2015 Theme Park Attendance Report

[A.J.]

Yeah, the I.P. in Europe's theme parks is definitely more popular on the regional level, as opposed to the kind of stuff you see Disney and DreamWorks throw around.

 

Example, Futuroscope in France has an award-winning dark ride themed to the Rayman Raving Rabbids, as well as their own Arthur and the Minimoys 4D cinema show and a children's play area themed to the Code Lyoko cartoon. Yet, Futuroscope's business isn't totally dependent on those I.P.s, they have plenty of original attractions as well.

 

They did, but Arthur is a lot more popular in France/Europe than the UK or USA. With Europa being so close to the Germany-France border, it makes sense that they would tailor any IP based attractions to that market. Compared to Merlin just using seemingly random IPs.

It also helps that Arthur and the Minimoys started as a book series, it fits Europa Park's "fairy tale books come to life" motif present throughout the park.

[cookiex]

I'm pulling for those smaller parks. Tivoli Gardens' and Grona Lund's continued relevance proves that "let's go for a few hours tonight" approaches to theme parks can be successful. They leverage full-day and few-hours visits so well.

They have that advantage partly because they're placed in or near the center of their respective cities (same with Liseberg) which make them instantly accessible. Very few parks in the US or even the rest of the world have that distinction.

[A.J.]

They have that advantage partly because they're placed in or near the center of their respective cities (same with Liseberg) which make them instantly accessible. Very few parks in the US or even the rest of the world have that distinction.

I know they do. I did my undergraduate thesis on the urban theme park idea.

 

I hope that I get to see (or possibly plan myself) an urban theme park here in the United States. But, the process would so complicated, and it may do more harm than good to an already-popular city (promote the bad kind of gentrification, possibly be noisy, etc).

[Nrthwnd]

^ Wouldn't Seattle's former Worlds Fair's site still be a good possibility to put back an inner-city park,

in the U.S.? They had a good run with the Fun Forest, a sort-of 'legacy' of the 1962 World's Fair.

 

Then it all dried up. Could they do it again, better planned, etc.? The space is still

essentially, there. Or isn't it, anymore? Sorry, not been to Seattle in several years.

[A.J.]

It's kind of there, the current Seattle Center is a big mixed-use area with a bunch of museums, theaters, the KeyArena (WNBA and college basketball), an outdoor athletic field, the Space Needle, and open park space scattered throughout. I guess it's generally pretty nice, but I'm not a local either.

[Password121]

It's interesting to see Kings Island with a stronger attendance jump in 2015 compared to when Banshee debuted. Goes to show those major investments really are long term, and perhaps it wasn't a "poor turnout" after all.

[livai]

but there is no way to know all the data of the Cedar Fair parks and six flags?

[A.J.]

They have numbers for the chains as wholes, so it's safe to assume that they were provided / were able to obtain information for all of the individual parks. There are plenty of "lower-than-#25" parks that I'm curious about as well.

 

Six Flags and Cedar Fair were respectively the 5th- and 6th-most attended park chains in the world this year, behind Disney, Merlin, Universal and OCT.

[cookiex]

Will be interesting to see how Shanghai affects Disney's overall attendance numbers. Probably won't cross 150 million this year though.