Believe it or not, half a billion people – that’s 7% of the planet! – visited a major theme park in 2018. How do we know which ones they chose? That’s the work of the Themed Entertainment Association (TEA) and AECOM, publishers of the 2018 Theme Index. Each year, industry enthusiasts rush to this annual report not just to see how their favorite parks stack up, but how estimates in attendance show major growth – and sometimes, major setbacks – in individual parks’ performance.
Here at Theme Park Tourist, we last used the Theme Index to sort out the top 50 amusement parks on Earth back in 2014. And boy have things changed… So today, we’ll revisit our list by including not only 2018’s estimated attendance for each of the top 50 parks, but what that attendance was estimated at back in 2014 and the percentage change since then… A telling number for many reasons.
That said, note that the attendance estimates made by the TEA/AECOM report are just that – educated guesses – since most operators don’t release per-park figures. In fact, some operators have gone so far as to outright denounce TEA’s estimates as “wrong across the board.” One other thing: a growing collection of otherwise-nondescript Chinese parks hovering around 3,000,000 visitors per year would’ve monopolized many of the first 15 slots on this list! As a result, we’ve combined like parks and omitted others that – frankly – don’t have history or notable rides quite yet. We’ll explore why that is later on…
50. Phantasialand (Germany)
Image: Phantasialand
2018: 2,000,0000 // 2014: 1,845,000 // 4-year change: +8.4%
Phantasialand is a captivating German theme park that masterfully blends thrilling rides into spectacularly themed lands themed to Mexico, China, Africa, Germany, and more. For many industry fans, it’s instantly recognizable as the park housing Black Mamba (a B&M inverted coaster diving through subterranean tunnels in an ancient Timbuktu), Chiapas (an elaborate, Mexican-set flume), and the flaming Talocan top-spin that spirals riders over fire and water effects.
Don’t miss: Newest is the Old Norse-themed Klugheim land housing Taron, a multi-launch thrill ride that coaster fans are drooling over. The coaster soars through craggy, crystalized rock formations, intertwining with the junior boomerang coaster, Raik, to create a kinetic and convoluted land of mystery.
49. Parque Warner (Spain)
Image: Parque Warner
2018: 2,185,000 // 2014: 1,460,000 // 4-year change: +49%
Opened in 2002 and originally managed by Six Flags, the then-called Warner Bros. Movie World looked like many Six Flags parks in the era: lightly dressed with DC super heroes and Loony Toons, but otherwise known for its thrill rides like the Superman: La Atracción de Acero flying coaster or Batman: La Fuga inverted coaster. Though Six Flags sold its European park to Time Warner in 2004, the park has continued on as a thrilling and lightly-themed park located in Madrid.
48. LEGOLAND Windsor (U.K.)
Image: LEGOLAND
2018: 2,315,000 // 2014: 2,200,000 // 4-year change: +5.2%
Opened in 1996 from the leftover remains of the Windsor Safari Park (which was closed in 1992), LEGOLAND Windsor is the second LEGOLAND branded park (after the original in Denmark dating to 1968!). Interestingly, LEGOLAND parks aren’t owned by The Lego Group, but rather by Merlin Entertainments, the U.K. entertainment company who also owns Madame Toussaud’s Wax Museums, SeaLife Aquariums, the “Eye” Ferris wheels, and prominent U.K. parks. That said, in 2019 it was announced that a consortium led by the family who does own Lego had set out to purchase Merlin Entertainments in its entirety, which just may change the theme park landscape for good!
It should be noted that both Denmark and Germany’s LEGOLAND parks come in with 2,225,000 visitors each in 2018, so we’ll squeeze them in here, too!
47. Alton Towers (U.K.)
Image: Merlin Entertainments
2018: 2,525,000 // 2014: 2,575,000 // Change: –2%
Alton Towers is a uniquely-British theme park centered around the actual remains of a historic estate and manor. Though the park’s modern story as a theme park begins just over 30 years ago, it’s developed an international appeal for its cutting edge thrill rides and cleverly innovative prototype coasters mixed among darkly-themed lands. The park’s recent setback in attendance is no doubt due to an unfortunate accident aboard the 14-inversion Smiler coaster that cost the park quite a bit of good will among visitors. It’ll be interesting to see what the future holds if indeed the Lego Group aquires Merlin Entertainments, and Alton Towers with it.
Don’t miss: The park’s most iconic attraction has to be 1994’s Nemesis, a B&M inverted coaster that stays low to the ground, tearing over rivers of blood and coiling around the giant, petrified exoskeleton of an insectoid alien half-buried in the post-apolocyptic Forbidden Valley land.
46. Six Flags México
Image: Six Flags
2018: 2,525,000 // 2014: 2,368,000 // Change: +6.6%
Even in Mexico, Six Flags has cornered the thrill ride market. The country’s leading park located in Mexico City has the standards you’d expect, like the indoor Dark Knight Coaster, a Bugs Bunny themed kids’ area, the much-celebrated Justice League: Battle for Metropolis shooting dark ride, and the other coasters and thrills that feel essential at any Six Flags – an inverted Vekoma SLC, a suspended Batman ride, etc.
Don’t miss: Medusa – a wooden roller coaster added in 2000 to celebrate the parks adoption into the Six Flags brand – wasn’t looking so hot by 2013. Luckily, Six Flags brought in now-celebrated partners Rocky Mountain Construction (RMC) to rebuilt Medusa in their steel I-box track, creating one of the most extreme and wild roller coasters on the continent.
45. Gardaland (Italy)
Image: lifthill.net
2018: 2,900,000 // 2014: 2,790,000 // Change: +3.9%
Another Merlin park, Gardaland is the preeminent thrill ride park in Italy, featuring some classic coasters, some modern coasters, and the supremely unusual interactive dark ride Ramses: il Risveglio, which appears to insinuate that ancient Egyptian statues have cyborgs within.
