It’s one of the most anticipated data drops in all of theme park nerd-dom… Every year, a consulting firm called AECOM partners with the Themed Entertainment Association (TEA) to release an annual report on the ups and downs of theme parks, waterparks, museums, and more from the year prior. The annual Global Attractions Attendance Report is a fascinating document that theme park fans should dive into in depth. It’s filled with the highs and lows, global contexts, and stories that permeated theme park news in the year prior.
But most importantly… it also contains a review of theme park attendance. To be clear, most theme park operators do not disclose their parks’ attendance, and even if they speak in broad generalities or percentages at investor calls, they almost never divulge specific attendance figures for specific parks… However, it’s known that many operators do work with AECOM to come up with fairly accurate figures since it’s in the best interest of their share price and financial disclosures to be vague, but honest.
At first glance, 2022’s ranking is pretty expected. There’s the always-first Magic Kingdom. Then Disneyland (which only surpassed Tokyo Disneyland for the number two spot just before the pandemic). Then Japan’s ever-popular-and-packed parks, then Animal Kingdom, EPCOT, Hollywood Studios, etc., with Shanghai Disneyland following, then Universal Studios Florida and Islands of Adventure, with California Adventure coming in at number 13, followed by Disneyland Paris at 14, then Universal Studios Hollywood at 15.
But wait just a second… take a careful look at 2022’s AECOM estimates and you’ll notice that the ranking of parks doesn’t align to their attendance. That makes sense. Different national and regional reactions to COVID-19 have seen parks return to full operations in varied timelines and with new attendance policies. As a result, while AECOM’s estimated attendance numbers have been updated for 2022, but their ranking of parks remains locked in the order in which these parks fell in 2019.
So what happens if you actually re-order the 2022 ranking to align with attendance?
The Updated 2022 Attendance Ranking
1. Magic Kingdom (17.1 million)
2. Disneyland (16.88 million)
3. Universal Studios Japan (12.35 million)
4. Tokyo Disneyland (12 million)
5. Universal Islands of Adventure (11.02 million)
6. Disney’s Hollywood Studios (10.9 million)
7. Universal Studios Florida (10.75 million)
8. Tokyo DisneySea (10.1 million)
9. EPCOT (10 million)
10. Disneyland Paris (9.93 million)
11. Disney’s Animal Kingdom (9.02 million)
12. Disney California Adventure (9 million)
13. Universal Studios Hollywood (8.4 million)
14. Shanghai Disneyland (5.3 million)
Which brings us to some very interesting findings…
1. Disneyland inches ever-closer to Magic Kingdom
Considering that Magic Kingdom was literally built to be a larger version of Disneyland that would appeal to massive, international audiences, it’s surprising to see that the tiny little California park continues its climb toward Magic Kingdom’s attendance numbers. (In 2019, Disneyland was 2.2 million behind; now, it’s only 320,000 behind.)
It could be that Magic Kingdom will wildly rebound in 2023, and especially after park reservations become included in multi-day tickets in 2024… but Disneyland has always been “the little engine that could,” and as frustrations with Walt Disney World’s low capacity and ever-rising prices increase, it could be that most people will finally make the trek to Anaheim – something they definitely should thanks to several very enviable Disneyland exclusives.
2. Shanghai Disneyland’s very rough year
For Disney’s recently-reappointed CEO Bob Iger, it must be a major frustration that two big buys he expected to cement his legacy with the company – the opening of Shanghai Disneyland and the purchase of 20th Century Fox – have both become significant albatrosses post-2020. While park fans get to help chip in to support the $72 billion Disney spent on Fox through new ticket fees, Genie+, and more, Shanghai Disneyland has so far been less of a golden goose than once dreamed.
Iger worked for decades to forge a relationship with China, where an emerging middle class and a cautiously permissive government was willing to let Disney into an entire, untapped market and a new, emerging “middle class” with leisure time and income to spare. But many of those doors have slammed shut now, with Iger suggesting in 2021 that “some of my optimism on China has eroded.”
