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2008 Park Attendance Figures Report

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Anonymous

Guest
Where did PBB go on that list? Didn't they usually be at the top on the European list??

Anyway, it's nice to see that Liseberg still is doing so well for their short season.
 

Pierre

Strata Poster
I like the bar charts at the end showing the increase over the past four years. Shows the 'recession' isn't as bad as the hype is making it to be.
 

Tony

Hyper Poster
Port Aventura took a huge fall in attendance last year, everything else seems to be pretty much the same. Looks like Aquatica had a very successful year with nearly 1million attendance.
 

AeRo

Hyper Poster
loefet said:
Where did PBB go on that list? Didn't they usually be at the top on the European list??

Anyway, it's nice to see that Liseberg still is doing so well for their short season.

BPB haven't featured in recent years - they always worked things out based on foot traffic as opposed to sales, so their figures were alway wildly out. Even so, based on turnover, their attendance was more likely to be around 1.5 million in 2005, and it has been on a downward spiral since, so it would be unlikely to figure in any of these charts.
 

Pokemaniac

Mountain monkey
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Pierre said:
I like the bar charts at the end showing the increase over the past four years. Shows the 'recession' isn't as bad as the hype is making it to be.

You could do without the 's. A recession is per definition a state a country is in if it has had two sucessive quartals with negative growth.

And page two of that pdf sums up my thoughts pretty well.
 

marc

CF Legend
I was shocked some parks are as high as they are, but Disney and Universal just about were I expect them.

I thought more people would go IoA than the Studios but its below on the list, maybe people are waiting for Harry Potter.

Also shocked how low Alton Towers is compaired to parks in Denmark for example, guess I just never really thought of Denmark until last years trip reports.
 
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Anonymous

Guest
^ You cant really compare Alton with city parks like Bakken, Tivoli and Liseberg. Since they do so much more then just attractions, they have large events several times a year that draws big crowds. And the fact that they are in the city centers makes it easy to go there several times a year.

The only park I find strange on that list is Hakkejima Sea Paradise, since it's almost in the middle of nowhere and don't really have any attractions and still draws 4000000+ every year...
 

gavin

Moderator
Staff member
Moderator
Social Media Team
loefet said:
The only park I find strange on that list is Hakkejima Sea Paradise

There's no entrance fee though. A lot of people use it as a recreation ground, a place to take a walk next to the sea, hang out with friends for coffee/drinks at the waterfront bars. I'm guessing these people must be included in those figures.

Plus, the animal shows and attractions are the biggest draw there. It's not about the rides for the vast majority of visitors. When I was there, the rides were all walk-on, but the dolphin/whale show and various aquaria were packed.

It's really not the middle of nowhere either. Yokohama has a population approaching 4 million, that's before the 12 million in Tokyo who could potentially get there in under an hour.
 

Pierre

Strata Poster
Pokemaniac said:
Pierre said:
I like the bar charts at the end showing the increase over the past four years. Shows the 'recession' isn't as bad as the hype is making it to be.

You could do without the 's. A recession is per definition a state a country is in if it has had two sucessive quartals with negative growth.

I couldn't really give a **** about the actual definition of the word recession. In my opinion its all very over-hyped bollocks which a lot of people are just getting sucked into, believing they're skint and can't afford **** because everyones harping on about it when in reality most people aren't even affected by it.

So I'll keep my 's thank you very much as it was a subtle way of putting across my opinion on the 'recession' but I appreciate the concern.
 

spicy

Giga Poster
Just goes to show how much Disney dominate the theme park industry really.

Shame not to see Chessie in the top 10 in Europe :( especially with Legoland so high for some reason. :?
 

Mark

Strata Poster
Excellent, I have been rather geekily been waiting to see this report!

So Merlin have retained the 2nd place spot with a gain of 3 million in terms of company figures. With Universal actually dropping behind by 10 million (after an overall decline for them). Although, as many would have already thought, this may be due to the large amount of work going on in Orlando for Harry Potter and Rip Rocket. So I would imagine they have seen a slight decline as people don't want to visit a building site and furthermore would rather visit once the new attractions are complete.

Good to see that the massive marketing scheme for Disney in the form of Year of Million Dreams went down well and gave them a further 2 million in growth. It is definately one of the best "themed" seasons I have visited. Hopefully this will continue to grow with the continued work on California Adventure and so on.

For those that did want to compare, here are the 2007 figures:
http://www.connectingindustry.com/downl ... rasupp.pdf
 

nadroJ

CF Legend
It still amazes me that Merlin are 2nd in the world, it just seems so strange to me for some reason.

The Year of a Million Dreams event at Disney was an incredibly good move. As were the Dream Fastpasses *still have mine* As a matter of interest what have Disney got going on at the moment?

I suppose Universal are only 3rd as they don't own as many parks in the world as the top 2, but still, weird...
 

Mark

Strata Poster
I would certainly expect to see Universal make massive improvements over the next two years. They have another park opening up in the middle east (reported in First Drop) and you need to factor in Harry Potter land in Orlando. As I said before, considering the number of gated attractions that Universal hold and it being far less then that of Merlin. I would expect Universal to make headways when it comes to gaining second place. If anything, they will see a dramatic improvement in attendance for this year, providing HP Land is a success....
 

Inverse

Hyper Poster
Efteling 5th in Europe is a suprise to me. Other than that this just shows Disney's attraction is huge, top 8 in the world with an extra million on 9th.
 
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Anonymous

Guest
I'm very surprised to see Port Aventura take such a dive.
10%? That's a lot by anyone's standards.

At least the queues are shorter though, right?
 

Jools

Giga Poster
I put it down to last years weather, and the fact they didn't build anything new, in my opinion they have quite limited thrill rides.
 

oriolat2

Giga Poster
It doesn't shock me. PA has gone downhill. Every year the entrance fee goes up by 2 € without putting anything new. On top of that, most of the restaurants are also expensive. Add some closed rides and bad operations and you have a "winner" in your hands.

It's so bad I haven't bee there for almost 2 years (and I used to have their AP).
 
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