The Mystery at Disney World Book

I think this book had some good potential at the start, but quickly became fairly bland. I also thought the attitude of the characters to their siblings' disappearances was very oddly blasé, à la "Hey, my little brother is missing and may have fallen off of a boat in a dark and watery environment! Let's have lunch!"

At one point just after the 2nd disappearance the kids take a ride on It's a Small World and that section turns into a matter-of-fact pointing out of each section of the ride. While the lack of real descriptive writing may be the author trying to keep it simple for a certain age group, I think more flavor was needed.

I like the idea of intertwining the excitement of a trip to Disney with some sort of intrigue, but this fell flat for me. Making that intrigue a serious thing such as child kidnapping (even with a very short and poor attempt at cartoonifying one of the bad guys) really doesn't work in the context of the Disney atmosphere. At least in relation to the vision I, as a parent, would hope my kids have for Disney.

What little description there was at the start became more of a drone of "where do we have to go next", and the wrap-up for where the clues were coming from felt like a big plot hole for me.

Even knowing that my complaints are taken from my own parental point of view and kids may see it differently: my son kind of glazed over about half way through and we ended up speeding through the rest.

If half-stars were allowed, I'd bump it up to 2.5 on a generous day. Sorry, author.