Don’t miss: The park’s signature ride has to be Raptor, the first of B&M’s now-well-known wing coasters (positioning riders out from either side of the coaster body with nothing above or below), and precedent-setting example of how those ultra-wide, nimble wing coasters should soar through near-misses that leave riders – and onlookers! – gasping. Raptor effortlessly twists through shredded metal observation towers, narrowly misses steaming pipes, and even coasts sideways through a tree ripped in half.
44. Busch Gardens Williamsburg
Image: CoasterGallery.com, used with permission
2018: 2,950,000 // 2014: 2,699,000 // Change: +9.2%
Voted the “World’s Most Beautiful Theme Park” for going on three continuous decades, Busch Gardens Williamsburg gets an leg up on its peers thanks to its location along the beautiful, densely-forested hills of Virginia. There, it manages a careful balance between thrills and theme, with beautifully-crafted lands themed to European villages where dining and entertainment are as big a draw as any ride. Those rides are largely centered on the myths and legends of “the Old Country,” including a “quality over quantity” collection of coasters where touches of story and a lovely setting make each among the best of its type. What we love is how the park’s coaster-naming conventions make the rides feel like a set, each perfectly named for the “country” it resides in: Tempesto, Verbolten, Pantheon, Invadr, Griffon, Alpengeist…
Don’t miss: Despite technically qualifying as a family coaster, the sensational Verbolten is a multi-launch “story coaster” that sends guests spiraling through the Black Forest, diving through branches, twisting in the dark, and ultimately facing one of three randomized show sequences: an encounter with the spirit of the forest, a thunder storm, or being surrounded by a pack of wolves. All three lead to the ride’s signature feat: a freefall drop track plummeting the whole train 16 feet to the forest floor below before a final launch blasts riders out of the forest and to the decaying old covered bridge high above the park’s Rhine River…
43. Liseberg (Sweden)
Image: Liseberg
2018: 3,055,000 // 2014: 3,100,000 // Change: –1.5%
Sweden’s Liseberg is a historic 1923 amusement park catapulted onto today’s scene thanks to a number of superb and extreme coasters. The first must be 2003’s Balder, a wooden roller coaster produced by Intamin using its unique and revered prefabricated plug-and-play track. Rather than being cut and assembled on-site, the ride’s wooden pieces are laser-cut and fit together like LEGO bricks, creating an ultra-smooth ride capable of things you wouldn’t expect on a wooden ride. 2018’s Valkyria is one of B&M’s 90-degree dive coasters, which should help stabilize the park’s attendance.
Don’t miss: Helix, built in 2014, is the park’s signature coaster: a terrain-hugging coaster that launches and leaps along a hillside, twisting and weaving in a seemingly endless, nearly-mile-long course including seven inversions. It’s an iconic and world-class thrill you might not expect in Sweden!
42. Six Flags Great America
Image: Six Flags
2018: 3,107,000 // N/A
Six Flags’ park outside of Chicago is relatively new to the top 50. The park is known as one of the better properties in Six Flags’ thrill-packed portfolio, and its impressive 15-coaster lineup sort of offers a little bit of everything! There’s the soaring B&M hypercoaster Raging Bull with its floating airtime hills, the double-spiked Vertical Velocity impulse coaster, the X-Flight acrobatic wing coaster (like Raptor, spiraling through obstacles with ease), the 4D free-fly Joker, the indoor Dark Knight Coaster, and even the ultra-classic Whizzer!
Don’t miss: It has to be Batman: The Ride. The first of the now-famous B&M inverted coasters, Batman has been often duplicated at Six Flags parks and beyond, with 12 identical clones across the world. Batman is still revered, however, for its awesome forcefulness – a feature B&M downplayed on later installations – whipping through loops and racing through five inversions with incredible intensity.
41. Hersheypark
Image: Hersheypark
2018: 3,367,000 // 2014: 3,212,000 // Change: +4.8%
The “sweetest” theme park on Earth is Hersheypark, located in Milton Hershey’s old company town of Hershey, Pennsylvania. The theme park itself is surprisingly chocolate-free, with 13 (going on 14) coasters and relatively few references to Kisses, Reese’s Cups, or Twizzlers… Instead, the park reads like a good, classic amusement park with a substantial thrill collection, including three classic wooden coasters (the oldest from 1946) and some modern surprises, like Intamin’s vertical lift Fahrenheit and launched Storm Runner, the madhouse wild mouse Laff Trakk, or the river-riding B&M invert Great Bear.
Don’t miss: While the park’s 2019 addition, the B&M hypercoaster Candymonium, will likely be a favorite, right now the winner has to be Intamin’s Skyrush, a maybe-accidentally-too-intense 200-foot tall, mega-lite-esque heartpounding ride that fans adore.
40. Six Flags Great Adventure
Image: Six Flags
2018: 3,400,000 // 2014: 2,800,000 // Change: +21.4%
Certainly Six Flags’ east coast flagship park, Great Adventure lives up to its name. Fusing a theme park and safari park, the massive property is one of the largest theme parks on Earth, with more and better theming than the Six Flags name might cause you to expect. Certainly there are standards – like a Batman: The Ride clone, a third indoor Dark Knight Coaster on this list, and the flying Superman: Ultimate Flight – but the park’s two most iconic attractions are considered two of the world’s most well-known.
Don’t miss: In one corner is El Toro, another of Intamin’s plug-and-play, unexpectedly-smooth, surprisingly-wild wooden coasters. In the other is Kingda Ka, the world’s tallest roller coaster. One of two Intamin stratacoasters in existence, Kingda Ka rockets riders from 0 to 128 miles per hour in just over four seconds, blasting them up a vertical top hat to a height of 456 feet before spiraling back down and cruising over a 129 foot hill (taller than most coasters, mind you) as a respite.
