About

What is this guide?

We are a short list, not a directory. We cover only the parks worldwide that are worth a traveller's full day, in two tiers: World-class (a reason to travel on its own) and Strong regional (worth a day if you are nearby). Start from where you are going and see which strong parks are within reach, with distance and drive time computed in advance. Every park gets a one-screen identity card. Status is honest and carries a last-verified date.

How parks are selected

• Only permanent, ticketed parks that are large and good enough to be worth a tourist's day are listed. Fairgrounds, small local amusement parks, mall play areas, hotel water parks, zoos without rides, miniature parks and adventure or trampoline parks are excluded.
• Each park is rated on four independent signal families from open data: recognition (Wikipedia languages and page views), visitors (annual attendance), physical scale (area, roller coasters, attractions) and ecosystem (operator or resort membership, coverage by wait-time services). A park needs at least two families to be published. Missing data is not a penalty: some countries are data-poor.
• Records close to the threshold go to a review list instead of being published automatically. Nothing is deleted.

Status and last verified date

Showing a closed park as open is the worst mistake a guide like this can make, so the rule is asymmetric: a single closure signal (for example in Wikidata, OpenStreetMap or Overture) blocks an "open" status, and an open status needs a fresh sign of life. Each park page shows when its status was last verified. Opening hours change constantly; always check the official site before you go.

Distances and drive times

Drive times for the destination pages are computed in advance from OpenStreetMap road data (OSRM), without traffic. For other places and for "Near me" we estimate the time from the straight-line distance; these values are marked with ≈ and "estimate". Destination lists include parks up to 2 hours by car; between 2 and 3 hours only world-class parks are listed.

Summaries, prices and seasons

• Summaries are written with AI assistance only from facts collected from open sources (Wikidata, Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap). A separate check makes sure every claim is backed by those facts. Summaries are licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 and link to their sources.
• Prices are shown only as a rough level ($ to $$$) relative to other parks in the same country, never as exact figures. Follow the link to the official ticket page.
• Seasons are given by month. When we are not sure, the page says so.

Licences

• Park dataset: ODbL 1.0 (it contains data derived from OpenStreetMap).
• Summaries: CC BY-SA 4.0.
• Photos: the licence of each file on Wikimedia Commons, shown under the photo with its author.
• City data derived from GeoNames and price-level data derived from the World Bank: CC BY 4.0.
• Code: MIT.

See the Data page for downloads.

Attributions

Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Map: OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles · Park facts: Wikidata (CC0) and OpenStreetMap · Summaries draw on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0) and were written with AI assistance; each park page links its sources · Photos: Wikimedia Commons, with author and licence on every photo · Cities: GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Price level: The World Bank, World Development Indicators (CC BY 4.0) · Visitor numbers via Wikidata (source: TEA Global Experience Index).

Coverage by Queue-Times and ThemeParks.wiki is used only as an internal signal; none of their data is published here. Roller coaster details link to RCDB, which is not used as a data source. Maps use MapLibre GL JS.

Disclaimer

Park Atlas is an independent guide with no official connection to the parks. Park names and trademarks belong to their owners. No park logos are used. Information can change; check the official site of each park for current hours, prices and closures.

Sources of this release

Data release 2026-10-05.1 · 2026-10-05