Top 25 Most Attended Theme Parks in the World for 2010

[Mouse Skywalker]

I thought some people here might be interested in this. The Themed Entertainment Association is the trade industry group that distributes the annual theme park awards. They also produce a yearly report on the state of theme park/amusement parks. The 2010 report just came out, and has some interesting information in it. I like "top 10" lists - so I get curious to see the statistics.

Here are the attendance figures for the Top 25 Theme Park/Amusement Parks in the World. Not surprising, Disney Parks throughout the world take the top 8 spots.

• 1 MAGIC KINGDOM at Walt Disney World, U.S.A., 16,972,000, -1.5%
• 2 DISNEYLAND, Anaheim, CA, U.S.A., 15,980,000, +0.5%
• 3 TOKYO DISNEYLAND, Tokyo, Japan, 14,452,000, +5.9%
• 4 TOKYO DISNEYSEA, Tokyo, Japan, 12,663,000, +5.5%
• 5 EPCOT at Walt Disney World, U.S.A., 10,825,000, -1.5%
• 6 DISNEYLAND PARK at Disneyland Paris, France, 10,500,000, -2.6%
• 7 DISNEY’S ANIMAL KINGDOM at Walt Disney World, U.S.A., 9,686,000, +1.0%
• 8 DISNEY’S HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS at Walt Disney World, U.S.A., 9,603,000, -1.0%
• 9 UNIVERSAL STUDIOS JAPAN, Osaka, Japan, 8,160,000, +2.0%
• 10 EVERLAND, Gyeonggi-Do, South Korea, 6,884,000, +11.6%
• 11 DISNEY CALIFORNIA ADVENTURE, Anaheim, CA, U.S.A., 6,278,000, +3.0%
• 12 ISLANDS OF ADVENTURE at Universal Orlando, FL, U.S.A., 5,949,000, +30.2%
• 13 UNIVERSAL STUDIOS at Universal Orlando, FL, U.S.A., 5,925,000 +6.1%
• 14 LOTTE WORLD, Seoul, South Korea, 5,551,000, +22.4%
• 15 HONG KONG DISNEYLAND, Hong Kong S.A.R., 5,200,000, +13.0%
• 16 SEAWORLD FLORIDA, Orlando, FL, U.S.A., 5,100,000, -12.1%
• 17 OCEAN PARK, HONG KONG S.A.R., 5,100,000, +6.3%
• 18 UNIVERSAL STUDIOS HOLLYWOOD, Universal City, CA, U.S.A., 5,040,000, +26.0%
• 19 WALT DISNEY STUDIOS at Disneyland Paris, France, 4,500,000, -2.6%
• 20 NAGASHIMA SPA LAND, Kuwana, Japan, 4,465,000, -5.0%
• 21 EUROPA PARK, Rust, Germany, 4,250,000, 0.0%
• 22 BUSCH GARDENS TAMPA BAY, Tampa, FL, U.S.A., 4,200,000, +2.4%
• 23 YOKOHAMA HAKKEIJIMA SEA PARADISE, Yokohama, Japan, 4,023,000, -6.0%
• 24 DE EFTELING, Kaatsheuvel, the Netherlands, 4,000,000, 0.0%
• 25 SEAWORLD CALIFORNIA, San Diego, CA, U.S.A., 3,800,000, -9.5%

If you're interested in the full report, you can find it via this link. There's a lot more lists including Top 20 North American Parks, top water parks, etc.

http://www.themeit.com/etea/2010Report.pdf

 

[KrysiaG]

Awesome! Thank you for sharing!

 

[Mouse Skywalker]

Here's some interesting observations - at least I think they're interesting.

Universal's Islands of Adventure attendance increased a whopping 30.2% - Wizarding World of Harry Potter opened
Universal Studios Hollywood attendance increased 26% - King Kong 360 3D was added to the studio tour

As much as has been made by Islands of Adventure increase in attendance, the park still lags behind 9 other Disney Parks in attendance. Even the much maligned Disney's California Adventure is ahead of Islands of Adventure. Granted the DCA attendance figure is probably due to spillover from people visiting Disneyland - the second most attended theme park in the world.

It's also interesting that both Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios Orlando are also behind Universal Studios Japan in their attendance figures.

The only parks with double-digit drops in attendance... SeaWorld! A rough year for SeaWorld with the death of one of their trainers in Orlando plus a congressional hearing into the park's educational value. SeaWorld Orlando dropped 12.1% and SeaWorld San Diego dropped 9.5% (OK, not double digits, but I rounded up to 10%).