39. Kings Island
Image: Kings Island
2018: 3,486,000 // 2014: 3,238,000 // Change: +7.7%
Located in Cincinnati, Ohio, Kings Island has one of the most fascinating histories on the planet. Opened in 1972 (the year after Magic Kingdom, and certainly inspired by it), Kings Island was one of the early parks to follow in Disney’s modern-built, master-planned park footsteps, with a “Main Street” (the fountain-lined International Street), a park icon (a 1/3 scale replica of the Eiffel Tower), and a hub-and-spokes layout diverging into themed lands. Owned by Paramount Pictures in the ’90s and sold to Cedar Fair in the 2000s, the park has a compelling mix of themed lands, hints of cinematic ingredients, and bare steel coasters that somehow mix cohesively.
Don’t miss: While the park’s impressive 14-coaster count is world class, the highlight must be The Beast. Opened in 1979, the four-and-a-half minute wooden coaster is sprawled around dozens of acres of Ohio woodland, with a 7,359 foot layout that makes it the longest wooden roller coaster on Earth even to this day! Famously, you can’t see any of the track of The Beast until you’re on it, as it’s all set down below the tree line, darting through the woods and into tunnels and caves. Perhaps the only thing more famous than The Beast is its ill-begotten offspring and subject of an in-depth Lost Legend: Son of Beast – the world’s tallest, fastest, second-longest, and only looping wooden roller coaster… and now, the world’s biggest source of scrap wood.
38. Six Flags Magic Mountain
Image: Six Flags
2018: 3,592,000 // 2014: 2,848,000 // Change: +26.1%
Perhaps the most iconic and well-known of Six Flags’ park arsenal is Six Flags Magic Mountain in Santa Clarita, California just outside of Los Angeles. Despite technically competing with Disneyland, Magic Mountain is content being a coaster capital – famously besting Cedar Point for most coasters in a single park with 18 (and a 19th opening this year). The park’s lineup is so varied, we can’t even begin to explain the unique kinds of coasters it features. But we’ll point out one…
Don’t miss: The current anchor of Magic Mountain is Twisted Colossus, a steel-tracked, RMC remake of the park’s 1978 classic racing wooden coaster. When the ride was “RMC’ed” in 2015, it became an extreme ride in the way most RMCs are – twisting, convoluted, wild, and unpredictable. But what’s especially cool is that the ride was modified into a mobius racing coaster, meaning technically, both sides are made of one continuous track, so riders go through the course twice – once on the green side, then on the purple side.
37. PortAventura (Spain)
Image: PortAventura World
2018: 3,650,000 // 2014: 3,400,000 // Change: +7.4%
Opened in 1995 through a unique co-ownership agreement with today’s Merlin Entertainment and Anheuser-Busch (now SeaWorld Parks), PortAventura has to be one of the most unique parks in the world right out of the gate. What’s even more unusual is that, in 1998, Merlin’s 40% ownership was sold to Universal, who briefly rebranded the park Universal’s PortAventura – Universal’s first and only park in Europe. They sold their interests in 2004 (when many companies were off-loading non-core assets in the lead-up to the financial crisis) and today the park operates independently as part of PortAventura World (which also includes a Ferrari Land mini-park).
Don’t miss: PortAventura Park is divided into Mediterrània, the Far West, México, China and Polynesia lands, packed with surprisingly intense thrills and better-than-average theming. Shambhala: Expedición al Himalaya – a towering white B&M hypercoaster – opened as the tallest and fastest coaster in Europe. Meanwhile, a new interactive Sesame Street dark ride is the envy of regional-park dark-ride-enthusiast circles.
36. Cedar Point
Image: Cedar Point
2018: 3,676,000 // 2014: 3,247,000 // Change: +13%
The long-standing “Coaster Capital” of the world is Cedar Point, and though the Ohio theme park may have lost the coaster count crown to Six Flags Magic Mountain, the park’s coaster collection is – perhaps literally – unbeatable. A bucket list park for thrillseekers, Cedar Point famously broke the 100, 200, 300, and 400-foot tall coaster barriers with Gemini, Magnum, Millennium Force, and Top Thrill Dragster, respectively. How do you beat Top Thrill Dragster’s 128 mile per hour launch and 420-foot tall apex? You don’t. Which is why the follow-up, 2007’s Maverick, left fans scratching their heads. It turns out that the 100-foot tall, multi-launch, more-than-vertical roller coaster is one of the park’s finest, bucking and twisting through canyons and becoming a world class favorite.
Don’t miss: Can anything beat the super-smooth Millennium Force, the iconic Top Thrill Dragster, or the wild Maverick, each of which stands among the best coasters on Earth? If you ask some fans, Steel Vengeance did it. The 2018 ride – another RMC conversion of a painful wooden coaster, in this case the park’s Mean Streak – is perhaps the most extreme coaster on Earth. Since words can’t do it justice, we’ll just implore you to tackle Steel Vengeance yourself.
35. SeaWorld San Diego
Image: SeaWorld Parks
2018: 3,723,000 // 2014: 3,794,000 // Change: –2%
SeaWorld San Diego is perhaps the least thrill-focused of SeaWorld’s parks, in part because of its picturesque location on Mission Bay that prevents it from building rides above a given height. Limited in just how wild it can get, the park has resorted to some clever solutions, like their Manta (unlike Orlando’s, a traditional sitting coaster with launches through tunnels and grottos). The focus here is on the sealife – appropriate for the seaside park.
34. Canada’s Wonderland
Image: Canada’s Wonderland
2018: 3,798,000 // 2014: 3,546,000 // Change: +7%
Though Cedar Point may be recognized as Cedar Fair’s flagship park, it’s not the most well-attended seasonal park in the chain! That honor goes to Canada’s Wonderland. Following the same trajectory as Kings Island (a modern park, previously owned by Paramount), Wonderland has similarly made the transition into a thrill park. Cedar Fair has super-stuffed the property with big time thrills like the 200-foot Behemoth, the 300-foot Leviathan, and the most massive B&M dive coaster yet, Yukon Striker.
