Aside from Fairyweather Travel, we used these books to plan for our trip.
In order of helpfulness:
Disneyland, The Unofficial Guide. While this super-planned approach won’t work for everyone, I was a huge fan. It aims to get you what you want out of Disneyland/DCA by planning and prioritizing. It’s also quite amusing in places. The book provides many different touring plans (Two-day with small children, one day without children, etc.) and offers an app to help you plan. The app, alas, is only for IOS right now, so we used the website version in the parks.
Things this book did well: Encouraged walking back and forth across the park to hit rides at the best time rather than a close-by geographical approach. Provided reviews and rankings of all rides so that we could rank the rides into categories of must, maybe, and probably when planning. Provided reviews of every restaurant and recommendations of favorites at those restaurants. Explained how policies like rider switch or single rider could improve your trip. Talked through strategies for best viewing of the light shows and whether one should buy a dining package that guaranteed seats.
Things that didn’t quite hit: Despite the book’s attempt, I didn’t understand how Lightning Lanes worked until my Fairyweather Travel agent walked me through it (and gave me a handout). Having now been there with Lightning Lane access, I also would take a slightly different approach than they recommended (at least at the time we visited).
I would prioritize must-visit (and then maybe-visit) attractions without Lightning Lane access from rope drop to about 11:00 and then start the Lightning Lane process after that time. We waited a very long time for the Peter Pan ride (a maybe-visit) and used our Lightning Lane for the Matterhorn (a must-visit) at 8:30 in the morning when there was basically no line. We should have reversed those. While some attractions did “sell out” their Lightning Lane availability before the day was done, most did not. And we were planning to be there All. Day. Long. so we could have better used the Lightning Lanes beginning in the late morning rather than first thing.
Overall, though, this is a great book and well worth both the money and buying a year’s subscription to the app to view their extended content. At less than $50 total, this book and the paid website will add value to your trip.
The Imagineering Field Guide to Disneyland. Somewhat out of date, this small book provides behind-the-scenes information and fun facts about how exhibits at Disneyland were created. I read it before we left and envisioned paging through it while waiting in line, but never actually did that.
The Imagineering Field Guide to Disney California Adventure. This is very out of date; things have changed a lot since this was published. Still, there was some good information including the relationship between Grizzly River Run and the water at Pixar Pier.
Mouse-Tales: A Behind-the-Ears Look at Disneyland. This book was published in 1994 and contains the experiences of former cast members. There are some fun stories like the one where so many people at the local naval base moonlighted at Disneyland that one Friday when there was a navel emergency, and they were called back to the base, and Disneyland had to close due to lack of workers. Given the era, there were some tales of “funny” mild sexual harassment. The author also discussed the difficulties Black people and all women had getting promoted, which is important perspective. That said, it wasn’t especially gripping, and I didn’t finish it.
I put all four of these books in a Little Free Library. The guidebooks were gone the next day, and the Mouse Tales book lingered for about a week.