Among parks well known to western fans, the Universal Studios theme parks in Japan and Florida posted the largest gains in attendance last year. Universal Studios Japan saw a 17.8% increase in attendance, to pass Tokyo DisneySea and take the number four spot worldwide, with 13.9 million visitors last year. Universal Studios Florida jumped 16 percent to 9.6 million visitors in 2015, to take the number 10 spot globally from Disney California Adventure.
Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom continued as the world's most popular theme park, topping the 20 million mark in annual attendance.
The Tokyo Disney theme parks suffered slight declines, along with Hong Kong Disneyland, Ocean Park and Lotte World, as tourism in Asia generally found the year difficult, beyond the massive surge of domestic visitors to new parks in China. SeaWorld San Diego also saw its attendance continue to decline, though SeaWorld Orlando and the Busch Gardens parks saw very slight gains.
Here are the North American top 20:
And the global top 10:
Previous theme park attendance reports:
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It finally opened in about 10 minutes....
Cover is Sleeping Beauty Castle. Not in Orlando. Sheesh.
By the way, I don't think it's accurate or fair to say that Disney has made "hardly any investment" in Orlando. $500 million for New Fantasyland, the current expansions of AK and DHS (which, granted, are overdue), and lot of other additions over the years.
-People wonder why Disney doesn't add new attractions frequently, and I think this shows why. Prices went up and attendance went up, but there weren't any big new attractions in either 2014 or 2015. DLR had all the new 60th anniversary stuff, numerous ride upgrades, and the Star Wars additions to Tomorrowland, likely contributing to more locals visiting, while WDW had almost nothing marketable, yet they posted sizable gains at almost all parks. Obviously, 2-3 major attractions per resort per decade is all Disney needs.
-USH only grew 4% despite adding Fast and Furious, Springfield, and other minor enhancements, while USO had the biggest gains of the year despite not adding anything. To me, this says that USH is failing to connect with the local market with their new pricing system and is not enough of a draw for the tourist market like USO is. I'm really interested to see what their 2016 report looks like as Wizarding World of Harry Potter does not appear to be meeting expectations in California.
-SeaWorld appears to be slowly recovering, though they are still suffering from the public perception of the parks. Hopefully the additions throughout the chain this year and next year will help to get them back on track. I worry about the San Diego park, however, as they are still losing attendance and have nothing to market in 2016 (not even a new show).
-In the regional theme park contests, Cedar Fair is doing quite well but Six Flags seems to be growing more rapidly. It appears that the "new attraction for every park every year" strategy combined with refreshing sections of the parks each year is really paying off. I think both chains are realizing that while roller coasters can be a good investment, only investing in coasters is not a winning strategy long term. None of the parks listed added brand new coasters in 2015 (Twisted Colossus is debatable between new coaster or extreme makeover), yet all posted attendance gains when several were losses or flat last year.
-Lastly, while I doubt that the numbers reported are exact (I have a tough time believing MK or DL really average 50,000+ daily visitors, for example), I do think the trends are accurate in the report. I'm really curious to see what happens in the industry in the coming years as it looks like we're in the biggest transition point since the 1980s.
Glad to see Busch/Seaworld on a upswing, though they still have a long way to go before becoming a big boy again.
I imagine very few people visit the Walt Disney World resort, which is often a vacation planned and saved up for for years - and skips one of the 4 parks. Even if you just go to DHS to have a look, you still want to get your money's worth and not leave 25% on the table. You probably won't write home about it (since there's FB, Twitter, text message, and email), but you'll still go. And that counts toward attendance.
If you're there for seven days, and have already been to all 4 parks, and want to go to one of them again...bingo. Magic Kingdom.
Which Chinese parks are surging? I wrote a review on ChimeLong Paradise in Guangzhou last year. Very Six Flags.
Disneyobsession, while it is possible DCA did barely reach 10 million I would bet that there is no way Disneyland hit 20 million. If Disneyland really reached 20 million, that would be an average of almost 55,000 visitors per day. According to a friend who worked at the park until earlier this year, weekdays were typically 20,000-30,000, weekends and school breaks were generally around 50,000, and the busiest days might see 70,000 (the gates close at about 80,000). I just don't see any of these numbers increasing enough to make the park hit 20 thousand, and I honestly doubt it will reach that number before Star Wars opens. Regarding Knott's, 3.9 million is for the theme park only and 5 million is for the whole resort. That 5 million includes visitors who only go to Soak City (estimated to be about 400,000) as well as those who do not enter the parks and only visit the marketplace and/or Independence Hall.
James, think about it like this...if you're visiting Walt Disney World and you know it will be 5+ years before you'll have another chance to go, are you going to visit DHS as it is or do you want to completely skip it? Most visitors would pick option one. I have a feeling that 99% of those who visit WDW for at least four days will include a trip to DHS, and I wouldn't be surprised if that 5% is roughly comparable to overall attendance growth for the resort. Besides, not only does DHS still have a fair number of attractions (19, vs 26 at DAK and 30 at Epcot), but it also has one of the top 5 attractions at the entire resort.
Er ... some small attraction called Diagon Alley.
Orlando ROCKS!
Oh I wish I had downloaded sooner! That flub would have been worth some serious $$$ a few years from now!! :D
If you believe what is being reported.
How many of these people are "counted" at both Universal parks or all four Disney Orlando parks.
Rubbish, I tells ya...
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