The theme park Efteling in The Netherlands was stagnant in their attendance for 2010 - probably because Yvette and Emiel were spending so much of their vacation time on DIS Unplugged trips!

 

[NancyIL]

Islands of Adventure sure had a big jump in attendance in 2010 - thanks to Harry Potter.

 

[NancyIL]

Here's some interesting observations - at least I think they're interesting.

As much as has been made by Islands of Adventures increase in attendance, up 30% due to the opening of Wizarding World of Harry Potter, the park still lags behind 9 other Disney Parks in attendance. Even the much maligned Disney's California Adventure is ahead of Islands of Adventure. Granted that is probably due to spillover from people visiting Disneyland - the second most attended theme park in the world.

Had the WWoHP been open in January 2010, I'm sure the attendance figures for IOA would've been much higher. It didn't open until mid-June.

 

[Squidgyness]

Interesting that 30% more people attended IoA, but how many will go again and again? That may be the key here. HP has limited time appeal as it isnt a brand, just a product. Will they be making HP related things into the 2030's???

Feel really sorry for SeaWorld. It was a bad year for them. I'm just glad I got to sea the trainers in the water with the whales, but I will certainly keep visiting that park. This may mean they have 12% less money to invest - hopefully they invest it wisely and dont skimp on the maintenance.

Hopefully SeaWorld will recover... it is my fave non-disney park...

Losses in Disney attendance probably are due to 3 things:

1) State of the world economy.
2) Universal only trips (probably small in number I would think. just people devoting more days from their trip to US and IoA, but still going to disney.)
3) Price rises (highly doubt this is a large number.

 

[Mouse Skywalker]

Had the WWoHP been open in January 2010, I'm sure the attendance figures for IOA would've been much higher. It didn't open until mid-June.

Good point!

 

[NancyIL]

The fact that the Magic Kingdom had 6 million more visitors than Epcot is the reason I go to the MK in the morning, see what I want to see, and then get out! Epcot is my favorite WDW park.

 

[Mouse Skywalker]

It's also interesting that 3 out of 4 Walt Disney World parks all dropped 1 - 1.5% in attendance. Is that the Universal WWoHP effect, a decrease of 1.5% at WDW. [Animal Kingdom was the only exception, with an increase in attendance of 1%.]

Disney California Adventure had the biggest gain of domestic DisneyParks - up 3%. Gotta love World of Color! It's such a great show.

Look at the 5-6% increase in attendance for the Tokyo DisneyParks! However, I'm sure they will have a decrease in attendance for 2011 due to the earthquake/tsunami (not to trivialize that event). Anyhow, I'd really love to make it out to Tokyo sometime. I especially want to see Tokyo DisneySea.

 

[PeterPan09]

I think only dropping 1-1.5% is actually pretty good, in what I'm calling a rebuilding period at the World. I'll be very interested to see how the attendance figures look after the new Fantasyland opens up.

 

[jcb]

I love reports like this.

Let's put it in some perspective.

The National Park Service released its report on park statistics. It is a 74 page document but if you look at page 19, you'll see that the Lincoln Memorial "only" had 6 million "recreational visits", the Smokies (the most visited national park) had 9.5 million recreational visits. The Blue Ridge Parkway and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area come closer, with over 14 million visitors. The Blue Ridge Parkway is a bit of an unfair comparator since it is a 400 plus mile roadway. The Golden Gate NRA is pretty accurate though. (A recreational visit excludes government personnel, through traffic (commuters), trades-person, and a person residing within park boundaries).

Significantly none of these parks charge for attendance.

Perhaps most interesting is that overall, park visitation was down by 1.5% That makes me question whether or not Harry Potter had any effect on WDW parks.

 

[Mouse Skywalker]

I love reports like this.

Let's put it in some perspective.

The National Park Service released its report on park statistics. It is a 74 page document but if you look at page 19, you'll see that the Lincoln Memorial "only" had 6 million "recreational visits", the Smokies (the most visited national park) had 9.5 million recreational visits. The Blue Ridge Parkway and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area come closer, with over 14 million visitors. The Blue Ridge Parkway is a bit of an unfair comparator since it is a 400 plus mile roadway. The Golden Gate NRA is pretty accurate though. (A recreational visit excludes government personnel, through traffic (commuters), trades-person, and a person residing within park boundaries).

Significantly none of these parks charge for attendance.