That’s no doubt in part thanks to the country’s now-ended “zero-COVID” policy, which saw Shanghai Disneyland close for no less than three separate periods in 2022 (including an embarrassing shutdown in October which saw visitors kept inside the park). In any case, the Chinese government’s COVID policies certainly led to Shanghai’s massive drop-off in attendance in 2022, and without a doubt, the park’s visitorship will rebound. (Pre-COVID, 11.2 million visitors attended.) The question is, will Disney’s relationship with China rebound? Or are things about to get awkward for Disney’s first mainland China park?
3. Hollywood Studios vaults ahead… for now
Though Magic Kingdom perennially resides atop theme park attendance figures, Walt Disney World’s other three parks tend to hover several slots down beneath global “Castle Parks”. They also tend to change their rankings on a dime. In 2019, the order went Animal Kingdom (13.8 million), EPCOT (12.4 million), and Hollywood Studios (11.5 million).
That order today is completely reversed, with Hollywood Studios serving as the highest performer of Walt Disney World’s non-Castle Parks, and Animal Kingdom as the lowest. Maybe that’s not surprising. Those three parks are basically in a continuous dance with the one that got the newest thing taking the lead. Right now, that’s Hollywood Studios thanks to Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge (which opened very late in 2019).
EPCOT is in the midst of a refresh, but the biggest part of it – Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind – opened halfway through 2022, almost certainly suggesting that when 2023’s AECOM report is published, EPCOT will launch ahead instead. And as its last-place finish shows, Animal Kingdom is almost certainly next in the rotation to get something big. (Its last headliner was 2017’s Pandora – The World of Avatar.) That only further fuels the belief that Zootopia and Moana are coming to Animal Kingdom, like it or not.
But that’s just the beginning. We’ll dig into some of the most shocking discoveries from 2022’s attendance report on the next page… Read on…
4. California Adventure “3.0” stalls
Few took Disney California Adventure seriously until Disneyland’s second gate removed its bandages in 2012, unveiling the results of a $1.2 billion, five-year facelift. In 2013 – the first full year with Cars Land, Buena Vista Street, and a reborn Paradise Pier – the park welcomed 8.5 million guests – 3 million more than it had just five years before – suggesting that the park would now grow year after year with a new “DCA 2.0” mindset.
Instead, Disney made the unusual decision to do everything they could to undo the detailed, historic, and distinctly-Californian reimagining they’d just spent a billion dollars installing a decade earlier. From Soarin’ Around the World to Pixar Pier, nearly everything that’s happened since (“DCA 3.0”) has taken the form of low-cost overlays with less and less “California” and more and more Disney + Pixar + Marvel.
Spoiler alert: it isn’t working. Insiders report that the “3.0” transition of the park’s boardwalk area to Pixar Pier (and a splashy marketing campaign that went with it) had virtually no impact on the park’s attendance. Oops. Perhaps the cornerstone of the “3.0” wave, Avengers Campus was a win-win, meant to infuse Disneyland and an under-attended park with the biggest IP on the planet. Avengers Campus opened halfway through 2021, meaning 2022 was the first full year its effect would be reflected on park attendance. So, is it working?
AECOM estimates that 9 million guests entered Disney California Adventure in 2022. That’s an impressive number in isolation, but it’s also only 500,000 more than the park was attracting in 2012! For better or worse, that seems to suggest that the last decade of quick-fixes, character overlays, IP infusions, and lands without E-Tickets just isn’t working… and the latest – renaming an existing area after Disney’s Big Hero 6 – seems equally unlikely to impact the park’s attendance.
If you ask us, it’s a hint to Disney management and Imagineers that stuffing the parks with mismatched IP isn’t working, and that maybe the best plan for California Adventure would’ve been to stick with the “DCA 2.0” mindset.
5. Tokyo Disney’s parks get beat by Universal Studios Japan
Like Florida and California, Japan plays host to both Disney and Universal theme parks. However, unlike in the United States, they’re geographically quite far from each other. It’s about a four-hour high-speed train ride between the Tokyo and Osaka areas, leaving Tokyo Disney Resort and Universal Studios Japan to compete much less directly than in the U.S.
