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The Best Amusement Parks in the World

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The parks the professionals actually rate: rides, worlds, and spectacle with the honors to prove it, ranked.

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  1. A 150-foot Ferris wheel on the Fisherman's Wharf waterfront, lit by a million LED lights and very aware of the London Eye comparison. Each of the 36 climate-controlled gondolas holds up to six people, and a single ride runs about four rotations, giving you unobstructed sightlines to the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, and the hills stacked behind the city. Clear nights are the obvious move.



Eat Score

The score comes from the awards it's won, weighted by who gave them: a Michelin star outweighs a listicle. When you sort by what's nearby, distance changes the order, never the score.

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    Drink Score

    The score comes from the awards it's won, weighted by who gave them: a Michelin star outweighs a listicle. When you sort by what's nearby, distance changes the order, never the score.

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      Stay Score

      Four fifths of the score is the awards it's won, weighted by who gave them: a Michelin Key outweighs a listicle. The last fifth is where it is: the ranked places to eat and things to do around it, and how safe the country is. When you sort by what's nearby, distance from you changes the order, never the score.

        How we score →

        Do Score

        The score comes from the awards it's won, weighted by who gave them: a Michelin star outweighs a listicle. When you sort by what's nearby, distance changes the order, never the score.

          How we score →

          Best Place Score

          The Best Place Score rates the area around a point, not any one place. The places are 60% of it: the best of what's within reach, weighed by distance. The setting is the other 40%: how life goes in that country (how people rate their own lives, how long and how well they live, how safe they are) and what it's like right there (the air, and the weather). If the score looks low, we probably haven't found enough critics out here yet.