Annual Theme Index Shows 2018 Park and Attraction Attendance Results

© AECOM / TEA

The annual Theme Index / Museum Index was recently released, giving a look at the 2018 attendance of the global theme park and museum industries.  The report uses a mix of actual data along with estimates to publish the top lists.  This leads to some debate over the accuracy of the lists, but at the very least the report gives a nice look at the health of the industry overall and allows us to see which parts of the globe are growing, or shrinking, the most.

While you can dig through the report on your own, the general commentary reads that 2018 was another year of growth with the top 25 parks on the globe seeing an overall attendance increase of 3.3%.  In fact, each section of the globe that the report covers saw overall growth among its top parks in 2018.

According to the report the most attended park in the world remains the Magic Kingdom in Florida, which is approaching 21 million visitors per year by their estimates.  One of the largest increases on the global top 25 lists was Animal Kingdom, which increase 10% to 13.75 million visitors.

Looking at the top 20 parks in North America, two SeaWorld parks stand out as big winners in 2018.  SeaWorld Orlando is listed as growing 16% to just shy of 4.6 million guests, and SeaWorld San Diego increased more than 20% to hit 3.7 million visitors.

You can download this year's report, along with all prior years, via this link.