But it certainly is interesting that Tokyo Disneyland (12 million) and Tokyo DisneySea (10.1 million) both slot under Universal Studios Japan (12.35 million) when you re-order the attendance list for 2022. That’s got be on the heels of Super Nintendo World – the all-star new land that debuted in March 2021 as the latest in Universal’s very ambitious “Living Lands”.
None of the Japanese parks are back to pre-pandemic levels (when Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea welcomed nearly 18 million and 15 million visitors apiece), and with Disney’s Annual Pass program still suspended, it’s really no surprise that attendance is down for Disney. Tokyo Disney also has the massive Fantasy Springs expansion locked and loaded, which will likely see the resort rebound well. But it goes to show that post-pandemic, we’re still learning new norms for the industry…
6. Universal Orlando Rises…
By far the most jaw-dropping finding of 2022’s attendance estimates is that Universal Orlando is looking better than just about anyone would’ve expected. Believe it or not, Universal Studios Florida welcomed more visitors in 2022 than EPCOT or Animal Kingdom, and was just 250,000 off from beating Hollywood Studios, too.
Even more astounding is the performance of its little sister. In 2022, Universal Islands of Adventure welcomed more than 11 million guests. That not only places it above Disney’s Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom, and EPCOT, but makes Islands of Adventure the fifth most-attended theme park on Earth last year – a meteoric rise from being 12th in 2019. According to AECOM’s estimates, Islands of Adventure is also the only theme park to be doing better in 2022 than in 2019, period. While other parks struggle to return to pre-pandemic levels, Islands of Adventure is nearly 1 million people past its 2019 benchmark.
The reason why must be obvious. Both Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure and the Jurassic World VelociCoaster have opened since mid-2019, and the park’s spectacular performance reflects the simple but important idea that when you add new, big budget, highly-desirable attractions to a park, its attendance grows. Voila!
Of course, the other aspect of this we can’t ignore is that frankly, Disney seems absolutely okay with it. After all, we know that Disney is intentionally limiting its attendance through the use of the Park Reservation system. (Former CEO Bob Chapek infamously held the mindset that Disney Parks should cater to fewer guests, but guests who were willing to spend more.) Disney has also vastly limited the sale of its Annual Passes, favoring high-price day tickets over value admission. And then there’s always the big question when it comes to Universal’s momentum…
7. … but will it last?
The key question for theme park fans right now is the one we just explored in our “Mickey vs. Mario” special feature: is the momentum in Orlando coalescing behind Universal and not Disney?
In many ways, the answer appears to be yes. With the financing of Comcast to keep the parks floating during COVID-19 (and Comcast’s insatiable appetite for expanding, updating, and refreshing the parks), Universal Orlando has seen incredible growth and evolution in the last decade. Universal will soon introduce a standalone family park in Texas to the canvas, as well as a year-round Horror Nights experience in Las Vegas. But without question, the biggest thing happening in the themed entertainment industry right now is Universal Epic Universe – a novel third gate coming to Orlando that Dragons, Wizards, Mario, and Monsters will call home. (It’s also the first new stateside Disney or Universal park since California Adventure.)
But even the most optimistic Universal fans can’t help but wonder if Epic Universe will be the smashing success they hope… After all, as the constantly-shifting ranks of Disney World’s second, third, and fourth park suggest (and as we saw firsthand in our reasons not to expect a fifth gate anytime soon), three theme parks is a lot of theme parks… It could very well be that once Epic Universe opens, we actually see attendance at the other two parks drop. This concept – which theme park fans call “cannibalization” – could mean that Universal Orlando doesn’t really get any more guests or convince them to stay for longer; they just enter a cycle of constantly needing to balance capital projects to convince guests to go to the park that’s falling the most behind (like Disney World does).
So what will really be interesting is to see where Universal’s parks land in 2025 and beyond, and whether Universal fundamentally adds to its capacity or merely shuffles around the guests it already had.
As the last five years have shown us, anything’s possible… So keep an eye out for major changes in theme park attendance in the years to come! And until then, let us know… were you surprised by any of the shifts we’ve seen in theme park attendance post-pandemic? Let us know in the comments below!
