Rating: 
Summary: An insightful, insider's overview of Disney's "dream world"
Review: A smart idea! Instead of visiting as reporters for a few weeks, the authors moved themselves and their children to Disney's planned community of Celebration, Florida -- then stayed for a year! Here's a real inside viewpoint of Disney's "perfect small town", brought to life by two people who are smart, literate and have a broader view of the meaning, trends and consequences of planned living. As investigative reporters, they cast a wide net -- interviewing executives and residents; getting the back story; examining other planned communities across America (both recent and past). As residents and parents, they also deliver a more realistic, intimate portrait of scraped knees and bruised egos. The lesson is made clear by good, crisp reporting and insider experience: while people can move their families, their possessions and their lives to a new community, ultimately, one thing never changes -- who they are. A delicious read.
Rating: 
Summary: A bit "bubble-gum" (but I like bubblegum!)
Review: An interesting account on life in Disney's startup town, Celebration, Florida. The authors do a good job of chronicling the pros and cons of the town...and staying unbiased in their approach (after all, they too were Celebration residents looking to increase their property investment). I enjoyed the emperical accounts of life in the town, and life with the towns-people. It gets you thinking about where modern-day suburbia has gone wrong and what can be done to bring back "Mayberry."Overall, I was sorry to put the book down because it seemed to be a nice escape each time I would read it. My only critcism is that the chapter titles are misleading - often the titles are covered in the first few pages in the chapter, and the authors get on another interesting tanget that has nothing to do with the rest of the chapter in the remaining pages.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointed
Review: As a follower of the Celebration story for many years, I was greatly disappointed by what I thought would be a new and interesting perspective on the model town. It was nothing of the sort. The book had the feel of so many pages of anti-Disney propaganda, and the repetitiveness of a bad serial. The authors of Celebration U.S.A. clearly made up their minds about Celebration long before signing off on a mortgage. Lacking in the detail needed to illustrate Celebration's experiment with the tenets of neotraditional style, the book offered splashes of cliched generalities such as "a return to the past" and "recapturing tradition." It soon became some sort of mantra exhorting Disney's ownership of the town, the rules imposed on property improvements and maintenance, and, interestingly, the attention the town received. Most tactless of all was the shadow of mockery cast on every description of residents, conversation with neighbors, and interaction with people doing what the authors SHOULD have been doing: giving the town a chance.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointed
Review: As a follower of the Celebration story for many years, I was greatly disappointed by what I thought would be a new and interesting perspective on the model town. It was nothing of the sort. The book had the feel of so many pages of anti-Disney propaganda, and the repetitiveness of a bad serial. The authors of Celebration U.S.A. clearly made up their minds about Celebration long before signing off on a mortgage. Lacking in the detail needed to illustrate Celebration's experiment with the tenets of neotraditional style, the book offered splashes of cliched generalities such as "a return to the past" and "recapturing tradition." It soon became some sort of mantra exhorting Disney's ownership of the town, the rules imposed on property improvements and maintenance, and, interestingly, the attention the town received. Most tactless of all was the shadow of mockery cast on every description of residents, conversation with neighbors, and interaction with people doing what the authors SHOULD have been doing: giving the town a chance.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book! But...
Review: As a longtime Disney fan and Florida resident, I was very interested to hear more about Celebration. The book was good, I had to buy it for research reasons, but I finished the book a little skeptical about Disney, primarily the corporation's means of controlling its employees. The authors' experience was certainly eye-opening, as were the sacrifices people made to live in Celebration (financial and career-wise). What bugged me the most, however, were the authors' criticism of Seaside, the New Urbanist town in Northern Florida. Every chance the authors had to criticize Seaside, a different city with different aims, they pounced upon like a mouse pounces upon a block of cheese. I have lived very close to Seaside for my entire life, and if I had to choose, I'd live in Seaside any day over Celebration--the quality of building is much better, and the people are friendlier.
Rating:
Summary: A worthy contribution to the literature of urban planning
Review: Authors Frantz and Collins do an excellent job of treading the delicate line between participant and observer in this in depth, inside, and insightful look at Disney's planned town.I opened the book expecting a hatchet job (these two are reporters, after all) but discovered a balanced and feeling account of what it's like to take part in a turbulent experiment in creating a "real" EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow). Best of all, Frantz and Collins place Celebration in the context of the rich and fascinating history of planned communities in America. My guess is this book will prove an eye-opener for Disney devotees and detractors alike.
