2015 Theme Park Attendance Report

[A.J.]

Hey everyone! The TEA (Themed Entertainment Association) and AECOM have released the 2015 theme park attendance report!

 

Check it out here (link fixed) - www.teaconnect.org/Resources/Theme-Index/

 

First, the top 25 theme parks worldwide in 2015, compared to where they were in 2014.

 

Here's what we were looking at last year in order.

 

 

Generally, things are about the same but it looks like China's influence in the theme park world is growing rapidly. If you'll notice, one Disney park is missing from the top 25 this year - the Walt Disney Studios park in Paris, which was overtaken by Songcheng's Lijiang park. Also, Chimelong's Ocean Kingdom has jumped a bunch of places this year.

 

Finally, the top 20 theme parks in North America in 2015.

 

Much like last year, the only park on this list that isn't owned by one of the "big" chains is Hersheypark, hanging out at #17.

 

So, what do we think?

Edited May 26, 2016 by A.J.

[PKI Jizzman]

I wish we could see reports on unique visitors. I bet SF Great America has the most repeat/pass holder visitors.

[coasterbill]

I think the things that really jump out to me are Magic Mountain and Cedar Point. While Twisted Colossus was an amazing addition, a 9% jump is pretty amazing for a Six Flags park. I wonder what other factors played into this.

 

As for Cedar Point, an 8% jump with no major additions is incredible. Maybe I underestimated the appeal of Rougarou but I feel like other factors have to be playing into that one also.

 

Great Adventure had a huge jump but I would attribute that to Holiday in the Park and extending the season by 2 months.

 

Nothing else shocked me too much. Universal Orlando seems to be a complete powerhouse, so does Canada's Wonderland. It is nice to see Sea World Orlando finally stop the bleeding a little but I expected that to happen eventually. All in all this is always a really interesting report to sift through.

[n1ch0las]

I think the biggest takeaway is how many more people traveled to theme parks last year. 5% boost for the top parks around the world is an impressive number, and shows how much more disposal income people have in general.

 

Most of the parks that experienced a decrease were explainable - Sea World in California from Blackfish (and Sea World Florida only a 2% bump while other central Florida parks here 5% up) and Tokyo was an effect of more people visiting Universal after Potter's debut.

 

China's growth is still exponential and will be for a few years, although I'd direct you to this interesting article from a few days ago examining all the building in China right now. 21 new parks last year, and 20 more under construction.

 

http://www.scmp.com/property/hong-kong-china/article/1952256/china-building-too-many-theme-parks

[Swede]

Looks like Harry Potter has payed off big time for Universal.

[williamj2543]

Wow makes me wonder how cedar point got that 8 percent boost, could it be the hotel breakers renovation?

 

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[SFOG1991]

I find the North American water park attendance list interesting. I had to look up a few of the parks I wasn't as aware of. I was also surprised Six Flags White Water still ranks so highly and had the biggest increase in the top 10.

[SFOG1991]

Wow makes me wonder how cedar point got that 8 percent boost, could it be the hotel breakers renovation?

 

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I'm thinking that may have done it depending on how extensively they marketed it and if they offered special deals for staying longer. I'm thinking they had more people stay a day longer than normal. Then again Cedar Point is a big regional destination park and with the increase in theme park tourism Cedar Point is pulling from a larger audience of people who are on the fence in terms of distance for making a yearly visit.

[Superbatboy]

Wow, SFMM and SFGradv haven't seen 3 million in more than a decade. Great numbers!

[coasterbill]

Nothing will spin those turnstiles like this...

 

 

No wonder attendance was through the roof.

[A.J.]

Some tidbits from the report:

 

• Harry Potter has driven the Universal parks forward, with attendance to the Studios in Orlando up 16 percent. We'll see what it does for Universal Studios Hollywood, as well as what Star Wars will do for Disney's parks in the coming years. In fact, I.P. in general is keeping many major parks going.
  
