And the Disney theme park with the best castle is....

[nathan detroit]

Well, the votes have been counted and verified and the results are in. I can now reveal the winner of the MiceChat Poll for Best Disney Castle. But first I would like to give a bit of background as to why I decided to conduct this poll, not only on this forum but on the other four theme park forums on this site.
It started about a week ago during the obligatory discussion on the WDW forum of DL versus WDW. The matter of castles arose and someone suggested that a poll should be set up to decide once and for all whose was best. This original suggestion was for a poll pitting DL against WDW although I saw an opportunity to ‘investigate’ something that had struck me ever since arriving at MiceChat…
My observations have always been that people fight for their ‘home’ park. DL forum regulars are all for DL and WDWers generally believe that WDW is the best. My decision to set this poll up was less about seeing which park had the best castle (the winner was pretty predictable) but more about seeing how park loyalties fell in each of the forums. This aspect of the results show much more interesting trends.
Also I was interested in people’s interpretation of the word ‘best’ in the question ‘Which park has the best castle?’ Many argued for looks alone although some focussed on interactivity and ‘special features’. Was it just a walkthrough or was there stuff to do in it?
(Another reason for starting this ‘investigation’ was partially as a sort of apology for my infamous ‘Here’s a Thing…’ thread on the WDW forum. Although it made some people want to pat me on the back, others wanted to slap me in the face. This is an effort to show that I can be sensible too!)
Some people queried the validity or sanity of the same poll on five different forums and said that the results would not reflect the truth. In my opinion, this was the only way we could get anywhere near the truth as the variation in the below results show. It was also suggested that voters would simply go into each forum and vote for their own castle. This was clearly not the case since the most subscribed to forums are DL and WDW and, as you will see, neither came out on top.

The overall winner was the castle at Disneyland Paris. This was predicted by many from the outset although it is interesting to note that this particular castle won the poll in all five of the forums, suggesting that it is universally admired.

Each forum’s results were as follows: -
Disneyland – DLP 45.61%, DL 41.23%, WDW 7.89%, TDL 4.39%, HKDL 0.88% (Total votes – 114)
Hong Kong Disneyland - DLP 52.51%, DL 17%, WDW 17%, HKDL 7.5%, TDL 5% (Total votes – 40)
Disneyland Paris - DLP 80.43%, DL 15.22%, WDW 2.17%, TDL 2.17%, HKDL 0% (Total votes – 46)
Tokyo Disneyland - DLP 58.14%, DL 23.26%, TDL 9.3%, WDW 6.989%, HKDL 2.33% (Total votes – 43)
Walt Disney World - DLP 51.32%, WDW 28.95%, DL 13.16%, TDL 6.58%, HKDL 0% (Total votes – 76)

As you can see, both of the US parks placed their own castle in second place whereas the Eastern parks were constantly in the bottom two (with the exception of the TDL forum where WDW was knocked doen into fourth). Is this because US MiceChatters are more territorial about their parks? Or, as someone suggested, is that the Japanese are better travelled and so have a more informed opinion? Discuss!

And so the overall results are as follows: -
Total votes – 319
1st DLP 54.5% 174 votes
2nd DL 25.4% 81 votes
3rd WDW 13.2% 42 votes
4th TDL 5.3% 17 votes
5th HKDL 1.6% 5 votes

Thank you to all who voted and contributed to the threads - there were some great comments and fantastic pictures. And now I pass the baton to everyone else to comment or criticise the results and my observations. Feel free…

[TDLFAN]

Read my response in the TDR section.