The Themed Entertainment Association (TEA) and AECOM have released their theme park attendance report for the 2013 calendar year. All of the Disney theme parks in the U.S. showed gains in 2013 with one park up 9.5% over the prior year.
Disney's four Florida parks added more than 1.6 million additional guests in 2013 over the prior year. Leading the charge was the Magic Kingdom with attendance up 6% to 18,588,000 million visitors during the year. The phased opening Disney's of its new Fantasyland expansion and Storybook Circus in late 2011 and into 2012 helped boost numbers.
Disney's Animal Kingdom and Disney's Hollywood Studios saw gains of 2% each, with annual attendance eclipsing 10.1 million. Epcot finished the year up 1.5% to 11,229,000 million.
Magic Kingdom again earned the title as the #1 most visited theme park in the world. Despite its modest gains, Epcot rose one spot on the chart to #5 due to a 6.9% attendance decline by Disneyland Park at Disneyland Paris. Animal Kingdom (7) and Hollywood Studios (8) finished in the same positions as the previous year.
These gains occurred in the shadow of across-the-board higher prices for hotels and park admission, combined with the rollout of Disney's MyMagic+ technology initiative.
Disney's Typhoon Lagoon and Disney's Blizzard Beach also experienced gains of rougly 2%, up to 2.142 million and 1.968 million, respectively. Typhoon Lagoon lost its title as the most visited waterpark in the world to Chimelong Waterpark in Guangzhou, China. Chimelong attendance rose to over 2.7 million, handily dropping Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach into the #2 and 3 spots.
Out west, Disneyland experienced at 1.5% growth in attenance to 17.214 million guests. However, it finished the year as just the third most attended park in the world, losing the #2 position to Tokyo Disneyland which rose nearly 16% to over 17.2 million guests.
Disney California Adventure saw the greatest percentage gains for a Disney park in the U.S., up 9.5% to 8.514 million. California Adventure rose one spot on the worldwide chart, passing Islands of Adventure as the #10 most visited theme park in the world.
The complete Global Attractions Attendance Report is available on the AECOM.com website.
