Carlye Wisel is an American journalist specialising in theme parks and her articles have appeared in many leading publications, including Bloomberg, Glamour, GQ, National Geographic and TIME.
“No one is marrying theme park fandom with unbiased factual reporting better than Carlye,” says her one of her nominators.
In a COVID-19 related article this summer for VOX, she dared to ask the question: “Should Disney World even be open?” In it she wrote, “The sheer irony of visiting the World Showcase at Epcot, a theme park within America’s hot zone, to travel to facsimile countries like France and Japan where the reality is much less bleak than here isn’t lost on me.” Some of her other, lighter pieces include online guides and energy-packed vlogs about Walt Disney World.
Describing herself as a “professional kidult”, Wisel has previously had in-house jobs with Epic Records, Vevo and ASOS, but now writes exclusively about theme parks on a freelance basis. In one of her most unusual assignments she once spent three days locked inside the Mall of America.