All 63 U.S. National Parks Ranked REACTION - More Than Just Parks List 

If either of the Pattiz brothers see this, feel free to comment some insight in regards to some of my thoughts. Thank you for watching and this was an excellent list to react to. Also, sorry this is so long.

I agree I don't think a park should be docked for being difficult to access, that's a huge plus in my book honestly. As someone who wakes up at 2 - 3 am to go hiking here in WA to avoid seeing another human on trail, crowds are a big detractor for me personally.

You are my favorite National Park enthusiast online and give so much credit to lesser known national parks more than most but I always chuckle when you get to the smokies because your tone ALWAYS changes a bit and can’t help but dog on it 😂

hey this was my suggestion :') thanks a bunch for doing this video

Yeah, accessibility is a bit ridiculous. If anything, the lack of accessibility can be just as well be treated as a pro to a national park. So it just shouldn't be included at all.

Great video! I enjoyed watching!

Agree that Theodore Roosevelt national park should be higher, there's a section in the park called Peaceful Valley that my friend and I got to enjoy entirely to ourselves for the night, wish we could of stayed longer but we planned on going to glacier and Yellowstone

Crowds might be a issue like arches can be hard to get in, but I do like crowds and being able to talk to them. In Bryce I was talking to Germans, and a lot of other foreign people. It adds to the enjoyment.

Arches accessibility should definitely be a 10 in my eyes. It’s minutes from Moab and most everything is very easy to drive to on good roads. I don’t understand why it’s less than a 10?

Badlands NP can have some crowds on weekends. When I visited it over a year ago on a Saturday, the eastern parking lots were mostly full and the Ben Rifle visitor center was packed. The main problem is that there is not a lot of parking spaces for some of the turn offs. Even though I have never seen it, I would definitely put TR over Badlands. And it hurts me to place North Dakota over South Dakota. (My home state).

Interesting list! Also interesting that Grand Teton was considered to be an 8/10 for crowds....it can definitely get pretty crowded at times! Especially around Jenny Lake. Also surprised to see Bryce Canyon so low!

The more I watch your videos the more excited I get to see the rest of the parks. Thanks again

Idk, man. I think accessibility is a very good criterion to have. Most people will either never have the chance visit kobuk or only be able to visit it once in their lifetime due to how inaccessible and expensive it is. Also having good amenities makes park experiences more enjoyable sometimes (meaning there are good latrines and visitor center/museum building for info), and I really hate crowds when I'm trying to enjoy myself in a wilderness area. I thought this list was pretty good.

I saw this list a few months ago and hated that they included 'accessibility' ... I still ended up looking at it but I didn't care about the rankings due to that one criteria affecting the overall scores so much. To be quit honest, I find that a harder a park is to get to, the more magic it is !!!!

I do wonder what all they qualify as accessibility. Like yeah, the remoteness of a park is very subjective. But, the ease of getting to a park and traversing it can be a huge issue for families, the elderly, those with impaired mobility, etc. Obviously natural places that emphasize hiking and the like won't be fully accessible to everybody, but it is a factor for sure. Not sure how much of that they were considering in this list, but I do believe in the importance of accessibility. People that are huge fans of the park don't necessarily have an issue with long or difficult travel because usually that's part of the experience. But for the "average" park-goer, it'd be really different. All that being said, as a Carlsbad native, putting the Caverns at 60 is a war crime. 0/10.

How is Mount Rainier crowd 7/10? If you do not arrive at the parking lot before 8.30 then you are screwed. If so I cannot imagine how bad Zion is. Plus North Cascades Accessibility should be 2/10 at most. There is a reason why it is one of the least visited park and the most accessible part of the National park complex are not in the National park. I don’t like accessibility and amenity as rankings but I have to agree with crowds. I always feel a completely different experience when there are not so many people.

How is Pinnacles a 6.5 on accessibility when it's only like an hour from San Jose? It's closer than Olympic from Seattle which got 10/10! Accessibility is a weird metric because it depends on where you're coming from anyways.

Scenery and Recreation should have multipliers, as those categories are the most important. I would completely remove Accessibility too.

I demand justice for Gates of the Arctic!

