TEA 2020 Attendance Figures

[JoshC.]

The Themed Entertainments Association (TEA) has released their guide on attendance figures for theme parks in 2020. These are in some cases guesstimates / not wholly accurate, but gives a good indication about how parks performed during the pandemic: https://aecom.com/wp-content/uploads/documents/reports/AECOM-Theme-Index-2020.pdf

Magic Kingdom is stated as the most visited park in the world, with 6.9m visitors (a decrease of two thirds compared to 2019).
Efteling is listed as the most visited European park, with 2.9m visitors.

Parks such as Legoland Windsor, Port Aventura and Universal Studios Hollywood are listed as having over 80% reduction in attendance compared to 2019.

Obviously none of this is surprising, but still, ouch.

 

[Matt N]

Unsurprisingly, that makes for pretty dismal reading. I think this year, it’s more of a competition to see who had the lowest percentage decrease!

Some of them did surprise me, however; in some cases, I was expecting higher decreases (Efteling’s 40-50%, for instance, arguably isn’t too bad compared to some of the others), while I was quite surprised to see some of the placements!

On a random note, is it just me, or are the parks listed in order of 2019 attendance as opposed to 2020 attendance?

 

[Pokemaniac]

On a random note, is it just me, or are the parks listed in order of 2019 attendance as opposed to 2020 attendance?

Yeah, that's mentioned in the footnotes. Doesn't make sense to rank amusement parks by 2020 attendance, as that is largely dependent on how Covid-hit they were and not how successful they are. For comparison purposes, it's better to use figures from the last year of regular attendance.

Compiling statistics is not going to be very fun in the years going forward. Or as XKCD put it:

 

[Hyde]

Wowzers those are low numbers. It would be interesting to correlate US parks to their respective state's lockdown protocols; obviously the less parks were able to be the open, the lower the numbers - but still interesting to further index on a per-operational-day basis how parks faired through all the varying protocol and procedure.

 

[Kalistos]

What a surprise ! I thought they would skip this year, as the report is generally published in may/june.
If you read the introduction (about the dynamic of crisis in theme park industry), you might find a partial explanation to the reason why Seaworld did not open their new rides in 2021. Basically, the year after the crisis is not the best year to open a new ride.

 

[Matthew Fair]

Here is the 2020 ranking

 

[Matt N]

I’ve had a bit more time to look through it in more depth, and I have some definite thoughts brewing:

• This report definitely shows the impact that different countries/areas’ restrictions had on attendance; some parks fell by almost 90% compared to 2019 figures, while some fell by lesser amounts. Interestingly, some Chinese properties only had around a 10% fall in attendance, which is why some non-Disney Chinese parks are making the worldwide top 10.
• Legoland Windsor has slipped from top of the UK attendance ranking right down to 4th, with Alton, Thorpe and Chessington all beating it, in that order. LLW suffered the most, with more than an 80% decrease on 2019; the park only attracted 450,000 guests in 2020. I wonder why Legoland was so profoundly dented compared to the rest of Merlin’s UK parks?
• Neither of DLP’s parks claiming the European attendance crown was intriguing; I’d have expected those to be top. Disneyland Park itself came 2nd only to Efteling, while Walt Disney Studios came 5th, behind Efteling, Disneyland Park, Europa Park and Tivoli Gardens, in that order.
• I also found the rise of Efteling to top park in Europe incredibly interesting; if any park was to beat Disney, I’d have thought it would be Europa, as EP opened up fairly early relative to others in Europe and had pretty high attendance figures pre-COVID.
• Shanghai Disneyland claiming 2nd place behind Magic Kingdom was also an occurrence I found quite intriguing, as both Tokyo parks, both California parks, and Universal Studios Japan all got higher attendance figures than Shanghai Disneyland in 2019. I guess that shows the impact that China’s fairly early easing of COVID restrictions had, if nothing else!

So all in all, I think this report has some very interesting info! Of course, attendance isn’t a competition, especially in times like these, but it’s certainly interesting to see who came out on top with the pandemic in play!

 

[Hixee]

If you read the introduction (about the dynamic of crisis in theme park industry), you might find a partial explanation to the reason why Seaworld did not open their new rides in 2021. Basically, the year after the crisis is not the best year to open a new ride.

Oh right, so no 2022 opening either then?

 

[Antinos]

If y'all want to deep dive anything regarding this report, please look into how inaccurate it is. They're reporting that Canada's Wonderland, which did not open in 2020, had over one million visitors. They also claim that Disneyland, which only operated for 2.5 months prior to shuttering, received nearly four million visitors...and Knott's nearly one million in the same time span.

I don't buy any of it.

 

[cookie]

Neither of DLP’s parks claiming the European attendance crown was intriguing; I’d have expected those to be top. Disneyland Park itself came 2nd only to Efteling, while Walt Disney Studios came 5th, behind Efteling, Disneyland Park, Europa Park and Tivoli Gardens, in that order.

Worth noting that Efteling was one of the first parks in Europe to reopen after the pandemic started, whereas DLP didn’t open until July and did so with very limited capacity.

If y'all want to deep dive anything regarding this report, please look into how inaccurate it is. They're reporting that Canada's Wonderland, which did not open in 2020, had over one million visitors. They also claim that Disneyland, which only operated for 2.5 months prior to shuttering, received nearly four million visitors...and Knott's nearly one million in the same time span.

I don't buy any of it.

I wouldn’t say the Disneyland number’s unreasonable given that they reported 18.66 million guests in 2019, or over one-and-a-half million a month. It would still have had New Year’s, MLK weekend, the opening of Rise of the Resistance, Valentine’s Day, and the start of Spring Break to draw crowds before it shut. Similar case with Knott’s.

But yes, the CW number is all kinds of sus.