Rating:
Summary: "Nothing to Celebrate" when reporters move in
Review: Based on excerpts from the book that dealt with Celeration School, it is apparent that the school should be shut down immediately. How dare they expect the children to learn self discipline or use integrated subject learning. We all know that teacher lecturing, student note taking, and regurgitation of information is the only real way to learn. As a teacher it has been my experience that if a child can be inspired to be an active learner the "basics," like math and punctuation, will follow. However, what would I know. Howard Gardner, who has done extensive research in the field of education and learning has apparently been wasting his time. He should have simply consulted these two writers who are infinitely more qualified. Hopefully, the authors will choke on every nickle they make from this book. It is more than apparent that they moved into the community for the sole purpose of gathering dirt to put in a book in order to put money in their pockets. If they wanted to make money off Disney why didn't they save themselves the trouble of moving and just do what others have done, sue Disney because they found some subliminal message in one of their movies?
Rating:
Summary: An engaging book. An important book.
Review: Celebration may be the most important experiment in urban living in the last quarter century. Douglas Frantz and Cathy Collins have written exactly the kind of book most of us want to read on the topic -- one that's well-researched and well thought out, but also deeply personal and highly engaging. Their narrative flows along at an unstoppable pace. As you turn from incident to incident, from chapter to chapter, you don't even realize you're learning so much -- about the history of utopias, about arhictecture, about the promise and peril of starting over from scratch. Not until you near the end do you realize you've been privvy to one of the great experiments in the American Dream. Most of the commentary about this book suggests it is about Disney. It's not. This book is about America, about how we love to build something to new, and about the problems that come when our dreams come up against reality. No matter what community you live in, this book will help make your neighborhood a better place, because it will help you be a better neighbor.
Rating: 
Summary: Though full of interesting facts, a bit flat.
Review: Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins did their homework. They moved to Celebration, joined the organizations, interviewed the principals, sent their kids to school, hung out with the locals. However, their quest for objectivity strips the book of any life it could have had. I know these smart and well-travelled reporters had opinions about the neighbors, the lack of intellectual discussions, the maddening pastels, but there is only the barest hint of this. They try so hard to like Celebration you can see their jaws clenched through the smile. I wished I could shake them have them really confide in me. Although they joined every organization and supposedly made many friends, it was a difficult decision for them to choose to stay more than a year. In carefully worded phrases, they admit it is not for them. On a technical note, since the two of them wrote the book together, they would say "we did this" and then refer to "Doug and Cathy" in the same paragraph. It was disconcerting and confusing. Read it if you want to know about Celebration.
Rating:
Summary: An inadequate book on a fascinating topic
Review: Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins had all the opportunities when they researched Celebration, U.S.A. They bought a house in the town, sent their kids to school, made friends, joined the social circle, even interviewed a few people here and there. You'd think this would make an exceptional book - well researched, deeply felt, rigorously documented. It doesn't. Instead, their book is disjointed, incomplete, and on every page gives the sensation of writers trying to cover for scanty research. Several of the town's most important early struggles, like the school and its curriculum, or the poor home construction, are discussed in depth. However, the authors fail to provide context and completion for each issue. They never, for example, note the outcome of the battle that could be described as parents v. school, although the outcome certainly occured while they were residents in town. Nor do they discuss in any real detail the local and regional political climate that had such an effect on the school. This sort of thing turns their book into a series of stories with no beginnings and no endings. They also completely missed many quieter, but just as crucial, events and movements in the town. They failed, for example, to document the Montessori School at all - not its beginnings, which were precedent-setting in Celebration, not its future, nothing. Frantz and Collins failed, too, to reach citizens of Celebration who *weren't* like themselves. There is little dicussion of the single parents, the renters, the gays, the elderly, or the (admittedly limited) ethnic minorities. These omissions create an incredible bias in their book. Add to this the poor quality of the writing with its distracting conventions, and you have a worthless, random discourse on a truly gripping, relevant topic - the building of a new town by a corporate giant. Despite the fascinating subject, the book cannot hold the attention of the reader for any length of time. If you want to read a decent and interesting book about Celebration, read Andrew Ross's The Celebration Chronicles instead.
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