I don't like the factors they based their list on either. Why does one go to a National Park? Isn't it to see the scenery (including wildlife) and hike and/or camp. People don't go to a National Park because it's close by (they take road trips-that's half the fun). With reservations in some parks, they do have to think about crowds. I don't know if people would not go to a National Park because of the "expected" crowds (they might not return because of it - think South Rim of the Grand Canyon in Summer). Crowds to me would affect how I feel about being in the Park. Going into the Visitor's Center is a part of the experience.

I went to Glacier in mid September and crowds weren’t an issue

You should do a new video with your ratings using their system, but let scenery go up to 20. So double points for scenery and see how it compares to your own current order you have.

If they are experts then each park should be ranked for what it brings to the table (importance/uniqueness/ecosystems/) regardless of crowds and accessibility. Nobody will go to see a patch of dirt just because its easily accessible and there are no crowds. Stuff like that should be placed as a side note for some parks and reserved as an actual factors for other parks such as 'Accessibility' of Gates of the Artic and 'Crowds' for Yosemite since each park and season is different.

wonder if bringing Crowd and Accessibility down to a score out of 5 instead of 10 would work better for ranking these; there's no way they should be evenly scored comparable to Scenery and Recreation in this kind of list.

Tbh list like these are almost impossible because everyone has different views and perspectives. Example for me, im sure yellowstone is absolutely amazing but im not going there because I don't wanna deal with all those people, I don't like being around tourists in nature. So I would put Lassen over yellowstone which probably no one else would do. I've hiked all over colorado but have yet to go to rocky mountain np because I know there will be tons of people there. Some people don't mind that. I don't need amenities at all, honestly I'd prefer less amenities, keep it as wild as possible. Families would think otherwise. It's all about what you personally like

The categories are not necessarily bad, but the weighing is wrong. I watch Little Wars TV on RU-vid and when they rank a ruleset for historical wargaming they have 5ish categories that have a separate percentage of the total score. For example, 50% of this ranking could be scenery and accessibility could be 5%. So while you may have a 10/10 on accessibility, the scenery might be only a 5/10. so instead of 15 out of 20 points, you have 30 out of 55.

This list is technically incorrect. I am not saying they shouldn't consider crowds or accessibility, or some of their scores look too subjective. I am saying even if they want to consider those factors, they do it wrong. It looks like they make every category weigh 10 points, evenly. However in terms of crowds or accessibility many parks can get as low as 0, while in terms of scenery most parks gets at least 6, this actually makes crowds not only as important as scenery, but much more important.

That's gotta be one of the worst lists I've ever seen tbh. Loved your commentary on it, agreed with everything you had to say

Wubbalubbadubdub

A ranking for accessibility seems a bit elitist really… it doesn’t matter where it is, if it’s beautiful it’s beautiful… & the categories of accessibility and crowds are essentially mutually exclusive. If it’s accessible & beautiful, it will be crowded… 🤷‍♂️

I think accessibility should take care about handicap support to points or not.

Interesting list. I think a lot of the ranking is where you live. The original posters, must be in the NW. Yellowstone is much closer to me. Crowds can be really bad, especially by the thermal features. Amenities are bogus, the best one have crowds. I do like some the comment, but if GC and Yellowstone are not in the top. OP is one something (not legal I think(

Readwood @ #5 is embrassing. Big Basin State Park & Humbolt Redwoods State Park have much better groves and the coast line is nice, but par for the course on the US West coast, nothing too special. Rocky Mountains NP @ 8 calling it the "crown jewel of the rockies" after ranking glacier higher is wtf? They realize those parks (basically) share a mountain range?

Smoky Mountains is very high in my list as well. It is an amazing park specially if it has clouds and mist.

Crowd size and accessibility matter a lot. You can't see a place if you can't get to it. Look how many of the National Parks require reservations now...it's because there are too many people who want to visit and not enough accommodations. Most summer weekends at Indiana Dunes, for example, the parking by the beaches (and I mean every single parking lot) fills up by about 10 am...so you'd have to park miles away and walk...and there are times when even those parking lots fill up. Also, visiting those beaches when no one else is there (i.e., in mid-March) is an orders of magnitude better experience than in mid-July when you can't even walk along the shore because there are so many people there.

Yellow stone not even top 10....an absolute joke. The smoky mtns are not Even top 15

Your narrative on Great Smokey Mountains is getting old. Go back and do it right.