Favorite Overseas Parks

[joz]

Seems many forum users have been overseas, well I want to know what everyone's favorite parks are. This should be interesting since there aren't any home park fanboys. Also don't count Disney parks, since as we all know, Disney is the best, and daylight is second. I'll go with Alton Towers as my pick of the overseas parks. Great rides, atmosphere, gardens and the like.

[mikrowave]

But Disney parks are my favourites!! Everything pales in comparison. I don't actually have a favourite behind Disney, I am yet to visit a non-Disney park OS that I really like.

[Richard]

I really don't know which way to go given that you've crossed Disney off the list. I think that Disney parks (particularly Walt Disney World - Disneyland Resort was in every way a fraction of the WDW experience) on the whole are just so much better than other parks that there's so little room left to scale non-Disney parks against each other. Six Flags is off the list - overall bad experiences at two of their parks, including SFOT which is meant to be a flagship park, cross them off. I found Knott's Berry Farm to be a tad on the tacky side. Most of the park is built from ancient relics salvaged by Walt Knott. Though they have a select few quite good rides (Xcelerator and GhostRider), the rest is really mediocre. I found both SeaWorld parks to be a fraction of what we have here, despite better rides. They have quite good food (admittetedly better than the food here), but Universal Studios Hollywood is good, but really does lack things to do. There's not much more there than there is at Movie World here. Universal Studios Florida was a much bigger and better designed park with many great attractions. I think the addition of The Mummy is exactly what they needed, because I think that another big ride was exactly what they're missing. Islands of Adventure has some of the best theming and best thrills, but I was really disappointed by their crowd control and capacity issues. I think that leaves me with Busch Gardens Tampa. This park has amazing theming that just so happens to also be one of my favourite styles. They have some of the best thrill rides out there, and somehow manage to have virtually no queues while the Orlando parks have hour-long queues. They also have excellent food and some of the best live entertainment I've ever seen. A few (more than we'd have liked) encounters with particularly rude staff were the only problems I can think of. Nine months from now I suspect Cedar Point will be my favourite, but until then I'll put down Busch Gardens.

[stdragon03]

Im actually not a huge fan of Disney parks i enjoyed Disneyland with my family 6 years ago.These days i like smaller parks with Cedarpoint the exception Heres my favourites CedarPoint A great park with excellent coasters and the best inverted coaster(Raptor)very friendly staff and very Efficient. Nagashima Spaland.This park has some great coasters including Steel Dragon i think is the best coaster in the world. A great shopping centre near by and Japanese people are beautiful ,they treat you so well. Knoebels Grove A real surprise.It has great atmosphere, food is good and not expensiveStaff were friendly and look like they wanted to be their and made sure you have great time.On the ride department they have one of the best Dark Rides in America.Old fashion bumper cars,The Flyers their are the best around.two great wooden coasters.The Pheonix my favourite wooden coaster. Two other parks i enjoyed was Dollywood and Lake Compounce both scenic and beautiful parks and very friendly staff.A mention to Sixflags New England and Sixflags America nice and friendly parks. Busch Gardens williamsburg is beautiful and has some good rides and shows but the staff their were obnoxious and rude and didn't care about the visitors.i will never go back their again. I hope Dollywood wins the next Golden ticket for the most Beautiful Park because Busch Gardens dont deserve it.

[scott]

Disney have excellent theming,but not a very large number of rides.It just depends on what you favour.

[steve$]

My favourite is Cedar Point, the rides are great,the food is nice and it is fun all round. And you will never get bored,there's so many record breaking rides

[scott]

Cedar Point would probably be the park I most want to go,followed closely by Busch Gardens,mainly because of Kumba.

[steve$]

Cedar Point is one of the best. I went there earlier this year and really enjoyed it. I couldnt write a trip report then Because i didnt even register on this site until last month. Although i still rode all the big rides

[mikrowave]

Disney have excellent theming,but not a very large number of rides.

Ummm...what? Have you been to Disneyland, or the Magic Kingdom at DisneyWorld? They have a huge amount of rides.

[Gazza]

Yeah, just replace the word "rides" with "coasters" and you might be right.