33 – 31. Happy Valley Parks (China)
Image: SoCal Attractions 360
2018: 3,592,000
Opening between 1998 and 2020, there are no less than eight Happy Valley parks across mainland China – and doubtlessly plenty more on the way. Calling them “the Six Flags of China” is an apt comparison, if an oversimplified one. After all, Happy Valley Parks also borrow heavily from Disney’s influence, melding a few signature coasters into highly themed spaces… some of which resemble Disney’s parks a little too much.
The recent rise in Chinese parks is no coincidence. In the last two decades, the country’s population (about four times that of the U.S.) has exploded with a post-industrial “middle class” as never before. Back in the 1950s, the never-before-imagined mix of “leisure time,” expendable surplus income, and the family car and interstate system literally created Disneyland and its contemporaries in the U.S. That same growth is happening now in China (hence Disney’s big push for parks in the country). If we listed each Happy Valley individually, three – Beijing, Shenzhen, and Chengou – would all land here on the list. Which also leads to our next park…
30. China Dinosaurs Park
Image: Dinosaurs Park
2018: 4,106,000 // 2014: 3,700,000 // Change: +11%
Everyone loves dinosaurs. Particularly, it turns out, the Chinese. Like many Chinese parks to have appeared in the last two decades, the China Dinosaurs Park (opened in 2000) leverages China’s massive population (remember – about four times as large as the U.S.’s) to have even simple thrill parks rocket past American mainstays like Cedar Point and Six Flags that have been at it for decades. Dinosaurs Park is made of dinosaur models in naturalistic settings, carnival rides (including the famous HUSS King Kong ride system), a log flume, and three coasters, including Dinoconda – an S&S 4th Dimension coaster like Magic Mountain’s X2.
29. Knott’s Berry Farm
Image: Knott’s Berry Farm
2018: 4,115,000 // 2014: 3,683,000 // Change: +12%
Located literally several blocks from Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm is billed as “America’s first theme park.” Growing from its time as a literal farm with a chicken restaurant, the Southern California classic was sold by the Knott family in the 1990s. While Disney considered making a play for the park, Cedar Fair ultimately ended up with the property – their only year-round park. In its first decade in control, Cedar Fair arguably sapped the park of a lot of its charm in favor of coasters, but in recent years has come around and rehabbed its classic dark rides in a loving and charming fashion that’s brought locals back to celebrate.
28. Busch Gardens Tampa
Image: SeaWorld Parks
2018: 4,139,000 // 2014: 4,128,000 // Change: 0%
Just as Virginia’s Busch Gardens is themed to Europe, Florida’s is a more overtly-animal centered park dedicated to Africa. Like its European counterpart, this park’s villages are likewise themed to corners of Africa, like Timbuktu, Egypt, the Congo, and Morocco. Cleverly, each of Wiliamsburg’s coasters has a complementary “spiritual sequel” in Florida. And just as Williamsburg’s ride names feel like they’re cut from the same cloth, the same is true in Tampa’s lineup: Kumba, Montu, SheiKra, Gwazi, and Tigris are headliners. (The major coaster that doesn’t match was initially registered as Cheetaka, but its name was changed to Cheetah Hunt just before the ride’s announcement.)
Don’t miss: Kumba is considered by many to be the best thrill coaster in Florida – a towering, powerful B&M ride that races through 7 inversions, including a massive 114 foot tall vertical loop that encircles the lift hill, a cobra roll, and two interlocking corkscrews. The word “Kumba” means “Roar” in the African Congo language – a perfect fit for the legendary, rumbling roar produced by B&M’s hollow tracks.
27. Universal Studios Singapore
Image: Resorts World Sentosa
2018: 4,440,000 // 2014: 3,840,000 // Change: +15.6%
Universal Studios Singapore is part of the Resorts World Sentosa entertainment complex. Opened in 2010, the park represented Universal’s first chance to build a park from the ground up since 1999’s Islands of Adventure. Perhaps not surprisingly, they chose to use… well… Islands of Adventure as a basis. Like the Orlando park, Singapore’s is made of themed IP-based lands situated around a lagoon, though in this case they’re themed to Hollywood, New York, Sci-Fi City (Transformers and Battlestar Galactica), Ancient Egypt (1999’s The Mummy), Jurassic Park, Far Far Away (Shrek), and Madagascar. The recent, exciting news is that the small and largely landlocked park will get a chance to grow in the coming years, swapping Madagascar for a Despicable Me-based Minion land and adding a Super Nintendo World.
26. SeaWorld Orlando
Image: SeaWorld Parks
2018: 4,594,000 // 2014: 4,683,000 // Change: –1%
Perhaps you’ve heard that times have been tough for SeaWorld, the once-beloved animal park whose brand has turned poison thanks to the widely-circulated but debatably honest 2013 film Blackfish. As “luck” would have it, SeaWorld went public just before the PR nightmare, essentially throwing the company into instant financial ruin just as its stocks went into trading. So even though our 2014 vs. 2018 attendance count shows a 1% drop, it’s a triumphant victory for SeaWorld that it’s back to pre-Blackfish attendance levels! And since these two years happen to skip the park’s lowest points, consider that the 2018 figure is a tremendous +16% jump from 2017! That’s incredibly good news for SeaWorld.
Don’t miss: Smartly downplaying its (AZA accredited and inarguably world-class) animal components, part of SeaWorld’s strategy was to follow the lead of their own Busch Gardens branded parks and head out into more thrilling coaster territory. SeaWorld’s Mako is a B&M hypercoaster of floating airtime hills – the perfect companion to the park’s looping B&M Kraken and the flying B&M Manta, creating a one-stop-shop for ultra-smooth, extreme thrill coasters in Orlando.
