Niles: Attendance numbers show challenges remain for Disneyland and other theme parks

The latest attendance numbers show that the theme park industry still has yet to recover from the pandemic. The Themed Entertainment Association and AECOM last week dropped its 2023 Theme Index report — the industry’s most widely accepted estimate of attendance at the world’s top theme and amusement parks.

Once again, Disney dominated the industry. But the real story lies in comparing this year’s numbers with those from 2019 — the last year before pandemic lockdowns disrupted the global economy.

Parks last year were bragging about big attendance gains since they were allowed to reopen following the lockdowns. Yet several parks stumbled in 2023, and most of America’s top parks remain below the attendance numbers they were doing in 2019. The rate of recovery among parks is far from even.

Five parks among the top 20 in North America have gotten back to or exceeded their 2019 attendance. Four of those five are in Southern California, led by Universal Studios Hollywood, which has set an all-time attendance record thanks to the opening of Super Nintendo World last year. Disney California Adventure, SeaWorld San Diego and Knott’s Berry Farm also are back to their pre-pandemic numbers.

Of the five parks that have lost the most visitors since 2019, four of those are in Central Florida, with Disney’s Animal Kingdom suffering the greatest, losing more than five million visitors over the past four years, about 37% of its 2019 attendance.

Disneyland is also among the bottom five for that metric in the TEA/AECOM report, so this is not strictly a Florida vs. California issue. Yet I suspect that most of Disneyland’s 8% decline since 2019 is due to the park’s restrictions on visits by annual passholders including its post-pandemic reservation policy, which has shifted attendance to DCA, helping account for that park’s gains.

After Disney California Adventure, Walt Disney World’s EPCOT had Disney’s next-best performance, helped by the opening of the wildly successful Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, the park’s first roller coaster. At Universal, Orlando’s Islands of Adventure actually exceeded its 2019 numbers in 2022 on the strength of its Jurassic World VelociCoaster ride, before falling back last year.

Based upon corporate parent Comcast’s financial reports, both Universal Orlando parks have seen declines again in 2024, as fans delay trips in anticipation of the resort’s opening of the new Universal Epic Universe theme park next year.

The TEA/AECOM report reinforces the idea that new attractions are the best way to drive attendance in the theme park business is with new attractions. Yet the pandemic disrupted the flow of new attraction development. Projects canceled or delayed in 2020 would have been opening in 2023 and 2024.

That’s why Epic Universe and all of what Disney announced at D23 will be so important. If parks want fans to get back to their pre-pandemic habit of visiting the parks, they need to get back to delivering new thrills and wonders on a consistent basis, too.