Every year on the Fourth of July holiday, we celebrate the summer theme park season by honoring the best of the world's theme parks. Throughout the year, readers on ThemeParkInsider.com rate hundreds of theme park rides, shows, restaurants, and hotels at top parks around the world. The Theme Park Insider Award winners are the locations with a minimum number of votes and the highest average reader rating in their categories.
This year, we're doubling the number of awards, adding honors for best quick-service restaurant, best roller coaster, best show and best themed attraction to the awards for best hotel, best full-service restaurant, best new attraction, and best theme park.
Best Theme Park Hotel
Loews Portofino Bay Hotel at Universal Orlando
This is the fourth time that the Portofino Bay has won our top hotel award, as fans continue to praise the hotel for its outstanding theming, convenient location and the industry-best value of offering unlimited Universal Express front-of-line access to park attractions for all its guests.
Best Quick-Service Restaurant
Miss Lillian's Chicken House at Dollywood
This is Dollywood's second Theme Park Insider Award. The Tennessee park also won the Best New Attraction honor in 2007 for Mystery Mine. Dollywood's long won praise for its food, and the ever-entertaining Miss Lillian helps put this fried chicken restaurant over the top.
Best Full-Service Restaurant
S.S. Columbia Dining Room at Tokyo DisneySea
A two-time winner of the award, the S.S. Columbia Dining Room not only offers delicious cuisine and outstanding customer service, it does that in one of the most impressive settings in the theme park business: inside the full-scale, elaborately detailed S.S. Columbia cruise ship on the shore of Tokyo Bay.
Best Theme Park Show
Fantasmic! at Disneyland
The original version of the show still sets the standard, with great storytelling, music and many special effects upgrades over the years.
Best Roller Coaster
El Toro at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey
Not only is this the first Theme Park Insider Award win for Six Flags Great Adventure, it's the first Theme Park Insider Award win for any Six Flags park. Congratulations to El Toro for winning great reviews from so many theme park fans.
Best Themed Ride
Journey to the Center of the Earth at Tokyo DisneySea
Running in the heart of the park's centerpiece, the iconic Mount Prometheus, Journey to the Center of the Earth has been thrilling Theme Park Insiders for years, and earns this year's honor.
Best New Attraction
Banshee at Kings Island
The Best New Attraction competition this year blew wide open when several expected contenders failed to open officially by the June 30 deadline. But plenty of well-reviewed new rides and shows were left to battle it out. This is the first Theme Park Insider Award for Kings Island, but it's the second for manufacturer Bolliger & Mabilliard, who won the 2009 Best New Attraction Award for Manta at SeaWorld Orlando. Congratulations to Kings Island for its first win.
Best Theme Park
Tokyo DisneySea
Winning for the third year in a row and the fourth time overall, DisneySea continues to set the standard for theme park entertainment throughout the world. Congratulations to Tokyo DisneySea for leading the competition once again this year, winning three Theme Park Insider Awards: best full-service restaurant, best themed attraction, and best theme park.
Congratulations to all of our winners, and thank you for helping us honor the best of the best. Have a great holiday!
Tweet
I used to think going to DisneySea was a pipe dream, but although it might take 5+ years to save, if I focus and dedicate a small amount of each paycheck to a trip, there is no reason I can't make it out there. The trick is staying long enough to have fun while dealing with massive jet lag. Perhaps a two day stay in Hawaii would help make it more tolerable. Haha.
Congrats to all the winners!
Maybe this isn't something you do when you can travel only with the kids during the summer. But as a empty-nester reward for getting the kids out of the house? Hey, start planning now. It'll be worth it.
Unfortunately, I didn't get to ride Goliath at SFGAM until July 1, when the poll was already closed. Otherwise I would have voted for it as best new attraction. This coaster is a real winner! I have become a great fan of Rocky Mountain Construction; this is the second coaster I've ridden that they built - the first was Outlaw Run - and both are innovative and marvels of engineering.
This article has been archived and is no longer accepting comments.
