Rating: 
Summary: well written, but not too deep
Review: Earlier this year, i was going to be in Orlando for a conference and wanted to visit Celebration as i have an interest, both personal and professional, in urban design. I read Celebration, U.S.A. before i went. I think that my visit was enriched by having read this book before i went.I found the book provides an interesting and useful introduction to Celebration and New Urbanism. Frantz and Collins provide an narrative history of the development of Celebration as well as an interesting introduction to New Urbanism, etc. We experience alot from the personal leve. They write very well and the book moves readily along. They describe numerous problems with Celebration as well as how the expectations of many residents shaped their reaction to Celebration. It is a fairly fun book, though a little too upbeat at times. On the other hand, the depth of analysis isn't there and, given the market that this book is directed at, probably wasn't intended to be there. As an introduction to Celebration and an alternative approach to urban design, this book is worth it. Just don't expect too much.
Rating:
Summary: well written, but not too deep
Review: Earlier this year, i was going to be in Orlando for a conference and wanted to visit Celebration as i have an interest, both personal and professional, in urban design. I read Celebration, U.S.A. before i went. I think that my visit was enriched by having read this book before i went. I found the book provides an interesting and useful introduction to Celebration and New Urbanism. Frantz and Collins provide an narrative history of the development of Celebration as well as an interesting introduction to New Urbanism, etc. We experience alot from the personal leve. They write very well and the book moves readily along. They describe numerous problems with Celebration as well as how the expectations of many residents shaped their reaction to Celebration. It is a fairly fun book, though a little too upbeat at times. On the other hand, the depth of analysis isn't there and, given the market that this book is directed at, probably wasn't intended to be there. As an introduction to Celebration and an alternative approach to urban design, this book is worth it. Just don't expect too much.
Rating: 
Summary: Connecticut Yankees in Disney's New Town
Review: Frantz and Collins provide a somewhat interesting but ultimately jumbled appraisal of Disney's planned community just south of the Walt Disney World resort. Part of the problem rests in the dual authorship of the book. Although the narrator constantly writes in the first person, he/she also speaks of him/herself in the third person, often in the same sentence. The result is somewhat alienating.
Another structural problem lies in the chapter organization. There are a number of charming and highly personal anecdotes spread throughout the book which introduce the audience to the unique denizens of Celebration, but there's little attempt to link the characters established in earlier chapters to those who play an active role in the narrative further down the line. As a result, the reader never gains a rounded, in-depth appreciation of any single person or family within the community, which is a real shame because the human component in the most compelling aspect of the book.
Less compelling are the authors' frequently patronizing attitude toward the middle-class inhabitants of Celebration. In a laughably paternalistic chapter addressing racism, the authors bemoan the fact that Celebration is not ethnically diverse and fear that their children are somehow worse off for lack of exposure to black families. In a similar vein, they criticize the Walt Disney Company for refusing to sell houses below market value or institute rent controls in order to artificially introduce a lower income demographic into the community. This last complaint is quite odd considering that the authors often bemoan the "forced" qualities of the community.
Ultimately, the book is not as critical of Disney as some might imagine (or hope), but some of the criticisms leveled at the company are simply too programmed to take at face value. Readers looking for some interesting anecdotes about life in a planned community will find some morsels of intrigue here, but readers looking for a comprehensive book detailing the development, politics and future of Celebration, Florida are advised to look elsewhere.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Enough
Review: I am in the camp of rabid Disney haters. Someday, Disney and their ilk will return to the deepest pits of hell where they belong. Notwithstanding this mild bias, this book actually had me impressed with Disney. No, I would not live there. No, I would not visit there. No I would not make a public comment that Celebration is a good thing. But Disney did try to put into practice all of the new urbanism techniques that so many of us have written about for so long. Disney deserves the credit for funding this experiment, and the authors deserve high praise for making this valuable point. The weakness of this book is that the authors wrote it while they still lived in Celebration. As we learned from the Lynds in their books about Middleton, you need to get away from a place to see it up close. I hope the authors do a follow up later that ties together so many open questions. I suspect the people who have bashed this book are probably Disney employees, or pathetic mouse syncophants.