• Visitation to the Orlando area has more than doubled compared to twenty years ago, 32.4 million in 1995 and 66.1 million in 2015.
  
• The SeaWorld parks haven't taken a dip overall, but they're "only" remaining steady.
  
• Parks outside of Disney / Universal / etc are beginning to realize the benefits of integrated resorts, and beginning to turn themselves into multi-day experiences.
  
• Disney's water parks continue to increase in attendance every year despite having no major additions.
  
• Latin America's struggling economy has promoted more local tourism in the region, though several parks have reported declines as well.
  
• Right now, growth in the Asia-Pacific region is driven by mainland China.
  
• Songcheng's huge growth is interesting considering that their attractions aren't exactly what we would classify as "traditional" theme park experiences. They're much more cultural.
  
• Universal Studios Japan has overtaken Tokyo DisneySea. Poor Duffy.
  
• Korea had a "bad" time this year due to a wet summer.
  
• Europe's parks are being pretty cautious about global I.P., as they've had many successful projects that don't depend on it. Europa Park, Tivoli Gardens and Efteling have basically created their own, catered toward their regional market, as opposed to a region like the UAE which wants to bring in people globally.
  
• Grona Lund has attributed its attendance growth to its evening concert lineup. FYI, the concerts are a separate admission generally but are free for annual pass holders.
  
• As if we haven't figured this out already, the UAE is becoming [kind of] the new Central Florida, as it's developing attractions specifically for global tourists - becoming first and foremost a destination.

[Shavethewhales]

So the industry is really in a rising tide right now. Younger people seem to be much more inclined to go visit a theme park these days than people 10, 20 years ago. It used to be kind of a once or twice a year thing for most people to go visit their local park, but now I think more people are getting season passes to their locals and taking additional trips to see the big parks. Exciting times for our industry. A recession could knock a lot of this back, but I think there's still a ton of upside for the industry going forward into the next decade.

 

Some tidbits from the report:

....

• Parks outside of Disney / Universal / etc are beginning to realize the benefits of integrated resorts, and beginning to turn themselves into multi-day experiences.

...

 

Which is something I'm watching with interest. With so many parks expanding over time, when does it become viable for a smaller park such as ZDT or even Fun Spot to squeeze in nearby? Not everyone is willing to spend $150+ per person for a visit to some giant park all weekend. We lost a lot of small parks going into the new millennium, I'm hoping to see a resurgence. Maybe even be part of it someday...

[Shut It Down]

Sad to see SeaWorld SD continue to drop, hopefully it turns around this year!

[A.J.]

Which is something I'm watching with interest. With so many parks expanding over time, when does it become viable for a smaller park such as ZDT or even Fun Spot to squeeze in nearby? Not everyone is willing to spend $150+ per person for a visit to some giant park all weekend. We lost a lot of small parks going into the new millennium, I'm hoping to see a resurgence. Maybe even be part of it someday...

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.

[Jew]

^Taking quality out of the equation, the fair comparison to those parks would be Six Flags. They are the go to local park in larger cities that also have history on their side. I don't think you'll see any regional parks in the U.S. not owned by a major corporation on this list anytime soon.

[coloradocoasterguy]

We were told that Knott's had 5.5 million combined with Soak City. That's not even remotely possible if the Knott's park had only 3.9 million (rounding up). You're telling me SC had 1.6 million visitors in 2015? Something's not right here.

 

On a side note if Cedar Point and Canada's Wonderand are seasonal parks while Knotts s open year round yet all have around the same attendance then CP and CW must be crowded

Edited May 25, 2016 by coloradocoasterguy

[coloradocoasterguy]

Much like last year, the only park on this list that isn't owned by one of the "big" chains is Hersheypark, hanging out at #17.

But it is owned by a giant multinational corporation

[A.J.]

^Taking quality out of the equation, the fair comparison to those parks would be Six Flags. They are the go to local park in larger cities that also have history on their side. I don't think you'll see any regional parks in the U.S. not owned by a major corporation on this list anytime soon.

