando is one of many artifacts that exist only to create an atmosphere that resembles Disneyland.

FURTHERMORE: The scale of buildings and vehicles is one immediately noticeable difference between the parks. Because Disneyland was built on less acreage, everything was often built to a small scale, utilizing “forced perspective” (features get smaller than real life as they get taller) to make buildings look bigger. While the Magic Kingdom also uses forced perspective, it does so with more subtlety and less often, because the park was built on more acres and offers the ability to create vehicles and buildings at full size.

In addition to this book, this month’s winner will also receive a copy of “The Unofficial Dining Guide to Walt Disney World 2007: Current Menus and Prices for All Restaurants at the Parks and Hotels”, also by Kevin Yee. With these two books in hand, you’ll have plenty of reading material while you’re on the monorail or in line at one of the attractions.

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