25. Chimelong Paradise (China)
Image: Chimelong Paradise
2018: 4,680,000 // 2014: 3,351,000 // Change: +39.7%
Chimelong Paradise is one of several amusement parks to have sprung from China’s need for entertainment in the 2000s. In this case, the park opened in 2006 and might be best understood as a Chinese equivalent to Busch Gardens. It boasts a respectable 5 adult coasters including a half-pipe launch coaster, a B&M dive coaster with splashdown, a motorbike coaster, a Premier Skyrocket II (twin sister to Tempesto, Electric Eel, Tigris, et al), and the well-known 10 Inversion Coaster, which long held the record for most inversions.
24. Tivoli Gardens (Denmark)
Image: Tivoli
2018: 4,850,000 // 2014: 4,478,000 // Change: +8.3%
A romantic oasis right in the center of beautiful Copenhagen is Tivoli, a classic amusement park that opened 175 years ago (making it the second oldest amusement park on Earth; the oldest is also in Denmark). Tivoli is a spectacularly picturesque pleasure garden of “exotic” architecture, beautifully landscaped gardens, and rides dating to before the World Wars, including a 1914 wooden coaster. So iconic is Tivoli that in Icelandic, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, “tivoli” has come to be a generic term for “theme park.”
Not coincidentally, Walt Disney toured Tivoli in the lead-up to Disneyland’s design, adapting some ideas to his Californian park. He’s not the only person the park inspired. Famous Danish author Hans Christian Andersen attended the parks’ 1843 opening, which inspired his Nightingale short story. Andersen is immortalized with the H. C. Andersen Castle in Tivoli, as well as a dark ride through the tales he’d later write, like The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling, The Steadfast Tin Soldier, The Little Match Girl, The Snow Queen, and The Emperor’s New Clothes – each, in turn, adapted by Disney into animated stories!
23. Walt Disney Studios Park
Image: Disney
2018: 5,298,000 // 2014: 4,260,000 // Change: +24.4%
Being the first Disney Park on this list isn’t exactly a good thing… in this case, it means Walt Disney Studios at Disneyland Paris is – by far – the lowest-attended Disney Park on Earth. In fact, it’s not even close. Built at the end of Michael Eisner’s penny-pinching last few years at Disney, the park was so pathetic when it opened, we dedicated an entire feature to the sad story and wallowing walkthrough of the studio park – Declassified Disaster: Walt Disney Studios. Trust us – jump to that feature to see just how bad it was. Of course, substantial investment in the last decade has added Band-aids to the park’s proverbial broken bone, up to the opening of the Modern Marvel: Ratatouille – The Adventure, which at least gave the park a unique, exclusive ride.
In any case, the Studio park’s need for constant investment has starved its sister park – Disneyland Paris – of getting a new E-Ticket since 1995! That drought for the castle park will likely continue given that Walt Disney Studios is gearing up for a massive re-do that will add lands themed to Star Wars, Marvel, and Frozen in a World-Showcase style layout in previously-unused land.
22. Efteling (Netherlands)
Image: Efteling
2018: 5,400,000 // 2014: 4,400,000 // Change: +22.7%
Predating Disneyland’s opening by 3 years, Efteling is sometimes cited as an inspiration for Walt Disney’s fairytale park… But even if Walt did visit Europe for inspiration, he didn’t make it to Efteling. Today, Efteling is inarguably one of the most fascinating and fanciful parks on Earth – a gorgeous, classic park still based around its walkthrough Fairytale Forest, but joined today by the suspended Dreamflight dark ride, Fata Morgana (a sailing ride on par with Pirates of the Caribbean in terms of scope), Villa Volta madhouse, and Symbolica trackless dark ride, plus the iconic Baron 1898 diving coaster and Joris en da Draak racing wooden coaster… Altogether, it’s a park that skillfully blends theme and thrill in a sort of mysterious, storybook setting.
21. Europa Park (Germany)
Image: Europa Park
2018: 5,720,000 // 2014: 5,000,000 // Change: +14%
After more than a decade of reliably being awarded Amusement Today Magazine’s Golden Ticket Award for “Best Amusement Park on Earth,” Cedar Point fans were stunned in 2014 when the award instead went to Europa Park, an otherwise obscure-to-Americans park in Rust, Germany. But for Europeans, the park is every ounce as iconic. Owned and operated by the Mack family (of the Mack Rides manufacturing firm), the park is a playground for new roller coaster styles. Disney Parks fans will instantly recognize Eurosat, above for its… similarities to Epcot’s iconic Spaceship Earth. But this sphere contains a family roller coaster.
20. Ocean Park Hong Kong
Image: Ocean Park
2018: 5,800,000 // 2014: 7,792,000 // Change: –34.3%
If you’re expecting Ocean Park to be Hong Kong’s SeaWorld equivalent, you’re right. A combination animal park / thrill park, the property is picturesquely situated around a mountaintop (with a cable car connecting its two halves). Guests have been rightfully critical of the park’s practice of catching wild animals for display, and that may partly explain its gradual drop in attendance. Otherwise, spokespeople for Ocean Park have explained the massive attendance loss by citing a weakened global economy, increased competition from other Asian parks (perhaps including Shanghai Disneyland), and a drop in general Hong Kong tourism.
19. Everland (South Korea)
Image: Everland
2018: 5,850,000 // 2014: 7,381,000 // Change: –26.1%
Everland is a regional park in Korea that includes a zoo and water park on its property. That said, the park’s claim to fame is T Express, another of Intamin’s plug-and-play wooden coasters creating the same uniquely smooth and airtime-filled kind of course as Six Flags Great Adventure’s El Toro or Liseberg’s Balder. As for the park’s signficant drop in attendance? Insiders chalk it up to Korea’s aging population (more interested in international travel than domestic) and a huge drop in Chinese visitors after a political spat between the two countries.
