First off, everybody knows the Golden Tickets are just a joke where Parks just pay for publicity... obviously there's an extreme American bias. It's an American publication where I would say most of its clientele are also American. They used to release the voting information and I'm pretty sure it was some insane number like 25% coming out of the Ohio region. They have 4 or 5 vote regions but Ohio has its own.... and I believe anyone who subscribes to AT is eligible to receive a ballot on request. My parents bought me a physical subscription when they used to mail out newspaper like media in the early 2000s. So I guess I could have voted way back, but didn't care.
FLY winning Best New Roller Coaster of 2021 - it opened in 2020
But I do have to point out I'm pretty sure Amusement Today made it clear in the voting process that any ride from 2020 was eligible for 2021 because last year's season wasn't proper for most Parks, they also only did a modified golden ticket last year, with most categories not happening, so this gave the handful of things that opened last year some sort of recognition.
Valhalla winning Best Water Ride of 2021 - has it even run one public boat this season?
Again, this has to do with how GT works, rides are eligible to win even if they -don't open- to the public, solely based on the concept it's trying to promote. Like 10 years ago one of the Schlitterbahn water parks got the best water ride for their action river which didn't even open until a month -after- voting concluded!
And are we not forgetting how Steel Curtain managed to win best new ride what it was open a grand total of 6 days before voting concluded?
Since everyone is so continuously dissatisfied, why not just completely ignore it and focus on something more worthwhile as far as Amusement Awards go.