Disney Leads Theme Park Attendance Report, as China Gains

So (if you believe the soothsayers at TEA/AECOM) in 2019, the Walt Disney World parks have welcomed 62,991,000 guests and the Universal Orlando parks welcomed 23,101,000 guests.

By my accounting, since 2007, the six Walt Disney World parks have welcomed 720,316,000 and the three Universal Orlando parks have welcomed 206,169,000 guests.

Those nine parks brought 926,485,000 consumers to Central Florida over a period of 12 years.

The dependence Central Florida's economy has on the themed entertainment industry is stunning. In turn, the realization of how bad the pandemic has/will hit that same economy is frightening.

Please Note: Attendance calculations do not include guests who visited DSTP.

On a quick glance at the numbers here, the biggest one that stands out is that DCA AND DL were both flat in year over year attendance. While DCA's additions building into and through 2019 were relatively minor (mostly the Pixar Pier transformation), DL saw one of the largest single investments ever made to the park in Galaxy's Edge. The impact of Galaxy's Edge did not affect the entire year since it didn't officially open until May, but perhaps it demonstrates that large investments don't necessarily pay off with immediate bumps in attendance.

Now, Disney had a hand in tempering attendance gains because of changes to their annual passes and restrictions initially placed on entry into the new land (as well as RotR not being open for all of 2019), but I would think that Disney executives and accountants would not be satisfied with flat attendance resulting from a $2+ billion addition. On the other side of the coin however, these numbers do show that DL was not as much of a ghost town as people were making it out to be through the summer and fall of 2019. There were multiple claims from close followers of Disneyland that the park was hemorrhaging attendance because of the shrewd new AP policies and the limitations being placed on guests wanting to enter Galaxy's Edge. The park ultimately finishing the year with the same level of attendance as the previous year shows that those claims were false, and if Disney was reaping increased revenue from higher prices and per cap spending, then perhaps Disney was able to reach the balance between giving guests a little more room in the park while still generating profit to pay for the massive addition. The biggest problem with all of these numbers is that it will be nearly impossible to fully evaluate the impact of Galaxy's Edge at DL and DHS because of the pandemic, which could spell trouble for future massive additions to our favorite theme parks.

@TH - Let's not mince attendance with "consumers" or "tourists" since a click of the turnstile does not equate to a individual visiting Orlando. Most visitors (and locals) don't just visit one Orlando theme park in a year, so those 926+ million visits does not mean that many people visited Central Florida over that 12 year period. Not only does that number not differentiate between locals and tourists, but it does not accurately reflect the number of people vacationing in the region.

There's no doubt that the Orlando theme parks are a major economic engine and draw huge numbers of tourists from far and wide. However, let's not oversell these numbers as many hospitality and tourism lobbyists are apt to do by equating "visits" to " tourists".

So if I had written "Those nine parks brought 926,485,000 consumers into Central Florida theme parks over a period of 12 years," -- wherein each consumer can represent multiple "clicks" -- that would be okay?

That's certainly better TH...Living in the lobbying capital of the world (Washington, DC), I'm always perturbed by those who contort and exaggerate real, verifiable data to justify their POV. There's nuance to all data, and the lack of qualifications given to certain data sets can dramatically change one's understanding of the real numbers.

It does happen all the time, so there's some level of acceptance of outlets providing data without providing important qualifications (see everything surrounding the pandemic), but as a scientist, nothing bothers me more than seeing data not being accurately presented and qualified.

I don't often agree with TH Creative but lets be honest here if Orlando had no parks it probably wouldn't be a very big city today nor would it have one of the biggest airports. As a Canadian I can honestly say that I would have never been to Orlando if it didn't have high quality theme parks.

I wish there was a way to accurately know where everyone is from when entering theme parks. It would be amazing to compare the various parks. I know that Orlando is clearly more touristy then the LA parks but it would be fun to know exact numbers.

@ Francis 24 - We once won the world roller hockey championship ... So we got that going for us.

