Will Epic Universe Hurt Disney Attendance?

The Walt Disney Company faced innumerable, previously unimaginable challenges during the pandemic.

Since then, the company has done an admirable job of making people forget the whole thing had ever happened.

Still, theme park investors and analysts have discussed the parks lately in anticipation of the opening of Universal Epic Universe.

Disney suddenly finds itself under the microscope as various outlets debate the new Universal park’s impact.

So, let’s talk about Disney attendance. Hopefully, we’ll get a baseline understanding of Epic Universe’s potential impact.

About  Attendance Reports

For at least a decade now, I’ve written about the Themed Entertainment Association’s theme park attendance reports.

The organization posts them annually, and you can find the 2023 report here.

It’s important to know that these reports are estimates.

No major theme park business will open its books and reveal precise attendance numbers.

During quarterly earnings reports, executives at the various theme park corporations dance around attendance.

Nobody wants to admit specifics. All they’re typically willing to admit is whether attendance increased or decreased.

Even then, they’ll use vague terms to obfuscate the matter. So, we’re dealing with educated guesses from industry veterans.

Despite this fact, you’ll find the TEA attendance reports cited basically everywhere as gospel.

They’ve attained the sort of respect that lends credibility to anything the organization publishes.

Anecdotally, they’re also a joy to deal with. I find them highly professional and kind.

More importantly, a cursory glance at these reports underscores the exhaustive research the TEA performs each year.

You may not care about water park attendance in Guatemala, but it’s their business to know. So, they do. In short, I find the TEA’s annual reports highly credible, and you should, too.

Disney Leads the League

Last year, the TEA’s annual report indicated that Walt Disney World remained the most trafficked theme park on the planet.

According to the TEA’s estimates, Disney parks attracted 142.1 million tourists in 2023.

We don’t have 2024’s data available yet, as collating this much more information typically takes until the late summer.

So, we’re using the 2023 totals, which suggest that 48.77 million tourists visited Walt Disney World.

That means more than one-third of all Disney guests attended one of Disney World’s theme parks.

Note that I didn’t include water parks in these numbers, and Disneyland Resort is its own thing, too.

It bears noting that Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon was the most popular water park in the world in 2023 as well.

The TEA tracks its attendance at 1.9 million guests, which is in line with 2022’s numbers but ever so slightly lower.

That’s a vital part of all these discussions. Disney isn’t competing with other theme parks in that nobody else is even close.

The second-most popular theme park company is one you probably don’t even know.

It’s a Chinese company named Fantawild. In 2023, their total tourist attendance was 85.7 million.

Disney attained nearly as many tourists as its top two competitors combined. In short, there is no competition.

So, Disney primarily competes with itself. This statement applies in two different ways.

Disney World vs. Disneyland

Magic Kingdom is now and has been the most popular theme park in the world for many years now.

The primary competitor in terms of attendance is another Disney park, Disneyland in Anaheim, California.

The TEA registered Magic Kingdom’s 2023 attendance as 17.72 million, while Disneyland Park managed 17.25 million.

After those two parks, the third-most-popular park was Universal Studios Japan, with 16 million.

So, Disney has a 7.8 percent lead on the competition for the top park and 10.8 percent for the top spot.

Thus, what analysts primarily track is whether Disneyland ever makes inroads on Magic Kingdom.

That almost happened in 2022, when the attendance gap between the parks was a modest 252,000 tourists.

Currently, Magic Kingdom’s streak lasts more than 15 years.

Nobody has beaten the park in so long they’ve forgotten it’s even possible.

That’s why I scoff at the notion that Epic Universe will change anything.

In truth, the real competition Disney World faces is with itself. But let’s evaluate the Universal side first.

How Close Is Universal Studios?

As mentioned, Universal’s most popular theme park actually resides in Japan.

Universal’s most popular American theme park didn’t finish in the top ten in attendance in 2023.

Since Universal officials indicated that attendance dropped in 2024, that’s probably the case last year as well.

In 2023, Universal’s Islands of Adventure was the 11^th most popular theme park in the world.

This park managed attendance of ten million, which sounds good until you learn that it was over 11 million in 2022.

On the Disney side, attendance increased year over year at Disney California Adventure, Disneyland, EPCOT, and Magic Kingdom.

Meanwhile, attendance fell 2.8 percent at Disney’s Animal Kingdom and 5.5 percent at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

You may think that Universal closed the gap in 2023, but that’s patently untrue.

Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios Florida both suffered attendance declines of 9.3 percent in calendar 2023.

Presuming the parks also faced decreased attendance in 2024, Universal Orlando Resort is undeniably trending the wrong way.

In fact, even the water park, Volcano Bay, lost 2.3 percent of its customers in 2023. 

Any perception you may have of Universal Studios closing the gap isn’t supported by the data.

That brings us back to Disney being in competition with itself.

Magic Kingdom vs. Magic Kingdom

For Disney officials, here’s the true cause for concern.

In calendar 2019, Magic Kingdom’s attendance was a shade under 21 million.

The park first crossed the 20 million barrier in 2015 and stayed above that mark for five straight years.

Everything changed when the pandemic hit. Disney officials suddenly faced an existential threat, and it left a mark.

In 2020 and 2021 combined, Magic Kingdom’s attendance was 19.63 million.

The attendance split was 6.9 million in 2020, followed by 12.7 million in 2021.

The first year comes with a huge asterisk since the parks closed for multiple months.

And I’d argue that Disney officials triumphed by persuading 12.7 million guests to visit the following year.

The world faced several outbreaks, and Florida seemingly got the worst of it every time.

Still, people like me trusted Disney’s safety measures more than those of local authorities.

Thus, Disney felt like a respite from the real world in 2021, which greatly helped with theme park recovery.

By 2022, Magic Kingdom attendance had crept back to 17.1 million, which is great compared to the prior two years.

The problem is that it’s nearly four million short of 2019. And that’s where we still find ourselves today.

The Magic Kingdom of 2025 isn’t selling as well as the Magic Kingdom of 2019.

The Complexity of Attendance Totals

In a way, that’s a feature, not a bug. Disney officials transformed theme park revenue during the pandemic.

So, the company is somehow making more from its theme parks despite the lower attendance.

That’s the nuanced part of this discussion that I suspect people will overlook when Epic Universe debuts.

Disney theme parks could have higher attendance if the company wanted that.

They don’t because Disney runs a business. Their concern is revenue, not attendance.

So, the numbers we’ve discussed here don’t matter as much to them as revenue.

Thus, the story we’re really tracking later in the year is one we won’t know until Disney’s third- and fourth-quarter earnings reports.

That’s when Disney Experiences will report its quarterly revenue.

If those numbers drop during the third quarter, it’s likely a non-story since Epic Universe will impact only one of three months.

With the fourth quarter, a noticeable revenue drop would hint that Epic Universe at least somewhat affected Disney World.

To be clear, I don’t expect that to happen, but I’m posting this now so that we can compare later.

Until then, let’s all just be excited about a new theme park opening in Orlando. That’s a good thing, right?

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