Kids Out and About Top 20 Places to Take Kids (St. Louis): How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the Kids Out and About Top 20 survey for St. Louis?

Kids Out and About St. Louis runs its yearly Top 20 rundown of favorite places to take kids as a best-of ballot for the St. Louis area in Missouri. The exercise invites local families to weigh in on the venues and programs they actually use, and the publisher sizes its own audience plainly: every May and June it draws a crowd measured in the thousands, made up of parents, grandparents, and caregivers naming the spots around town they rate highest for kids.

Both the nominee list and the picking form live on the publisher's own domain, saintlouis.kidsoutandabout.com, with no outside polling service involved anywhere in the flow, so the survey's address holds steady from edition to edition. The current nominees page carries the masthead Kids Out and About St. Louis along with a copyright notice reading "© Copyright 2018 EntertainmentCalendar", which identifies the publishing operation behind the calendar brand.

As a best-of contest it sits in the same broad genre as restaurant and service rankings, but its subject is strictly family life: days out, classes, and kid-friendly spots across the metro. That focus shapes everything else about the ballot, from who bothers to fill it in to which nominees climb the list. Because the electorate is caregivers rather than general readers, a nomination's fate depends on how strongly families feel about a spot, not on broad name recognition. The table below gathers the fixed details a supporter or a nominated business needs before going further.

When does the St. Louis Top 20 voting window open and close?

The survey is annual. The organizer's own event listings state that it has sponsored the balloting each summer since 2005, and confirmed editions sit in 2024 and 2026. Within that series, the active stretch falls in late spring and early summer: the publication frames the season as a May-and-June weigh-in, and for the 2026 cycle the ballot is live June 10 through June 20, with the organizer's listings repeating the line "Voting is live through June 20."

Nothing in the published material announces a nomination round ahead of the picking stage, and no separate entry period is described. Several operational details are likewise absent. The pages display the venue lineup but stop short of listing every award slot on the form; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. They also print no statement on how frequently a single supporter may submit during the window, so anyone planning repeated visits should read the form's own instructions first.

The count of nominees is presented as a Top 20 outcome rather than a published entry figure, and past outcomes remain reachable: the nominee page links straight to the previous year's Top 20 and category winners. For a supporter, the practical summary is simple, a short June form with a firm close and little else fixed in advance. The timeline below sets the known dates against the gaps.

How do you place your picks on the St. Louis Top 20 ballot?

Voting is deliberately light. A supporter opens the nominees page, reads through the lineup for the St. Louis area, and marks the three favorites the form requests. The organizer's own appeal sets the tone: "Please take 2 minutes to help us by selecting your three favorites." That instruction is the closest thing the survey publishes to a vote rule, and it matters strategically: a nominee is not collecting solitary clicks but fighting for a place inside a household's short list of three.

The 2024 edition's form made the same structure explicit, asking participants to name three venues and also recognize educators in the same pass, so a single three-pick ceiling covered venue recognition and teacher recognition together in that year. Anyone voting from a phone gets the same experience; the form opens in a regular browser tab with no app required. There is no sign of a login wall or a payment screen in the published flow, and the form behaves like the rest of the site's pages.

Because the picking stage spans only the June dates the organizer announces, a supporter who intends to participate should reach the form early in that stretch rather than assume extra time. Submitting before the announced close, June 20 in the current cycle, is the only hard timing requirement stated anywhere on the material. Everything else about the experience, from the lineup's length to the exact slot labels, is whatever the live form shows that week.

How does this survey compare with other Missouri best-of ballots?

The Top 20 survey is one of several public ballots covering Missouri markets, and setting it beside its neighbors clarifies what makes it distinct. Within St. Louis itself, two siblings share the metro: the A-List St. Louis Magazine ranking and the Feast Magazine FEAST 50, both oriented toward dining, services, and general lifestyle categories. Elsewhere in the state, Best of KC, Best of Southwest Missouri, the Columbia Missourian Reader's Choice Awards, and Columbia MO CommunityVotes cover other cities and regions.

Against that set, this survey separates itself on three axes. The subject is narrower and warmer: it ranks places to take kids, a niche that no general best-of list serves as directly. The electorate is self-selecting in a useful way, since parents, grandparents, and caregivers hold strong opinions and pass recommendations among themselves constantly. The format splits each participant's support across multiple nominees, which rewards places that inspire genuine enthusiasm over those with mere awareness.

For a nominated business or venue, that means the competition here is less about outspending rivals on visibility and more about earning a spot in family routines. A museum that anchors rainy-day weekends, a class kids beg to attend, or a park that hosts every birthday tends to convert its natural advocates into ballot support without much persuasion. The siblings above mostly measure commercial prestige; this ballot measures affection, and the difference shows in who wins.

How can a nominated place earn more support in this survey?

Earning support here starts with the format's arithmetic: every backer can name only three places, so the goal is to be remembered alongside a family's absolute favorites. Practical steps follow from that. Make sure caregivers encounter the venue often enough before the May-and-June stretch to consider it automatic; remind them early in the window, because the picking stage shuts quickly; and let the published standings from earlier rounds show newcomers why regulars keep coming back.

The survey pages carry no published guidance on outside assistance, so a venue weighing paid help should check what the organizer's own pages say and read the general guide to getting more votes online before committing either way. Whatever route a campaign takes, the deciding currency stays the same: real enthusiasm among the families who actually fill in the form, expressed as one of their three picks before the June close.