Kids Out and About Top 20 Places to Take Kids (Westchester County): How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the Westchester Top 20 Places to Take Kids survey?

Kids Out and About Westchester County runs a seasonal honor roll that local families lean on for weekend planning: the Top 20 Places to Take Kids. Every spring the publisher posts a nominee slate of kid-friendly destinations around Westchester County, New York, and opens the floor to the people who actually frequent them. Parents, grandparents and caregivers weigh in on their favorites, and the venues with the deepest support become that year's published Top 20. Structurally this is a best-of ballot, the same genre as the readership polls that rank restaurants or plumbers, narrowed to a single question: which places around the county deliver for children? The survey's own framing calls it a community thank-you to the providers of family-friendly fun and learning, which is why the nominee mix leans toward parks, play spaces, museums and class providers rather than adult-oriented nightlife or retail.

Item	Detail
Program	Top 20 Places to Take Kids, Westchester County edition
Organizer	Kids Out and About Westchester County
Market	Westchester County, New York
Format	Public vote over a published nominee list
Host	The publisher's own website
Outcome	A ranked Top 20 list posted after each cycle

One page carries the whole contest. Nominees, voting controls and a path back to prior results all sit under the same westchester.kidsoutandabout.com address, so a supporter never has to chase the ballot across platforms.

When does voting happen, and which editions are confirmed?

History is the strongest thing this survey has going for it. Each summer since 2005, the publisher has sponsored the Top 20 Places to Take Kids as a way for the community to thank the venues that provide family-friendly fun and learning. Editions are on the books for 2024, 2025 and 2026, and the shape never moves: the voting window spans May and June, when thousands of local parents, grandparents and caregivers weigh in on their favorites. The 2026 edition carried a printed deadline. Voting stayed live through June 20, which concentrates the entire campaign into a late-spring sprint. An exact opening day is not printed beside that closing date, so the practical move is to check the nominees page as May begins rather than waiting for an announcement that may never come. Because the same months recur, venues that want a spot on the list can plan outreach against a calendar they have seen before, and returning families know roughly when to expect the ballot to surface. Two things the ballot leaves off the page deserve a flag. The nominees page does not print the roster of categories voters choose among; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Who is eligible to cast a vote is likewise unstated, and the page publishes no round schedule beyond the window itself.

How do you actually cast a vote in the survey?

Casting a vote takes minutes. Open the nominees page for the Westchester Top 20 survey, scroll the list of nominated places around Westchester County, and register your picks. On the 2024 ballot, voters were asked to place votes for their top three venues and educator categories, so expect to commit to several choices rather than a single favorite. The device rule is the one limit the organizer states plainly: "You can vote once on each device you have." That wording does two jobs at once. It caps any single machine at a vote, and it quietly invites every screen in a household to participate separately. Whether one device may return for a second pass later in the window is left unstated on the page. No sign-in step is described anywhere on the nominees page, and nothing points to an app or a store download; the ballot behaves like an ordinary web page in a browser. Mobile and desktop visitors see the same list and the same controls, which matters enormously here, because the device rule makes each screen its own ballot. A supporter who understands that structure on day one plans a very different campaign from one who assumes a single vote per person.

How does this ballot sit beside its New York neighbours?

Westchester County sits inside a crowded New York field of reader-driven ballots, and knowing the neighbours helps a supporter read this one correctly. The closest cousin is Best of Westchester, a magazine-backed poll covering the same county with broad local categories. Beyond it, the best-of format runs Best of Brooklyn, Best of Queens and Best of the Bronx across the boroughs, The City's Best for the five-borough metropolis, and Best of Hudson Valley up the river. Three differences set the Top 20 survey apart. First, the subject: every nominee exists to serve children, so the finished list reads less like a business directory and more like a ready-made family itinerary. Second, the organizer: a family-events calendar rather than a lifestyle magazine, which shapes both the nominee pool and the audience doing the voting. Third, the hosting: westchester.kidsoutandabout.com keeps the Kids Out and About nominees, the vote controls and the prior results on pages of its own, with no third-party polling service standing between a supporter and the slate. For anyone advising a local venue, that combination of county scale, child-first nominees and a one-page ballot is exactly what makes this survey behave differently from the magazine poll next door, even though the two share the same corner of New York.

How can supporters strengthen a favorite place before the window shuts?

A few practical levers follow straight from the ballot's own design. The one-per-device rule turns every gadget a family owns into a separate chance to speak, so a reminder that names the device rule, not just the venue, tends to lift turnout. The window stretches from May into June, which gives campaigns several weeks rather than a single weekend. Share the nominees link directly, since locating the ballot is the biggest friction point for casual supporters. The survey page prints no guidance about organized vote-gathering, paid or otherwise, so treat any outside effort as a judgment call for the venue's own team. General tactics around timing, messaging and reminders are laid out in our guide to getting more votes online, and the economics of purchased support for ballots shaped like this one are summarized on the award-votes page.