The Movers.com Blog

Europa Park. Yep, this looks awesome.

Last week you were treated to a look at the nation’s best amusement park towns. This week we’re going to expand beyond that to the rest of the world. So, if you’ve got an overseas vacation that you’ve yet to take this summer, keep these in mind. You’ll want to visit one of these parks should you be anywhere near one. A few US Parks are here too (even though they were mentioned last week), so you may not have to travel so far to get to one after all. Here they are in no particular order:

1. Europa Park, Baden Wuerttember, Germany: Germany’s largest theme park and the world’s most popular seasonal park (4.2 million visitors in 2009), meaning it’s only open from just before Easter until November. Europa Park is split into 15 different European-country-themed areas, so you may just forget about the rest of your world-travel plans while you’re there.

2. PortAventura, Tarragona, Spain: Located about an hour south of Barcelona, this park is known not only for its rides, but its entertainment as well. Particularly popular are its seasonal events like the La Mina del Diablo horror maze and the Psycho Circus 3-D maze.

3. Cedar Point, Sandusky, Ohio: Okay so, this was mentioned last week, but it would simply be crime to leave it off any such top ten list, seeing as it is most often voted the world’s greatest amusement park.

4. Alton Towers, Staffordshire, United Kingdom: Once upon a time, this location was the seat of the Earls of Shrewsbury, but now it’s marked by Nemesis (Europe’s first inverted rollercoaster), Oblivion (the world’s first vertical-drop roller coaster), Air (the world’s first flying roller coaster), and Th13teen (the world’s first vertical-free-fall-drop roller coaster).

5. Blackpool Pleasure Beach, Lancashire, United Kingdom: Yep, the UK gets two on this list. This one, though, is their most visited amusement park and is home to Pepsi Max Big One (Europe’s tallest roller coaster), Valhalla (the world’s largest indoor dark ride), and Infusion (the world’s first inverted roller coaster to be suspended entirely over water).

6. Tivoliland, Dalborg, Demark: This park is a thrill seeker’s dream due to the 55-meter (that’s about 180 feet) free-fall ride, Gravity Tower. If you want to try the free fall, but think your kids shouldn’t, there’s a good number of children’s attractions here including a funhouse, a junior roller coaster, and the Fairy Tale Twined City Park.

7. Park Asterix, Plailly, France: This park’s most popular coasters are the wooden coaster, Tonnerre de Zues, which goes upside down and has several double loops, and Goudurix, which is an astounding 950 meters long (that’s over half a mile!). Park Asterix is also famous for it’s Roman- and Greek-style areas.

8. Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York: This park is legendary. In addition to the the world famous roller coaster, Cyclone (with six turns, nine drops, and a 100 second turn), the Oceanside boardwalk boasts cafes, restaurants and shops. Coney Island is both fun and historic.

9. Canada’s Wonderland, Vaughan, Ontario: Canada’s premier theme park has over 200 attractions and 65 rides including Splashworks, a water park, as well as Nickelodeon Central and Hanna Barbera Land, where kids can hang out with some of their favorite cartoon characters.

10. Disneyland, Tokyo, Japan: Yep, Disney’s reach knows no bounds. Tokyo’s Disneyland attracts as many as 26 million people per year. It’s similar in many ways to Disney’s US parks, so if you are visiting Japan and missing Disney’s loveable characters (or cold grip on your wallet), this is the place to go.

Hopefully, if you partake in any free fall rides, no one will sing that awful Tom Petty song to you, getting it stuck in your head for the rest of the week… jerks.