Golden Ticket awards honor top amusement park rides of 2009

Amusement Today magazine awarded the Golden Ticket today to the Prowler wooden coaster at Worlds of Fun in Missouri as the best new amusement park ride of 2009 in the United States.

The Voyage at Holiday World in Indiana remained the all-time favorite wooden coaster, with Prowler claiming the eighth spot in the Top 10 wooden coaster list.

Diamondback at Kings Island in Ohio was named the best new steel coaster for 2009, moving into the seventh spot on Amusement Today’s all-time Top 10 steel coasters list. Bizarro (formerly Superman – Ride of Steel) at Six Flags New England in Massachusetts maintained the all-time top spot in the steel coaster category.

Schlitterbahn water park in Texas snagged best new water ride of 2009 honors for Congo River Expedition.

Little else changed from last year, with Cedar Point in Ohio (best amusement park) and Schlitterbahn (best water park) picking up top honors for the 12th year in a row.

In California, both Legoland California (best children’s park) and Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk (best seaside park) repeated in their respective categories.

Terminator Salvation wooden coaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain finished fourth in the best new ride competition. Disneyland took third place in the best park category. No California coasters landed on the wooden or steel all-time Top 10 lists.

Find the latest amusement and theme park news at the Los Angeles Times Funland blog: www.latimes.com/funland. Follow Funland on Twitter and Facebook.

— Brady MacDonald, Los Angeles Times staff writer

Photo: Six Flags Magic Mountain

Permalink | E-mail | Print | Add to My Trips

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 10, 2009 at 5:43 pm by Brady MacDonald and is filed under Boston, California, California's Central Coast, Cedar Point, Disneyland, East Coast, Family & Kids, Legoland, Los Angeles, Magic Mountain, Midwestern States, Orange County, San Diego, Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, Southern States, Texas, Theme Parks, Water Parks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.