18. Nagashima Spa Land (Japan)
Image: Nagashima Spa Land
2018: 5,920,000 // 2014: 5,630,000 // Change: +5.2%
Located in Southeastern Japan on a peninsula jutting into the Pacific’s Ise Bay is Nagashima Spa Land. A major amusement park for the country (think of it as Japan’s Cedar Point?), the park is most well known for its giant Ferris wheel (295 feet tall!) and its coaster collection, which includes Acrobat (a clone of SeaWorld Orlando’s Manta, complete with splashdown) and the legendary Steel Dragon 2000 – the longest roller coaster in the world and the second to beat the 300-foot height barrier, opening just a few months after Millennium Force.
17. Lotte World (South Korea)
Image: Lotte World
2018: 5,960,000 // 2014: 7,606,000 // Change: –27.6%
At first glance, fans are all too happy to mark Korea’s Lotte World as a Disney knock-off. And sure, like most modern parks, signature elements of Disney have been interpolated into the complex. But Lotte World’s indoor and outdoor theme park still represent some of the best entertainment in the world, including an Egyptian-themed EMV ride and the incredible Atlantis water coaster. Like Everland, its attendance issues are likely thanks to those uniquely-Korean problems.
16. Hong Kong Disneyland
Image: Disney
2018: 6,700,000 // 2014: 7,500,000 // Change: –11.9%
Disney’s Hong Kong park is in a decline of its own… a significant one. There are a few reasons. Primarily, the park was wildly underbuilt and unsuccessful when it opened in 2005 (the last of Eisner’s financially-starved parks from the era), and was missing most “Disney classics”: no Haunted Mansion, no “small world,” no Pirates, no Big Thunder Mountain, and not even a Peter Pan’s Flight. Obviously, that necessitated a massive reinvestment project that debuted three new lands in three years – Toy Story Land in 2011, Grizzly Gulch in 2012, and Mystic Point (featuring one of Disney’s best rides ever – the Modern Marvel: Mystic Manor) in 2013. As a result, the park’s 2014 attendance reflects the culimination of that expansion and the influx of guests to see it.
Why didn’t the post-expansion swell of attendance stick? For one, Shanghai Disneyland. The opening of Disneyland’s new-age mega-park in mainland China made Hong Kong Disneyland into a fly-over park, even with its three exclusive lands. Hong Kong’s government famously fought back, insisting that Disney return to Hong Kong yet again to double down on the still-small park. The result is a new Marvel Land (set to fully debut in 2023, but already featuring Iron Man Experience and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Nano Battle!), a new, exclusive Frozen-themed land expected in 2021, and a (literal) expansion of the park’s castle, transforming it from a clone of Disneyland’s diminutive original into the tallest Disney Parks castle on Earth.
By the way, consider this a major breaking point! From here, we enter the top 15, where attendance suddenly jumps from the 5 and 6 million range to the 10 million, representing the big players in international destination cities…
15. Universal Studios Hollywood
Image: Universal
2018: 9,147,000 // 2014: 6,824,000 // Change: +34%
There was a time not so long ago that Universal’s park in Hollywood, California was more studio than theme park. Though the studio’s been around since 1912, its 1964 official re-introduction as a “theme park” centered around the Studio Tram Tour – an authentic behind-the-scenes look at Universal’s expansive filmmaking campus, fabled sets, and – through the decades – staged special effects encounters and run-ins with Jaws, King Kong, earthquakes, and more littered along the Tour’s course.
Even as “modern” standalone attractions like the Lost Legend: Back to the Future – The Ride and Jurassic Park: The Ride were added in the ’90s, the Tram Tour remained the main attraction… until, of course, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter opened in 2016. A copy of just the “Hogsmeade” half of Universal Orlando’s more fully-realized set-up (fit for its more purpose-built theme parks), the land vastly increased the park’s appeal… but potentially without appropriately upping its capacity, operations, or logistics…
14. Universal’s Islands of Adventure
Image: Universal
2018: 9,788,000 // 2014: 8,141,000 // Change: +20.2%
Before Universal’s Islands of Adventure opened in 1999, the park was seen by many – including Disney’s executives – as a potentially industry-changing competitor. After all, the park was Universal’s first attempt at a “Disney-style” theme park of highly immersive lands dedicated to Dr. Seuss, myths, Jurassic Park, Sunday funnies, and Marvel heroes. But a botched marketing campaign failed to communicate to travelers that a whole new park had opened in Orlando, so the spectacular park and its incredible rides went largely unnoticed… Until the Wizarding World.
Obviously, the 2010 opening of Hogsmeade redefined not only Islands of Adventure, but Universal Orlando. Thankfully, that proved to new owners Comcast that these weird accessory theme parks might actually be worth their weight in gold, prompting unparalleled investment over the last decade across Universal Parks. Islands of Adventure benefitted by way of 2016’s new King Kong themed land and family ride, but we should see a big jump in attendance in 2019 thanks to Hagrid’s Motorbike Adventure.
13. Disneyland Park (at Disneyland Paris)
Image: Disney
2018: 9,843,000 // 2014: 9,940,000 // Change: –1%
A stagnant trend for Disneyland Paris continues, as the perpetually-struggling French park is finally finding a balance – but not significant growth – for its original park. In part, that has to be because the Parisian theme park hasn’t recieved a significant E-Ticket investment since 1995’s Lost Legend: Space Mountain – De la Terre á la Lune… Yet Anaheim’s Disneyland has gone just as long without a new anchor, but continues to grow… Even if Disneyland Paris has largely surmounted the initial rejection of the French and its perilous first few years (in which completely closing the park was said to be on the table), it’s sad that such a spectacular Disney theme park just can’t seem to find a foothold.
12. Disney California Adventure Park
Image: Disney
2018: 9,861,000 // 2014: 8,769,000 // Change: +12.4%
Disney California Adventure is “the little park that could.” After an abysmal opening in 2001 (the subject of its own Disney’s California Misadventure: Part I and Part II epic feature), the park rebounded big time starting in 2012, when the final products of a five-year, billion-dollar renovation culminated in Buena Vista Street, Cars Land, The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Undersea Adventure, Toy Story Midway Mania, World of Color, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, and more all taking up residence in the park.