I have to go with the "visitor-tourist" talk as when my family lived in Jacksonville, we visited WDW three or four times a year with special deals for Florida residents.

If Orlando didn't have Theme Parks, it would be the city that Jacksonville makes fun of.

The one thing that I have always been curious about is how are park hoppers accounted for. When the statistics show that X number of people attended the Magic Kingdom can they tell if that person was at Epcot and exclude them count.

When our family goes to WDW we don't buy the park hopper option as we just don't feel it is a good value considering the distances between parks. We do however get the park hopper at Universal as the two parks are side by side.

I'm actually surprised Hollywood Studios didn't see more of a spike than 2.0%. It has been packed every time I visited since the opening Galaxy's Edge.

Must be disappointing for Hong Kong, not even number 1 in its own market

A few notes:

1) Disneyland and DCA being flat. That happened because a strong final quarter of the year (led by Halloween and Christmas) overcame a dismal summer, as Disneyland's efforts to manage expected Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge crowds worked too well.

2) DHS got a bit of a Galaxy's Edge boost, but it came late in the year, as the Star Wars land opened there at the end of summer. There likely was a Rise of the Resistance kick up in December. too.

3) Among the regionals, Knott's was helped by its Calico River Rapids ride, food events... and being the place where all those fans who skipped Disneyland headed during the summer. Canada's Wonderland picked up visitors thanks to its new B&M Dive coaster.

4) It's been five years since Six Flags Great America bumped Busch Gardens Williamsburg from the NA Top 20. I'm surprised that there hasn't been a change in the parks on that list since then. Which park is ready to step up?

Also, just so everyone is aware, this report is not the end all be all defining the industry, and is not without its faults. While some parks and operators openly provided attendance data to AECOM for the report (full disclosure - I work for AECOM, though not in the division that assembles this report), much of the data are gleaned through routine observations and surveys.

Evidence of the fallibility of this report can be seen on the museum rankings that has a peculiar omission. The National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC is regularly one of the most visited museums in the world (saw 6.2 million visitors in 2018), but is not anywhere on the top 20 for 2019. Now, the DC icon is going through a massive renovation that has a number of popular galleries closed or with limited artifacts, but a drop from #5 in the world, to outside the top 20 should warrant a credible comment - the Index attempts to blame this >50% drop on a switch in counting techniques used by certain Smithsonian museums along with the renovation, which also impacted attendance in the 2nd half of 2018 but not to the degree insinuated by the museum's complete absence from the top 20.

I'm surprised there are not any water parks from California in the North America Top 20. I wonder if that's a mistake since I would expect that Knott's Soak City and Raging Waters each receive at least 500,000 visitors per year.

Makes me worry that Orlando could go the way of Detroit.

Detroit’s problem (and it was by no means unique to Detroit, I’m looking out on a river that was once the beating heart of an empire with shipbuilders up and down) was that the same (or closely equivalent) products could be sourced elsewhere.

Orlando’s problem is more temporal. Nobody is trying to replace WDW, or at least nobody seriously thinks they are despite bluster in press releases. Once international tourism can restart (and it will - this virus has changed much about society but I can’t see it changing our wanderlust) there is no replacement for WDW or USO.

There will be a period of pain. Those making the decisions are deciding how long it will be. Maybe some smaller operators of hotels or timeshares go under. But I’m convinced The fundamentals of the Orlando experience are such that as soon as those barriers are down, it will pick up again, and the parks will return to being money making machines.

What I hope Disney and Universal, and the smaller operators do with this time is to stop thinking “Brand Disney” and “Brand Universal” but instead think “Brand Orlando”. Many tourist destinations have a single-ticket for an enormous number of attractions (seriously don’t visit London without it). Maybe that dream is a little big, but there are a lot of little things along the way they can do to join up the many opportunities Orlando offers.

It's quite a sobering read when you see how good the parks were doing up until this year.

Also, I've never heard of Chimelong Ocean Kingdom, but it's quite amazing that a SeaWorld-type park with a handful of rides can pull in enough people to rank 8th in the world.