And that's totally fair. Though, I'd certainly like to see how much (if any) those smaller "near-FECs" like Fun Spot Orlando and ZDT's, as well as smaller regional parks like Knoebels, are growing.

 

Much like last year, the only park on this list that isn't owned by one of the "big" chains is Hersheypark, hanging out at #17.

But it is owned by a giant multinational corporation

From what I understand, Hershey Entertainment & Resorts operates pretty much separately from the chocolate company, even though the Trust Company owns both of them. I certainly wouldn't lump HE&R in with Cedar Fair, Disney, Six Flags, etc considering that they really only own the park, its resort hotels, a few restaurants, the zoo, a theater, the stadium and the arena. They're very localized, apart from the occasional Hershey Store I doubt you'll see them opening something along the lines of "Hershey Dubailand" anytime soon. EDIT: Does HE&R even own / manage the worldwide store locations?

[Jew]

The trust company is the sole owner of the resorts and the largest shareholder of the Hershey Company (10%), which is a publicly traded company.

[gerstlaueringvar]

Holy crap Alton Towers and Thorpe Park got wrecked!

[Kyle Coleman]

Always surprised to see knotts so far up the list and this is also the first time I can recall seeing Tokyo Disney actually drop.

[Morgan]

Holy crap Alton Towers and Thorpe Park got wrecked!

 

Not surprising after The Smiler incident, Towers really was a ghost town for the rest of 2015, and I don't think it'll properly recover for a while, it definitely was not bust at all last Saturday. I'm a little surprised both Legoland and Chessington saw an increase in attendance, I thought the attendance slump would have affected all parks in the UK.

[Garet]

Some tidbits from the report:

 

[*]Korea had a "bad" time this year due to a wet summer.

 

Do they research outside events when they give reasons or just look at things like forecasts? Just curious because I was surprised to see no mention of the MER's outbreak when they were talking about the down year. I feel that would be the main effect for Korean parks this year as there was mass panic over the MER's outbreak that spread quite rapidly in Everland's and Lotte World's area that had schools shut down for almost a month (in my area that wasn't too far from one of the hospitals) and a lot of people petrified of any big public areas for over 2 months during the busy late spring season as well as reducing the amount of foreign visitors especially Chinese tourists as well. It was a little silly since all the spreads happened in hospitals but there was a lot of mis-information and hysteria about where it was. I saw mothers crying and yelling when the school was opened and had only 5 kids out of 30 in the early days before they shut. Even when schools reopened it took a while after that for things to pick up again. The parks really were ghost towns for a while.

 

Also, for most of my time in Korea, my quietest trips have been the summer season, it's usually pretty quiet for the parks compared to spring and fall since most people hit the water parks due to heat and water parks don't have that long a operating season (the water park just opened running 3 slides right now and hasn't fully opened yet) they even offer deals to get people into Everland for free in the evening or to go there for "waiting" because the water park is at capacity.

[Rollercoaster Rider]

Some tidbits from the report:

 

...[*]Europe's parks are being pretty cautious about global I.P., as they've had many successful projects that don't depend on it. Europa Park, Tivoli Gardens and Efteling have basically created their own, catered toward their regional market, as opposed to a region like the UAE which wants to bring in people globally.

 

Didn't Europa add a themed area to Arthur and the Invisible's in 2014? Alton and Thorpe definitely aren't scared of adding IP brand's

[Dar]

Some tidbits from the report:

 

...[*]Europe's parks are being pretty cautious about global I.P., as they've had many successful projects that don't depend on it. Europa Park, Tivoli Gardens and Efteling have basically created their own, catered toward their regional market, as opposed to a region like the UAE which wants to bring in people globally.

 

Didn't Europa add a themed area to Arthur and the Invisible's in 2014? Alton and Thorpe definitely aren't scared of adding IP brand's

 

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.