Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher*
Toting kids on the road? Our crack team of parent-authors has assembled the motherlode of ideas and advice for kids and families of all ages - where to go, what to see, and how to answer at least some of those 'but why?'s.
- Fully revised and redesigned
- Health chapter written with a medical expert
- Tips on choosing the right kind of trip for your family
- Special advice for solo parents and parents with teenagers
- Travel games to while away long trips
Authors: Written and researched by Lonely Planet, Brigitte Barta, Katharina Lobeck Kane, Celeste Brash, Amelia Thomas, Monique Choy, Korina Miller, Fritz Burke, Charlotte Hindle, Jayne D'Arcy
About Lonely Planet: Started in 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel guide publisher with guidebooks to every destination on the planet, as well as an award-winning website, a suite of mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet's mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places where they travel.
TripAdvisor Travellers' Choice Awards 2012 and 2013 winner in Favorite Travel Guide category
'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times
'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves; it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia)
*#1 in the world market share - source: Nielsen Bookscan. Australia, UK and USA. March 2012-January 2013
LONELY PLANET aims to cater for every independent traveller, whatever the destination, whatever the style of travel and whatever the phase of the journey.
Most helpful customer reviews
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful.
Good Book ... If You're New To This
By Arnim Zola
If you're a new to traveling with kids, this book provides a good overview. If you've made several trips before, you really don't need this book.
My own personal experience has been flying with kids from NY to Hawaii (10+ hours each way) and from NY to Hong Kong (15+ hours each way). I was hoping for additional tips to make things smoother in flight but there wasn't anything earth shattering here.
The book is broken down into a few key sections:
- Trip Preparation (52 pages, 8 of which is dedicated to air travel specifically)
- On the Road (20 pages on routines while traveling)
- Types of Holidays (21 page overview on camping, resorts, tours, etc)
- Destinations (155 pages on different cities to visit around the world with about 1/2 page dedicated to each city)
- Travel Games (4 pages)
So it's not a "complete resource" as the full book title claims. More than 1/2 of the book is a travel guide of various cities. And each city is only given 1/2 page of coverage. I would suggest buying a few travel books focusing on the cities that you are considering instead. (There are many travel destination books with a focus on kids. And most travel books have at least a small section for kids). I feel this book could have been a lot better if it used the ;ast half of the book for more travel tips rather than an overview of cities around the world.
GOOD POINTS
===========
+ Good overview of air travel with kids (if you've never done it before). Also consider the CARES, Child Aviation Restraint System harness in place of lugging a car seat. You can buy this harness for kids 2+ and it's FAA approved for use in flight. But this wasn't mentioned in the book.
+ Good tips on trip preparation like immunizations, medical kits, etc.
BAD POINTS
==========
- This book is more of a destination guide and each destination is only covered with 1/2 page of information on average.
- Not really needed if you've traveled with kids (successfully) before
SUMMARY
========
I love Lonely Planet guides and this was not the among the best. It's good for an overview for the inexperienced. It is not the "complete resource" that it claims to be.
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful.
Definitely worth it for new parents, decent for experienced travelers...
By Y. R. Wu
Summary: An excellent resource for new parents (5 stars) who haven't traveled with small kids before. A decent value for more experienced parents (3 stars). Targeted at the "Lonely Planet" type - those who prefer traveling off the beaten path.
I have to admit I was somewhat jaded when I received this book to review from Amazon Vine - My wife and I have taken two toddlers (including a terrible two) to Taiwan and had three kids five and under to the Virgin Islands, Utah, Puerto Rico, Maine, and on planes more times than we could count. What could this book tell me I hadn't already lived?
For one, more than half the book (~185 of 275 pages) is dedicated to telling you which places are good for given activities (Beach, camping, cities, adventure, etc) while being kid friendly. It also gives a few pages on travel games you can play to keep the kids occupied. There is also advice on older children, up to teenagers.
I admit that much of the advice in he first two sections ("Before you go" and "on the road") seemed very basic, but I expected that given my experience with our kids. There are some good tips on how to address issues like schoolwork while you're away. Very little is rocket science, but it's a thorough resource for covering all the bases.
We have several extensive travel checklists - one for overnight road trips, others for week long trips by plane. A sample checklist for different scenarios would have been a good add.
In fact, I'd recommend anyone traveling with kids adopt this approach - it's not like you can easily go get the right kind of pacifier or lovey at 11 am in a foreign country....
Full disclosure: I received this item through the Amazon "Vine" program
If you've found this review helpful, please let me know!
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Not much more than your average parent already knows
By Bookphile
When I travel, I usually swear by travel guides. Thanks to the insider information provided by some of them, I've seen truly extraordinary sights in places such as Hawaii and Paris that I would otherwise not have known existed. My general rule of thumb when preparing for a trip is to get myself a good guidebook.
Naturally, I was excited about this one. My husband and I are planning a trip to Europe next summer and we will be taking along a six-year-old and a one-year-old. We have some ideas of things we can do that will be fun for the kids but I was looking for some hidden gems that wouldn't be known to the casual traveler, the kinds of tips that only insiders would know about and that would help us to make this a wonderful trip for the kids.
I eagerly turned to the section on Europe only to find it extremely slim. Apparently, countries like Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland--amongst others--are a total waste of time if you have kids as they are not even covered in the book. Even the countries that are covered--such as France and Italy--consist of little more than some very general information. Thanks to the guidebook, I now know that taking the kids for a gelato in Italy should prove an enjoyable experience for them. I'm sure I would never have thought of this myself. Really, the only thing worthwhile are the hotels named in various regions as that does give me something of an idea of good places to stay with kids. I did also find the bits of information on how people of other cultures respond to kids to be somewhat informative. Still, there is no real insightful information here and I'd venture to say that any parent would deduce that taking their kids to Euro Disney would likely go over well with said children.
The only other part of the book that I found at all useful was the section on travel games. There were some good ideas in there as to games to keep the kids occupied not only while in the car but also while standing in line waiting to enter tourist attractions. I will definitely test some of these suggestions when we are on our trip.
Other than that, there is really nothing to recommend this guide. I'd definitely advise spending your hard-earned dollars on a Frommer's or Fodor's guide. They may not specifically be tailored toward family travel but they offer plenty of insider information that will allow any parent to make a more informed decision about what to see and what to pass up while traveling with the little ones. Not so of this guidebook.
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