New Study Reveals How Disney World's Popularity Compares to Other Theme Parks

If you’ve been here a while, you know that we’re a little nerdy when it comes to Disney.

Magic Kingdom Train Station

We’ve seen the animated classics countless times, visit the parks daily, and altogether our staff probably owns an obscene amount of Disney merchandise. But besides those “typical” fan behaviors, we like to glance at the Disney data every now and then. We keep up with the stocks, the quarterly financial reports, and of course, the theme park rankings and surveys. And recently, a new report came out with some very interesting results.

The 2022 TEA/AECOM Theme Index was recently released, and it tracks important theme park statistics like annual park attendance. At the start of the report, there’s a chart that shows theme park attendance numbers every year from 2019-2022. And the data gives us some important facts.

©TEA/AECOM

First of all, Disney World’s Magic Kingdom Park has continuously held onto its spot at the top of the list. It has had the highest attendance numbers of any theme park in the world every year from 2019-2022. In 2022 alone, 17.1 million guests visited Magic Kingdom.

Crowds in Magic Kingdom

Second place goes to Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California. The park reopened from the pandemic in 2021, and in 2022, it nearly doubled its 2021 attendance numbers. It was a pretty close race between Disneyland and Magic Kingdom, with Disneyland raking in 16.8 million visitors last year.

Sleeping Beauty Castle in Disneyland

In third and fourth place are Universal Studios Japan and Tokyo Disneyland, respectively. But after that, things start to get interesting. It seems that in the past few years, the Universal Orlando parks have started to outperform the other three Disney World parks. Universal’s Islands of Adventure took the fifth place spot with 11 million visitors in 2022.

©Disney Parks

After that, the rankings go as follows:

Disney’s Hollywood Studios with 10.9 million visitors
Universal Studios Florida with 10.75 million visitors
Tokyo DisneySea with 10.1 million visitors
EPCOT with 10 million visitors
Disneyland Park at Disneyland Paris with 9.93 million visitors
Disney’s Animal Kingdom Theme Park with 9.02 million visitors
Disney California Adventure with 9 million visitors

EPCOT

Out of the top 12 attended theme parks in the world, six of them are in the Central Florida area, two are in California, three are in Japan, and one is in France. Only two of those parks surpassed their 2019 attendance numbers — Universal’s Islands of Adventure and Disneyland Park in Disneyland Paris.

Hogwarts Castle at Universal Orlando

But attendance isn’t the only important thing. The report notes that American theme parks seem to be focusing more on guest experience than strictly attendance numbers these days, introducing ways to make visitors’ time in the parks more enjoyable. Many companies (Disney and Universal included) have spent a lot of time in the past 10-15 years developing IP-based attractions and lands that draw in fans, and those additions help boost in-park spending and attendance.

Galaxy’s Edge

The Disney and Universal parks still hold the top 9 spots for theme parks in North America by a significant margin. SeaWorld Orlando holds the tenth spot on the list, and it only had half the attendance in 2022 of Universal Studios Hollywood (the #9 spot) and a quarter of the attendance of Magic Kingdom (the #1 spot). So it seems that the strategies that Disney and Comcast are implementing in the parks in the past few years are working to keep them above the competition.

©SeaWorld

So with Universal Orlando climbing up the attendance ladder and dethroning some Disney World parks…should Disney feel threatened? Well, maybe not as much as you think. Keep in mind that Disney has six theme parks in the U.S. (plus two water parks), while Universal currently only has three dry parks (plus a water park that they count as a “theme park”). Disney’s still WAY ahead in the numbers game, but the gap will likely start to close a little bit when Universal’s new theme park, Epic Universe opens.

No matter what happens, we’ll continue to monitor the numbers and reports to see what the future of the theme park industry looks like. Stay tuned to DFB for the latest!

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