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Ranked shortlist · 10 of 11 amusement attractions
Best amusement attractions in Chicago
The 10 most notable amusement attractions in Chicago, in rank order. The order is curation quality — how well attested and how complete each record is — not popularity, and no place on this list paid to be on it.
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1
Midnight Terror Haunted House - #1 Must See Haunted House in Illinois
5520 W 111th St
listed by Meta and Overture Maps Foundation · record has a website, a phone and an address · Overture confidence 1.00 · rank score 2.460, percentile 100 of 11
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2
Get a Grip Trapeze Chicago
5917 N Broadway
120 m from Thorndale station, metro
listed by Meta and Overture Maps Foundation · record has a website, a phone and an address · Overture confidence 0.99 · rank score 2.404, percentile 90 of 11
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3
MSA & Circus Arts
1934 N Campbell Ave
236 m from Western, metro
listed by Meta and Overture Maps Foundation · record has a website, a phone and an address · Overture confidence 0.99 · rank score 2.404, percentile 80 of 11
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4
The Catacombs at St. Pascal
6143 W Irving Park Rd
listed by Meta and Overture Maps Foundation · record has a website, a phone and an address · Overture confidence 0.92 · rank score 1.982, percentile 70 of 11
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5
Circo Hermanos Vazquez
4200 W 26th St
listed by Foursquare Open Source Places and Overture Maps Foundation · record has a website, a phone and an address · Overture confidence 0.92 · rank score 1.982, percentile 60 of 11
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6
Aloft Circus Arts
3324 W Wrightwood Ave
324 m from Logan Square station, metro
listed by Meta and Overture Maps Foundation · record has a website, a phone and an address · Overture confidence 0.97 · rank score 1.518, percentile 50 of 11
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7
The Park After Dark- Haunted House
4701 N Ashland Ave
459 m from Ravenswood, rail
listed by Meta and Overture Maps Foundation · record has a website and an address · Overture confidence 0.92 · rank score 1.462, percentile 40 of 11
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8
Scream Scene
4701 Oakton St
368 m from Oakton–Skokie, metro
listed by BrightQuery and Overture Maps Foundation · record has a website and an address · Overture confidence 0.92 · rank score 1.462, percentile 30 of 11
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9
Laramie Hills
15525 Laramie Ave
listed by Meta and Overture Maps Foundation · record has a phone and an address · Overture confidence 0.92 · rank score 1.462, percentile 20 of 11
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10
Haunted Barrens
5133 W 101st St
listed by Meta and Overture Maps Foundation · record has a phone and an address · Overture confidence 0.92 · rank score 1.462, percentile 10 of 11
How this list is made
Every place in this group was scored by the same model, with each term z-normalised inside the group and capped, so a famous chain cannot win by being famous everywhere. The weights, verbatim:
- attestation by independent providers
- +0.35
- record completeness (website, phone, address)
- +0.25
- Overture existence confidence
- +0.20
- Michelin designation (Wikidata, CC0)
- +0.40
- brand fame (Wikidata sitelinks)
- −0.15
- same-name chain collision
- −0.30
Curation quality, not popularity: how well attested and how complete a record is.
No licensable popularity signal; this ranks curation quality, not taste
Independent check: 5,951 places listed in Wikivoyage (CC BY-SA 4.0; validation only, never published or scored) were matched to our records by name within 250 m. Across the 5,651 that fall in groups of at least 10, the median matched place sits at percentile 73 and 24.2% are in the top decile, against 10% by chance; five families have enough anchors to report (arts, food and drink, lodging, shopping, sport), while health care (5), lifestyle services (17), travel (26) have too few and are not validated. A match needs both the guide and the catalogue to name the same place, which favours well-attested places — a term this rank itself rewards — so these are lower bounds; Michelin's 528 in-group anchors have a median percentile of 100, but that is partly circular: across the Wikivoyage matches, the 17 that also carry the designation term this rank scores sit at 99.93, against 72.55 for the 5,934 without it.
The catalogue carries no rating, review count, price or opening hours, so this file has none.
Station locations from Wikidata (CC0-1.0). Nearest station, not service: no frequency, timetable or departures.
Nobody paid for placement: no ads, no sponsored results, no ratings for sale.
Data: AllThePlaces (CC0-1.0), BrightQuery (CDLA-Permissive-2.0), DAC (CDLA-Permissive-2.0), Foursquare Open Source Places (Apache-2.0), Meta (CDLA-Permissive-2.0), Microsoft (CDLA-Permissive-2.0), Overture Maps Foundation (CDLA-Permissive-2.0), PinMeTo (CDLA-Permissive-2.0), RenderSEO (CDLA-Permissive-2.0).