Hey Thrill Seekers,
You definitely won’t find a group of people that love theme parks as much as we do. We figuratively eat, drink and sleep coasters and attractions but we’re not the only one’s!
2014 saw a record number of people visit theme parks throughout the World, according to data released today by Themed Entertainment Association visit were up by 4%, the top 10 theme parks in the World had an amazing 392,039,000 visitors in 2014.
Walt Disney Attractions is still the World leader with 134,330,000 people visiting their group of parks last year, followed by the Merlin Group who own LEGOLAND Florida who welcomed 62,800,000 through their gates.
Top 25 Theme Parks in the World 2014
As you can see Disney dominate the World of theme parks with 9 of the top 10 being Disney owned. Amazing to see Magic Kingdom attendance grow by another 4%!
The World rankings are all well and good, but for us we’re more interested in how North America has done, and more specifically Florida, so lets look at the numbers…
Top 20 Theme Parks in North America 2014
So no real surprise that Disney dominate the top 10, as we mentioned above Magic Kingdom has raised attendance by 4% but they’ve also seen an increase at all their Orlando based parks. Epcot taking the number 3 slot and raising attendance by 2% yoy to an impressive 11,454,000, Animal Kingdom nabbed 4th spot and also added another 2% yoy to take its official attendance to 10,405,000 and very close behind it in 5th place is Disney’s Hollywood Studios with an attendance of 10,312,000 another rise of 2% yoy. Proving that even without a major new IP Disney still dominate Florida.
However they might want to take a little look over their shoulder… The largest rise in attendance with a massive 17% increase yoy is Universal Studios, obviously buoyed by the unveiling of Diagon Alley Universal went from just over 7 million visitors in 2013 to over 8 million visitors in 2014!!! An amazing achievement and definitely shows that Universal are moving in the right direction.
SeaWorld have had a very well documented attendance issue in 2014 but one bright spark for them is Busch Gardens Tampa which has managed to increase attendance, perhaps the launch of Falcon’s Fury has something to do with that.
So all in all 2014 was a very positive one in the World of theme parks. Tomorrow we’ll take a look at how the water parks faired.
Smiles included…
Jamie
