Golden Ticket Award for Best New Ride

The Golden Ticket Awards have been presenting awards since 1998 acknowledging amusement and water parks for their achievement in different categories. The Best New Ride award was introduced in the form of two different awards to acknowledge the best in amusement and water parks. The award has been presented since 2005 and has been featured on the Discovery Channel and the Travel Channel. In 2019, the amusement park award was split into three categories. The overall award was renamed to Best New Attraction Installation of 2019, with "industry suppliers and parks hav[ing] direct involvement with nominations" [1]. The Best New Family Attraction and Best New Roller Coaster categories were also introduced.

Winners of the Best New Water Slide has only been produced by seven different water parks out of the 13 slides that have been rewarded. The park to introduced the most exciting new water slide is Holiday World & Splashin' Safari with four slides, yet Schlitterbahn the company as a whole has released five across its properties.

Due to an incident in 2016 in which a ten-year-old boy was decapitated, Verrückt became the first ride that had won an award from Amusement Today for Best New Ride to be removed. Verrückt operated for 2 and a half seasons before closing indefinitely on August 7, 2016. [17] The Kansas City Schlitterbahn water slide is not the first award recipient to have a fatality incident as so did the New Texas Giant back in 2013, yet the roller coaster still operates today after an intensive investigation that was done on the ride.

2010 Water Slide winner, Wildebeest

2014 Water Slide winner, Verrückt

Year	Winner(s)	Park	Other candidates
2005	Black Anaconda	Noah's Ark Water Park	Crush 'n Gusher at Typhoon Lagoon Typhoon at Six Flags New England Bahari Wave Pool at Holiday World & Splashin' Safari Funnel of Fear at Michigan's Adventure	[2]
2006	Bahari River	Holiday World & Splashin' Safari	Time Warp at Noah's Ark Water Park Tornado at Six Flags Great America Fire Tower Falls at Dollywood's Splash Country	[3]
2007	Bakuli	Holiday World & Splashin' Safari	Deluge at Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom Brainwash at Wet 'n Wild Orlando East Coast Waterworks at Hersheypark Poseidon's Rage at Mt. Olympus Water & Theme Park	[4]
2008	Dragon's Revenge	Schlitterbahn	Dolphin's Plunge at Aquatica Orlando Black Hole: The Next Generation at Wet 'n Wild Orlando Rock & Roll Island at Water Country USA Taumata Racer at Aquatica Orlando	[5]
2009	Congo River Expedition	Schlitterbahn	Wahoo Racer at Six Flags St. Louis UpSurge! at Alabama Adventure Maximum Velocity at Wet'n' Wild Phoenix Dr. Von Dark's Tunnel of Terror at Splish Splash	[6]
2010	Wildebeest	Holiday World & Splashin' Safari		[7]
2011	The Falls	Schlitterbahn		[8]
2012	Mammoth	Holiday World & Splashin' Safari		[9]
2013	River Rush	Dollywood's Splash Country		[10]
2014	Verrückt	Schlitterbahn Kansas City	Colossal Curl at Water Country USA Bahama Blasters at Six Flags Fiesta Texas Deep Water Dive at Kentucky Kingdom Snake Pit at Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom	[11]
2015	Dive Bomber	Six Flags White Water	SlideZilla at Elitch Gardens Theme Park Aqua Rocket at Raging Waters San Dimas Slideboarding at Wet'n'Wild Las Vegas Anaconda at Kalahari Resorts Pocono Mts.	[12]
2016	Massiv	Schlitterbahn, Galveston	Blackbeard’s Revenge at Carowinds Cyclone Saucers at Beach Bend Tropical Plunge at Kings Island Wonambi at Raging Waters, Illinois	[13]
2017	Thunder Rapids	Six Flags Fiesta Texas	Krakatau Aqua Coaster at Volcano Bay Point Plummet at Cedar Point Shores Miss Adventure Falls at Typhoon Lagoon Ko'okiri Body Plunge at Volcano Bay	[14]
2018	Ray Rush	Aquatica Orlando	Breaker's Edge at Hersheypark Rock Wheel at Chimelong Waterpark Whitecap Racer at Hersheypark Raja at Noah's Ark Water Park	[18]
2019	Cutback Water Coaster	Water Country USA	Lava Drifting at Shanghai Haichang Ocean Waterpark Daredevil's Peak at Little Stirrup Cay Infinity Racers at Schlitterbahn Galveston Rapid Remix at Soundwaves Water Park	[16]

• Current Golden Ticket Awards at Amusement Today's Golden Ticket website