Disney Parks Take Top Six Spots In America Last Year

| June 6, 2015 | 2 Replies

The Disney brand is alive and well…when looking at theme park attendance in America and worldwide last year. In 2014 the six Disney parks in America took the top six spots. Worldwide Disney parks took nine of the top ten spots.

On June 3 the Themed Entertainment Association released its 2014 Global Attractions Attendance Report. This report discusses attendance at theme parks, water parks and museums around the world.

Below is a list of the top ten theme parks in America in 2014. All six American Disney parks are ranked in the top six spots. The Magic Kingdom in Orlando, Florida was the most visited park with 19,332,000 visitors. Growth at the American Disney parks was 2-4% above 2013. Disney Animal Kingdom just barely edged Disney’s Hollywood Studios in attendance in each of the last two years – taking the number four and five spots, respectively.

Top Ten Theme Parks in America

2014 N America Top 10

Below is a list of the top ten theme parks worldwide in 2014. Disney parks are ranked in all top ten spots except for number five – which went to rapidly growing Universal Studios Japan. The list shows that Magic Kingdom in Orlando, Florida is not only the top park in America but also the top in the world. Tokyo Disneyland is the second most attended park while the original Disneyland in California is third worldwide.

Top Ten Theme Parks Worldwide

2014 Worldwide Top 10

Below is a list of all the Disney parks including Hong Kong Disneyland (11th worldwide) and Walt Disney Studios (in Paris, 25th worldwide). Tokyo DisneySea is the most attended “second gate” at the four multi-park Disney resorts. DisneySea has held this distinction ever since its first full year of operation in 2002 with Epcot the second most attended second gate.

Disney Theme Parks Worldwide

2014 Disney Park

I have been fortunate to have visited all of the Disney parks in the world since 2007 – with the exception of Hong Kong Disneyland. It is my understanding that when a Disney resort has two or more parks (which is the case for all resorts except for Hong Kong – and the upcoming Shanghai Disneyland in 2016) and a visitor park hops, then Disney only counts the first park visited that day in its tally of attendance.

Looking at historical Disney park attendance since 1991, the graph below shows attendance at the American parks. The next graph shows the parks outside America and the final graph shows a busy graph of all Disney parks worldwide.

American Disney Park Attendance Since 1991

Disney Park N America Historical Attendance

Note that Disney’s billion dollar investment in its Disney California Adventure park resulted in 23% attendance growth in 2012. Since Disney only counts the first park attended each day in its tally of attendance – and since Disney California Adventure and Disneyland are located a one minute walk away from each other (which leads to significant parkhopping at the Disneyland Resort) – the official attendance at the Disneyland park fell in 2012 by 1.1%. This figure is misleading because of parkhopping but it is included nevertheless in the historical attendance graphs above and below.

Disney parks continue to experience growth worldwide with some recent exceptions such as Disneyland Resort Paris. Disney parks are the leading parks in the world.

Disney Park Attendance Since 1991 at Parks Outside America

Disney Park International Historical Attendance

Worldwide Disney Park Attendance Since 1991

Disney Park Worldwide Historical Attendance

 



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Category: Disney World

About The Author: HydroGuy

  • PoliticalTruth

    HydroGuy !!!! Love you on the boards.

    I wonder what your thoughts are on this … looking at the charts, it doesn’t appear that the picture is all that rosey if you take the long view.

    Magic Kingdom attendance isn’t up all that much compared to 1991
    Epcot is down significantly from its high point, and from 1997, up only a little since 2000
    Hollywood Studios is Flat since 1997
    And AK well, I guess that’s trended up on the charts.

    Big fans keep talking up how great it is and how crowds just keep growing and growing, but the long term growth doesn’t actually look very good, according to the charts you presented.

    • http://blog.wdwinfo.com HydroGuy

      I am no expert on this but would think at least part of the reason is that WDW has introduced two new parks. DHS in 1989 and then AK in 1999. So visitors to WDW have increased overall while they may be choosing to visit DHS or AK now and not MK or Epcot as much. And as I mentioned in the article, when a guest park hops Disney only counts the first park attended that day in its numbers.

      One can see a similar trend at Tokyo Disney Resort where the Tokyo Disneyland attendance dropped with Tokyo Disney Sea was opened in 2002.

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