Kings Island reveals top ridership numbers for 2023

Kings Dominion posted its top three coasters on the park's social media channels:

1. Dominator - 611,873
2. Twisted Timbers - 585,233
3. Racer 75 - 509,094

Interesting to see that the rider count on Kings Island's most ridden coaster is more than double that of Kings Dominion's.

I always love it when parks release data like this, and am glad to see more and more joining the bandwagon. It not only gives an idea of what real world throughput is on a major roller coaster, but also shows which attractions both draw in the guests and have the capacity to handle them without creating extreme lines.

As to Tim's comment above, I think the big difference is that Kings Island runs three trains on pretty much all their coasters (unless the ride cannot operate with three trains), while Kings Dominion rarely runs more than two even if the ride can handle it.

@AJ - I would note that Dominator is the only "big" coaster at KD that even has 3 trains, but I do get where you're coming from.

I've always appreciated KI's tracking of ridership stats on their attractions. We happened to be in the park a few years ago when The Racer hit a milestone number (100 millionth ride I believe).

I don't see why parks don't celebrate their numbers more. For example, BGW used to maintain a sign in the station for Loch Ness Monster that would be updated yearly showing the total number of riders on the classic coaster, but it must have cost too much to update the sign, so they changed the actual count to "millions and millions of rides."

The popularity of attractions is something parks should celebrate, not conceal. Also, I've never understood why parks try to hide their true attendance numbers, forcing the industry to rely on the nebulous TEA/AECOM annual report to provide any sort of quantification on the health of the industry. Parks have to disclose all of their financial data as publicly traded companies, so it's never made sense to me why actual turnstile clicks are so taboo.

@AJ I'm not at all surprised as the park attendance at KD doesn't warrant the need for three trains unlike KI. What was surprising to me, not really, was that I-305 didn't crack the top 3 for KD. Guess it's too intimidating.

@Russell when I worked at BGW, there was an internal number we could call to hear the park attendance which would inform us of the anticipated, current and total amount of guest per hour. Within my 5 years of working there during the summer, the lowest amount I've ever heard was about 5k on a raining day, with the most being around 33-35k+ when they exceeded a previous record. Granted this was 20 yrs ago, but I wonder if other parks had something similar to this now, or previously.

Projected daily attendance was printed on the daily printouts handed out to cast members at Disneyland back when I worked there. Though, again, that was more than a decade ago. I am so old.

I remember those days. Now you need level 4 clearance from the Pentagon to get that
(which made sense during covid as they didn't want the media to find out how many people they were letting in...but now since they have this whole "let in people who are willing to pay the most and keep the poor people out" thing they still don't tell anyone anything lol)