• ℹ️ Heads up...

    This is a popular topic that is fast moving Guest - before posting, please ensure that you check out the first post in the topic for a quick reminder of guidelines, and importantly a summary of the known facts and information so far. Thanks.

Top 25 Theme Parks in the world

I wouldn't rate the universal parks nearly as high as they are on that chart. Except for the potter areas I was decidedly unimpressed when I visited the Orlando parks this year. DAK blew me away however and was an easy no 1. Out there.

Can't wait to visit silver dollar city next year and have very high expectations of that park
 
Danny said:
Good to see that not a single Merlin park makes the list, yet Paulton's Park does!
Click to expand...

Rather embarrassing for the world's 2nd largest theme park operator.

Its good for Paultons to get on a list like this, it will bring the park to some well deserved attention.

After becoming used to Merlins knock down pricing, Paultons tickets (x4] felt expensive this summer. Having been now, they are 100% right to understand their product has value. Paultons know exactly what the brand is about and get on with providing a high quality product at a sensible price.
2020 has to see them announce hotel plans, its the biggest gap in their offering now.
 
TheBolt said:
Rather embarrassing for the world's 2nd largest theme park operator.

Its good for Paultons to get on a list like this, it will bring the park to some well deserved attention.

After becoming used to Merlins knock down pricing, Paultons tickets (x4] felt expensive this summer. Having been now, they are 100% right to understand their product has value. Paultons know exactly what the brand is about and get on with providing a high quality product at a sensible price.
2020 has to see them announce hotel plans, its the biggest gap in their offering now.
Click to expand...
Plus they're opening a new area next year, which will justify the cost even more. :)
 
skyscraper said:
Plus they're opening a new area next year, which will justify the cost even more. :)
Click to expand...

Tornado springs is such an exciting investment and I'm so happy to see an interesting payer in the UK park scene. Hopefully it's a huge success for them and we see them move into the thrill market with something like a Verkoma Bermuda Blitz or Shockwave Coaster with a high standard of theming
 
The list is a farce; mainly as Puy du Fou is overall 5/5 but none of the others are.

Meaningless.
 
That’s because the rankings are based on three things:

1) The average rating

2) How recent the reviews are. The overall rating is an average of all the reviews on Trip Advisor, but for the ranking more weight is put on more recent reviews.

3) How many reviews there are. The assumption is that the more reviews an attraction has, the more likely it is that it will be somewhere lots of people want to visit.

That list doesn’t entirely match my personal feelings, but I do think Trip Advisor is a good barometer of how the public perceive an attraction. Opinions are by their nature subjetive and people visit these attractions looking for different things, but so many people use Trip Advisor that by the law of averages extreme views and freak experiences get averaged out.

Because it takes into account the number of reviews and some cultures use Trip Advisor more than others, it isn't a completely fair comparison when you're looking at parks from different countries. Also some parks do more to encourage guests to leave reviews etc. It isn't perfect, but it's about the fairest set of rankings we've really got.
 
Last edited:
I'm not a big fan of the ratings on Tripadvisor, but reading the reviews give a good impression of what a place is like. My work has received poor ratings before purely because the customer didn't read the website and came to find us shut.
 
The rankings are primarily there to promote Trip Advisor.
And this discussion thread show it has been a success in doing so.

TA need to defend their niche as where people go to for tourism information, against the likes of Google Maps.
Doubtless those 25 pages have all seen a significant increase in hits, which with advertising means income.
 
Puy du Fou is incredible, but that and a couple of others are oddly placed among the rest. If you use theme park as a fairly broad brush description, I guess that's ok - but for me something like Puy du Fou is a completely different day out than many of the others in that selection.
 
For a few years Trip Advisor ranked Discovery Cove in Orlando as the world's top theme park. It didn't make the list this year. Not sure if that's because it has fallen in the algorithm or whether it's been recategorised. I've never been to Puy Du Fou, but I'm not sure what other Trip Advisor category it would fit into, and the TEA (Themed Entertainment Association) report lists it as a theme park. I think it has also won Brass ring awards from IAPPA and awards from Park World Magazine. I do agree though that it's probably not what a lot of people would normally think of as a theme park.

For some attractions it must be a bit contentious whether they fall into the theme park category or the zoo category.

At least in the UK, zoos generally seem to perform better on Trip Advisor than theme parks, although zoos have the advantage that most of them aren't comercial companies, but are run by charities which has tax benefits and allows them to access grants.
 
Rick said:
Puy du Fou is incredible, but that and a couple of others are oddly placed among the rest. If you use theme park as a fairly broad brush description, I guess that's ok - but for me something like Puy du Fou is a completely different day out than many of the others in that selection.
Click to expand...

Puy du Fou is incredible if you're into that sort of thing. It's definitely not for me though so not on my list.

Like with everything else it's all subjective and depends on what your tastes are.

Europa Park for me ticks more boxes than anywhere else. It's pretty much perfect. However I also love Epcot and when all the new stuff is ready for there that might go back to being the best park in my eyes.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top