I like books. That's why I'm a writer. I'm the type who reads guidebooks cover to cover, and I read a lot of them. These are my three favorites:

• The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World by Bob Sehlinger and Len Testa

  This is a huge guide, complete, fair, and employs actuaries to develop crowd predictions and touring plans to maximize your time. An essential read in my opinion.

• Mousejunkies by Bill Burke

  You know how sometimes you read a book and say, "If this author and I knew each other in real life, we would be besties and spend the whole day at the pub drinking beer and talking about Disney?" No, just me? Whatever. That was my reaction reading this book. It was like I found my people. Funny, in-depth, and a read that even my guidebook reading averse wife enjoyed. I'm not sure how this will read to someone planning their first ever WDW vacation, but I'm guessing it will be amazing.

• Birnbaum's Walt Disney World For Kids

  This is the guidebook to hand to your kids to read, and will help them develop their must-do lists. Full color, advice from kids, fun pages to fill in. Note: Birnbaum partners with Walt Disney World to produce guidebooks, which means everything is awesome. Even Stitch's Great Escape. So some cross-referencing may be necessary.

Hey, I know that I'm a website, so anything I list is probably technically competition. But I don't care, because I care about getting you the best information. And sometimes other places to it better.

• The Official Walt Disney World site

  The big daddy. The official source. I spend an embarassing amount of time on this site, even when I'm not planning my next vacation.

• The Disney Parks Blog

  A sister to the big daddy, this is the best place to keep up on new things in the parks in an easy to read blog format.

• The immensity, the in-depthness, and the time and committment that went into this site is incredible. Run mainly by one woman, Shannon Albert, in Texas, it has blossomed into one of the top go-to sites for planning. And listen to her podcast: it's excellent! WDW Prep SChool has recently introduced members-only content, which I'm sure is absolutely amazing. I will say, however, that Shannon's travel style is not mine. And that's okay! She has an article about what she carries in her park bag each day, and it truly covers all bases. Whereas my park bag usually consists of a guidemap, my phone, a bottle of soda and a pack of smokes. Sometimes her site feels like a lot of pressure and causes me to question if I'm doing enough (yes, I am), but it has a wonderful search function that easily pulls up articles.

  This past June my travel dates coincided with Shannon, and we spent a couple hours at the Tiffins Lounge in Animal Kingdom sampling some cocktails and chattinig Disney. We're both theater loving Disney geeks, and it was a wonderful afternoon.

• Touringplans.com

  From the same people behind Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World. I love this site, and subscribe to it. Not only are the articles excellent and easy to read, they have what I've found to be the most accurate crowd calendars. I also really like the personalized touring plans feature, which factors in your walking speed, your ideal amount of waiting in line time, and will optimize on those and other factors.

• The Disney Food Blog

  Want restaurant reviews? You found them!

• The WDW Transportation map from WDW Focus

  Anyone on Walt Disney World property may use the extensive network of monorail, busses, and boats to travel around the resort. For those who like visuals, this is a super great thing to keep handy.

• My Disney Experience

  Did you miss the entire page I wrote on all the reasons you need this app? Go download it now. I'll wait.

• Lines

  The third part of the trifecta of The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World and Touringplans.com, I find myself using this app almost more than MDE when I'm in the parks, mainly for wait times and looking up menus. If you're on the DDP, the menus on this site have the clearest list of snack options. If you have saved touring plans for your trip on the website, they will automatically import into this app and you can change and fiddle with them as needed. Technology is awesome. I love living in the future.