Though we might argue that Disney has tinkered too much with the park (at this point, retroactively removing so many of the features that made 2012’s re-opening such a triumph), a continued push to place Marvel and Pixar properties into the second gate is meant to make it the must-visit complement to Disneyland’s Star Wars and classic Disney properties, respectively. Though it’s unlikely 2018’s eyebrow-raising Pixar Pier re-theme made much of a blip in attendance, the 2020 arrival of Marvel heroes might be the thing to propel California Adventure back into the top 10.
11. Universal Studios Florida
Image: Universal
2018: 10,708,000 // 2014: 8,263,000 // Change: +29.5%
Universal Studios Florida is a park on the rise, thanks in large part to the continued success of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. (The park’s largest single-year growth spurt actually happened between 2013 and 2014, so our “before” measure above already represents a huge jump from the year prior; if our comparison was from 2013 to 2018, it would be a 51% jump!) But even after the success of Universal Orlando’s Diagon Alley half, it’s worth noting that the park hasn’t slowed (even if its quality has), also opening Race Through New York and Fast & Furious: Supercharged in that span.
10. Chimelong Ocean Kingdom (China)
Image: Chimelong Ocean Kingdom
2018: 10,830,000 // 2014: 5,504,000* // Change: +96%*
Don’t let Chimelong Ocean Kingdom’s near-doubling of its attendance fool you. The park officially opened in March 2014, meaning that its 2014 attendance number represents only two-thirds of a year. Still, the Chinese park is part of the Chimelong International Ocean Tourist Resort, billed as “the Orlando of China.” Given that no less than three more theme parks are tentatively planned for the property (with a second potentially opening in 2020), it may be possible. The park’s most notable today for its B&M wing-style Parrot Coaster and the criticism its recieved for its animal care and potentially shady animal trading with Russia. Yikes.
9. Disney’s Hollywood Studios
Image: Disney
2018: 11,258,000 // 2014: 10,312,000 // Change: +9.2%
Even Disney Parks fans will admit that Disney’s Hollywood Studios probably doesn’t deserve a spot in the top 10 most-attended theme parks on Earth in isolation… After all, it opened in 1989 with only two rides, and in 2018 offered only 6 – the fewest of any Disney or Universal Park on Earth. The diminuative park is likely so highly attended because most of its rides happen to be anchors (like Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, Star Tours, Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster, and Toy Story Mania) and because, y’know, it’s one of the parks at Walt Disney World. Still, expect this number to explode in 2020 – the first full year of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.
8. Shanghai Disneyland
Image: Disney
2018: 11,800,000 // N/A
It’s been known for years that Disney’s leadership sees Asia as the company’s next stronghold… and despite the underbuilt Hong Kong park, CEO Bob Iger has been itching to get a real foothold in mainland China for years, as evidenced by the controversial Disney English program of English language extracurricular schools scattered around the country to teach English to China’s rising middle class… by way of allegiance to Disney stories and characters that had long been unknown in the highly censored country…
Disney’s agreement with China’s strict and authoritarian government was met with as much controversy stateside, including the government’s majority ownership of the park, its final say on things like ticket and food prices, and its oversight of the park’s ride lineup – purposefully omitting American classics. When the park opened in 2016, it was somewhat shocking for Disney’s western fans to watch online as Chinese cultural customs and norms fell against expected Disney Parks standards. In any case, the park’s impressive debut cements it as a legacy win for Bob Iger.
7. Epcot
Image: Disney
2018: 12,444,000 // 2014: 11,454,000 // Change: +8.6%
Disney’s announced overhaul to Epcot (and particularly its Future World) is a massive undertaking… but it may be necessary. It’s been pretty well recognized that the influx of intellectual properties is what’s fueling the next generation of park growth… and that infusion of characters into Epcot has been… well… clunky. Although Disney’s 2019 D23 presentation introduced a new logo, a renewed identity, and a return to the park’s cohesive design aesthetic, we simply remain skeptical…
After all, Disney’s piecemeal additions and subtractions at Epcot have created (or will create) some pavilions that stick to their educational, “brainy” origins, some centered on “brainless” technological thrill rides, and some relying on Disney, Pixar, or Marvel characters. If a tropical Moana walkthrough leads to an ’80s seabase with Finding Nemo overlay, next to an epic educational dark ride through the history of human communication, which is itself neighbors with a Guardians of the Galaxy thrill ride… well… then one might argue that neither Epcot nor its designers have a clear or concise picture of what the park should be…
In any case, they’d better figure it out since Epcot’s been overtaken and knocked back in the rankings by…
6. Disney’s Animal Kingdom
Image: Disney
2018: 13,750,000 // 2014: 10,402,000 // Change: +32.2%
Disney’s Animal Kingdom takes the cake in our calculation of attendance changes, catapulting up the global attendance list with an estimated and unimaginable 3,350,000 increase in annual visitors from 2014 to 2018. That’s like if every single guest who visited Hersheypark last year decided to come to Animal Kingdom instead, adding an average of 10,000 people per day versus the park’s 2014 number.
Surely, that figure signals something big happening at the park between 2014 and 2018. Yep… Pandora: The World of AVATAR. The billion-dollar land based on the 2009 film cemented the success of the “immersive IP land” model as the next jump for theme parks, sending Animal Kingdom zooming past Epcot to overtake the number 6 slot.
5. Universal Studios Japan
Image: Universal
2018: 14,300,000 // 2014: 11,800,000 // Change: +21.2%
Any hypothesis as to what caused Universal Studios Japan’s spectacular 21% jump in attendance over the last four years? You guessed it again – the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. The continued success of the industry-defining, highly-franchisable land strikes yet again. Believe it or not, another boon to the park’s attendance just may be the new Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem. The Minions are big business in Japan, so at Universal Studios Japan, the attraction replaced the high-capacity Back to the Future – The Ride and brought with it a whole Minion-themed land (called Minion Park).