Perhaps most interesting is that overall, park visitation was down by 1.5% That makes me question whether or not Harry Potter had any effect on WDW parks.

A very interesting perspective, thanks!

 

[princessbride6205]

Thanks for posting - really cool data and a pretty report to look at, too. I was surprised when you look at the smaller US parks and water parks that they have almost all had increases in attendance. This points to staying closer to home for entertainment, but as the report points out, 2009 was the year of the "staycation" and many destination parks rebounded in 2010. So theoretically the relatively smaller parks are seeing big attendance, since they are seeing double-digit increases up from a previous good year. Water parks especially saw huge increases in the USA - global warming, good for that business? Or I wonder if the smaller parks got really creative with their marketing and discounting to get people in - I'd love to see some examples of why those parks think they are doing well in 2010.

Also notable is how little spillover Universal Orlando is getting from HP. IoA is up 30% but studios only 6%. I'll be really interested to see these two numbers in next year's report.

Despite WDW losing an average of 1% between its 4 main parks, they will still come out ahead in ticket sales for the year, since they raised prices more than 1%.

Also, while 2 SeaWorld parks were down in attendance, the umbrella company Busch Entertainment (now renamed SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment) saw a 4.9% increase in attendance, so their Busch Gardens (well, Tampa, not VA), Sesame Place and water parks business must have done really well.

 

[Emiel]

The theme park Efteling in The Netherlands was stagnant in their attendance for 2010 - probably because Yvette and Emiel were spending so much of their vacation time on DIS Unplugged trips!

Even though we spend our vacation time stimulating the economy in the USA we (or I should say Yvette) visited the Efteling too!
It's nice to go and spend time there but you can't and shouldn't compare it with Disney.

 

[NancyIL]

Also notable is how little spillover Universal Orlando is getting from HP. IoA is up 30% but studios only 6%. I'll be really interested to see these two numbers in next year's report.

I thought it was interesting how close the attendance figures were at the two parks in 2010, yet IoA's increase was much higher than Universal's. It was obviously a good plan on the part of Universal Orlando to put the WWoHP at IoA rather than at Universal Studios, as it had been the less popular of the two parks.

 

[FireDancer]

I was a little surprised not to see Cedar Point on the list. I imagine location and being closed for part of the year didn't help.

While I think HP will get more people into IOA I wonder how many repeat visitors it will bring. I have a feeling a lot of people made sure to get to IOA on their last or next trip to see it but I wonder how many will make that trip every time they go.

Next year the Toyko parks will plummet since they were closed for part of this year and even once they opened a lot of the locals had other things to worry about that didn't include trips to their favorite local park.

 

[Mouse Skywalker]

Even though we spend our vacation time stimulating the economy in the USA we (or I should say Yvette) visited the Efteling too!
It's nice to go and spend time there but you can't and shouldn't compare it with Disney.

And we thank you for stimulating our economy Emiel!!!

 

[Mouse Skywalker]

I was a little surprised not to see Cedar Point on the list. I imagine location and being closed for part of the year didn't help.

Cedar Point was #16 on the Top 20 Amusement Parks/Theme Parks in North America. Its attendance was 3,051,000, up 3.7%.

I'm a little surprised Cedar Point wasn't higher in North America. Besides being behind the 12 parks that were on the Top 25 of the World, Cedar Point was also behind Knott's Berry Farms, Canada's Wonderland, and King's Island (that one really surprised me).

 

[Tarzan513]

I am surprised to see that MK gets about 3 times as many visitors as IOA...that put some things in perspective for me. And, AK is still almost double even after HP opened...wow. Hearing the comparisons without seeing the numbers, it made me think the gap was much smaller.

 

[HawkeyeThad]

Cedar Point was #16 on the Top 20 Amusement Parks/Theme Parks in North America. Its attendance was 3,051,000, up 3.7%.

I'm a little surprised Cedar Point wasn't higher in North America. Besides being behind the 12 parks that were on the Top 25 of the World, Cedar Point was also behind Knott's Berry Farms, Canada's Wonderland, and King's Island (that one really surprised me).

I'm not surprised that CP is behind Knott's, since Knott's is open 364 days/year. King's Island barely had more people, and I think that's due to it being open about 3 weeks earlier than CP. I'm surprised that Canada's Wonderland gets that many tourists. I know they've done a lot to that park over the last 10 years, but I wouldn't put it in the same league as CP or King's Island.

Man, I need to get back to Ohio. It's been 10 years since I've been to CP!