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

What is the Portland Top 20 survey and who runs it?

KidsOutAndAbout.com operates a network of local family-event sites across the United States, and its Portland edition, Kids Out and About Portland, serves households throughout the Portland, Oregon metro. Once a year the edition puts a single question to its readers: which local spots are the best ones for a day out with children? The answers become the ranked Top 20 list, which the publisher frames as the voice of local families. Its results coverage describes a heavy turnout each May and June of area parents, grandparents and caregivers naming their favorite kid-friendly destinations.

The survey stays on home ground technically. The nominee list for the Portland area lives at the /content/nominees-portland-top-20-survey address on portland.kidsoutandabout.com, inside the same domain that carries the edition's event calendar, and no third-party polling vendor sits between the Portland voter and the form. For a best-of style ballot that distinction matters, because the publisher controls the ballot layout, the nominee wording and the results presentation itself. The site's footer carries a "© Copyright 2018 EntertainmentCalendar" line, which names the publishing entity standing behind the calendar operation.

The outcome carries weight beyond the voting fortnight as well. The places that finish at the top become the ranked rundown that Portland-area households lean on when planning weekends, school breaks and rainy-day outings, so a nomination on this ballot puts a family destination in front of exactly the audience that visits it.

Which editions of the Portland kids-places ballot are on the calendar?

KidsOutAndAbout has sponsored this summer survey continuously since 2005, according to its own event listing, which makes the Portland kids-places ballot one of the longer-running family choice contests in Oregon. Confirmed recent cycles run 2024, then 2025, then 2026, whose ballot printed June 6 through June 20, 2026 as its live voting stretch. Earlier survey language invited participants to place votes for their top three venues and educator categories, so the ballot has never been a single flat list of places alone.

Two details stay off the published pages. The publisher does not announce a separate nomination or entry round with dates of its own. And although the survey page presents the nominees directly, a standalone index of every ballot category is not maintained anywhere else; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

How does a supporter actually vote in the Top 20 survey?

The mechanics follow the page itself. A supporter opens the nominees page on portland.kidsoutandabout.com, reads through the places nominated for the Portland area, and submits picks through the survey form linked there. The vote happens in a standard browser session on whatever device the supporter is using, with no special software or portal involved on the voter's side, and no account requirement is described anywhere on the ballot pages for this Portland survey.

The device rule

The publisher's stated limit is plain: you can vote once on each device you have. A household whose members carry separate phones, tablets and computers therefore holds several chances to back a favorite Portland-area spot, and the rule rewards spreading the word through a family rather than hammering a single screen. Nothing on the published pages adds a waiting period between device ballots.

Timing and results

Votes count during the printed window only, and the active dates sit on the survey page for each cycle. Because that single address serves both jobs, someone who arrives midway through the open stretch can read the slate and cast picks without ever leaving the page. Seeing the outcome afterward is straightforward too: once the close passes, the nominees page keeps a link to the finished Top 20, so a supporter can check where a favorite landed without hunting through the site.

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

Oregon readers have no shortage of choice ballots, and this site follows six siblings alongside the kids survey. Best of Portland covers the same metro with a general business-and-services slate. The Bend Magazine Readers' Choice Awards and the Coast Weekend Readers' Choice Awards serve regional audiences, the latter around Astoria, while Best of Eugene and the Eugene Community's Choice Awards both serve the southern city, and the Mid-Valley community choice awards cover the corridor between the two metros.

What separates the Top 20 survey is its audience and its subject. The nominees are places to take kids, so the voting base is parents, grandparents and caregivers rather than the general consumer electorate that ranks restaurants and shops in a typical reader's choice poll. It also runs on the publisher's own domain, while several peer ballots depend on outside contest platforms to host their voting.

Each of these ballots keeps its own calendar as well, so a Portland family can hold standing in several Oregon choice contests across the same year without any overlap in effort.

How can supporters strengthen a favorite place's standing?

The device rule shapes every realistic push. Because the publisher allows a vote once on each device a person owns, the ceiling for any individual supporter is fixed, and growth comes from reaching more people rather than repeating the same ballot. Efforts built around this survey tend to work the nominee link into preschool newsletters, playground groups and family chats early in the May-to-June stretch, while the window is still open and habits have not settled. Because the ballot belongs to a family-events publisher rather than a retail brand, those community channels are the natural carriers of the link, in a way they would not be for a general business poll.

A nominated spot rallying its regulars does best to pass along the survey address itself rather than a generic homepage, since every extra hop between a supporter and the form costs participation inside a stretch this short. Naming the destination being backed in the message helps too, so nobody lands on the nominee page unsure what to pick.

The publisher prints no guidance that either encourages or bans organized outside vote help, so a nominated place weighing paid support should study the ballot's own instructions before committing. General tactics for public votes transfer well to a device-limited family ballot like this one, and anyone considering purchased support for an award-style race can review the award votes page before deciding anything.