Still, it’s worth noting that Universal Studios Japan has struck a balance between progress and nostalgia that other Universal Studios parks seem to lack, adding popular, new age hits like the Modern Marvel: The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man and Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, but also managing to keep classics like the Lost Legend: JAWS and Jurassic Park: The Ride and their own original attractions like Space Fantasy: The Ride.
4. Tokyo DisneySea
Image: Disney
2018: 14,651,000 // 2014: 14,100,000 // Change: +3.9%
Tokyo DisneySea is a Mecca for Disney Parks fans; a “bucket list” park you have to see to believe, often cited as the greatest modern Disney Park on Earth. Opened in 2001, the nautical park is built of themed “ports” dedicated to the corners of the globe and the legends, stories, and adventures they hold.
Dusted with narratives drawn directly from S.E.A.: The Society of Explorers and Adventurers, the park transcends what most of us think of when we think of Disney, featuring a romantic, epic, and cinematic style that’s delivered three of the best rides on Earth: the Modern Marvels: Tower of Terror, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Sinbad’s Storybook Voyage… none of which are themed to a Disney movie franchise!
3. Tokyo Disneyland
Image: Disney
2018: 17,907,000 // 2014: 17,300,000 // Change: +3.5%
Tokyo Disneyland, opened in 1983, was unusual in just how usual it was! Though Disney’s designers initially expected to redesign a Japanese park around Japanese style, stories, and culture, the park’s owners and operators – the Oriental Land Company – wanted just the opposite. Instead of customizing the park for the Japanese, they insisted that Disney simply build Magic Kingdom all over again, with all its distinctly “American” influences (like a Space Age Tomorrowland, the old west Frontierland, and the European Fantasyland) completely in tact!
Obviously, they were right – the park is routinely among the most-attended on Earth. And since the OLC owns the park, it’s the highest-attended park in the world not owned by Disney! That said, Tokyo Disneyland recently lost is #2 position to a rapidly-rising park…
2. Disneyland Park
Image: Disney
2018: 18,666,000 // 2014: 16,769,000 // Change: +11.3%
Industry commentator Jim Hill astutely calls Disneyland “the world’s most popular regional theme park.” His insinuation is that – athough Disneyland is the recently-elevated second-most-visited theme park on Earth, it’s still – at its core – a locals’ park. On any given day, more than a third of visitors are estimated to be Annual Passholders from Southern California and the surrounding region.
Walt himself – seeing that the park was hemmed in by real estate and unable to grow beyond its berm – essentially threw his hands up and decided that if he wanted to do something bigger, he’d just need to do it somewhere else. So while Disney World was master-planned as “the Vacation Kingdom of the World,” Disneyland remained a single park and one lone hotel through the New Millennium! In fact, Disney’s first real push to turn Disneyland into a national and international destination hinged upon the opening of Disney California Adventure in 2001… So as you can imagine, those dreams were quickly scaled back. But in the last decade, something unimaginable has happened… Disneyland attendance has skyrocketed, chiefly thanks to an Annual Passholder base of around one million.
Frequent Disneyland visitors won’t be surprised to know that the park’s attendance has grown astronomically, basically taking off at the park’s nostalgia-based 50th anniversary in 2005 and never slowing down. Even in the four years since our last check-in with park attendance (when it was behind Tokyo Disneyland), the park’s visitorship has jumped over 11% – a number made all the more unthinkable when you consider that its last major “E-Ticket” attraction was 1995’s Modern Marvel: Indiana Jones Adventure!
Though it took nearly 25 years, Disneyland recieved its next and latest anchor attraction with Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. What few expected is that the mega-land’s opening actually saw crowds initially vanish from the resort, perhaps meaning Disney’s incessant price increases and Annual Pass cuts have worked, or that guests simply feared that the land would push Disneyland’s cramped conditions into unlivable territory. If Disneyland crowds return and its upward trajectory continues, might this tiny regional park have a chance of overtaking the number one slot in 2020 or beyond? We’ll see… But until that happens…
1. Magic Kingdom
Image: Disney
2018: 20,859,000 // 2014: 19,332,000 // Change: +7.9%
Though its older sister in California continues to grow at a steady and surprising rate, there’s simply no beating Magic Kingdom – the iconic anchor park of the “Vacation Kingdom of the World.” The hallowed grounds of Cinderella Castle are an international destination, baked into pop culture as a must-visit Mecca for any self-respecting middle income family. Disneyland is for Southern California. Magic Kingdom is for everyone else in the world. In other words, absent some catastrophic shift in our global consciousness, Magic Kingdom will continue to be a world-renowned destination.
Historically, that’s meant that Disney didn’t really feel the need to keep pace with park additions. While Disneyland is constantly adding, adjusting, and overlaying attractions to keep its heavily local (and heavily vocal) visitorship coming back for more, Magic Kingdom has – for better or worse – been able to coast.
One could argue that only the Wizarding World’s opening (which saw a 29% jump at Islands of Adventure in 2011’s Theme Index versus Magic Kingdom’s 1% jump that year) could’ve caused Disney to lumber off its laurels and fight back… But then, the opening of the retaliatory New Fantasyland in the years after has been the park’s only substantial addition in the last few decades and amounted to a net one new ride. Even the upcoming addition of the Modern Marvel: TRON Lightcycle Power Run feels more like a present for the park’s 50th than the billion-dollar projects underway at the other Disney World parks… Maybe in part because Magic Kingdom has 25 rides when none of Disney World’s other parks breaks past 10; that’s why focus and investment has always been on the Studios, Epcot, and Animal Kingdom alone, which historically do go head-to-head with each other (and Universal) for visitors. They need it to keep visitors coming back… Magic Kingdom doesn’t.
The numbers speak for themselves. Magic Kingdom reigns supreme and according to estimates – for now – it’s the only park to have crossed 20 million visitors in a year.