Rating:
Summary: Not too bad
Review: I bought this book out of a growing interest in New Urbanism sparked by a paper I wrote for one of my courses last year on James Howard Kunstler's "Home From Nowhere" (which is an excellent book, by the way). On the whole, I enjoyed reading "Celebration, U.S.A.", but I did have one problem with it: it seemed that the authors went into the project with the goal of observing the people living there "from within". However, once they got there, they got sort of drawn into the whole culture, and, in my opinion, lost a lot of their objectivity. That was probably the worst thing about the book. The rest of it was well researched, well written, and a good read.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting, informative,intruiging,although incomplete
Review: I decided to place myself on location for this reading. I spent a delightful 12 mornings, sipping au laits at Barnies, rocking by the lake and watching Celebrationites start their day, as I delved into this book. Like all good authors should,Doug and Cathy had done their homework. I could imagine it would be a difficult task to uncover as much of the dirt as they did. The Disney Corp. obviously went to extraordinary lengths to keep bad news under wraps and as new homeowners of rather expensive dreams, I could understand hesitation and guarded friendliness among the residents of this village. At the end ,I was left with the uncertainty of their purpose. Was it to gather the info, write the book and leave town. Or was this family drawn to the dream of this new social experience with a strong desire to contribute to its evolution, at least with more perserverence than the 18 months or so. I was surprised to find out that they had moved out of Celebration before the book was released. Given their "tell all" details of some of the more intimate goings-on at neighbors houses, perhaps fear of an old fashion lynching of yesteryear was adequate motivation to say adios.
Rating:
Summary: Only a Mild Celebration
Review: I live in a master-planned community, so I have some experience with many of the seemingly strange rules and regulations described in the book. I'm also fascinated with new urbanism, so I was very excited when I found out about this book. It's higly readable, but there are some awkward places where the authors repeat each other. More troubling, I never got the sense that they went much beyond the perceptions and needs of their immediate family and neighbors. For two supposedly objective journalists, their particular opinions on the Celebration school spoke more of their own biases than anything else. Did anyone else feel like they were more concerned with their own property values than documenting the year or two in Celebration? For a much deeper and thoughtful account, read the "other" Celebration book by Andrew Ross. By the way, he mentions in his book that he tried to contact these authors, but that their editor told them not to talk to him. Interesting. Knowing that the various authors were in Celebration at about the same time, and having them interview many of the same residents was surreal.
Rating: 
Summary: Loved It![.]
Review: I read this book AFTER visiting Celebration, Florida. I was interested in more background info and details. We walked down the Main St of town and thought "this is nice" but not very practical. Practical is shopping in [local store] and buying groceries in[local store]. The days of the corner grocer and little hardware store on Main St are long gone so I was curious about the opinions of the author and his neighbors. This is a great story - it seems to be unbiased and does provide good background info on the town without making it boring. The author nicely weaves little stories about the town or tales of the neighbors into this "documentary" to keep the story moving. I know this book is not for everybody but I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It's also a great commentary on planned communities in general although I'm not sure that was what the authors intended.
Rating:
Summary: Congratulations on Celebration, U.S.A.
Review: In Celebration, U.S.A. Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins have provided us with a solid background of information on planned communities in the United States, with accounts of interviews conducted with the planners and builders of Celebration, with an overview of the lengthy and complicated transactions between Disney and Florida officials, and with a lively and humorous account of their life in Disney's brave new town. On every page their desire to give the town a fair shake, to be unbiased in their observations, to be wholehearted in their participation, shines through. Celebration has received its share of criticism, based it seems on an anti-Disney bias that does not allow for a fair analysis of the town, its successes or its shortcomings. On the other hand, it is too bad that those who moved to Celebration anticipating a magical solution to familial woes were doomed to come to terms with the reality that is Celebration, and with the fact that pixie dust alone has no curative power over long-standing problems. We have shared the concerns of the authors with the problems at the school, their irritation with shoddy building practices, their delight at the freedom and safety their children experienced in the town, and their pleasure when, at the end of their time there, they knew that what they would miss most is "Celebration's genuine friendliness, a place infused with the sense that everyone there shared the dream of finding a better place to live and, as we had seen finally, a willingness to work to make the dream come true".
Rating:
Summary: Loved It![.]
Review: Unlike some of the earlier reviewers, I didn't think this was anti-Disney or anti-Celebration. After reading it, I almost wanted to move to Celebration myself! (If it had decent transit connections to Orlando it could be paradise). The authors' love for the place showed through, and the only thing that mystified me was why they left. The authors do discuss the very real problems with Celebration's schools and construction; this part of the book could have benefited from a comparison with traditional suburbs, to show readers that Celebration's problems exist in typical suburban sprawl as well -- as anyone who saw what Hurricane Andrew did to Miami's sprawl houses knows!
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