4. California Adventure “3.0” stalls
Few took Disney California Adventure seriously until Disneyland’s second gate removed its bandages in 2012, unveiling the results of a $1.2 billion, five-year facelift. In 2013 – the first full year with Cars Land, Buena Vista Street, and a reborn Paradise Pier – the park welcomed 8.5 million guests – still far fewer than Disneyland, but 3 million more than it had just five years before – suggesting that the park would now grow year after year with a new “DCA 2.0” mindset.
Instead, Disney made the unusual decision to do everything they could to undo the detailed, historic, and distinctly-Californian reimagining they’d just spent five years and a billion dollars to install. From Soarin’ Around the World to Frozen Fever to Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT! to Pixar Pier, nearly everything that’s happened since (“DCA 3.0”) has taken the form of low-cost overlays with less and less “California” and more and more Disney + Pixar + Marvel.
Spoiler alert: it isn’t working. Insiders report that the “3.0” transition of the park’s boardwalk area to the low-cost, quick-IP infusion Pixar Pier (and a splashy marketing campaign that went with it) had virtually no impact on the park’s attendance. Oops.
Perhaps the cornerstone of the “3.0” wave, Avengers Campus was a supposed to be a win-win. Not only would Avengers Campus infuse one of the biggest IPs on the planet (the Marvel Cinematic Universe) into the still-undervalued California Adventure; it would also finally leverage the gargantuan franchise in the only one of Disney’s U.S. resorts that’s allowed to use Marvel’s most well-loved heroes.
AECOM estimates that 9 million guests entered Disney California Adventure in 2022. That’s an impressive number in isolation, but it’s also only 500,000 more than the park was attracting in 2013! For better or worse, that seems to suggest that the game plan we’ve seen for the last decade – quick-fixes, character overlays, IP infusions, and lands without E-Tickets – just isn’t working…
That’s also bad news for the park’s latest “addition” – renaming and redressing an existing area after Disney’s Big Hero 6 – which seems equally unlikely to impact the park’s attendance. If you ask us, it’s a hint to Disney management and Imagineers that stuffing the parks with mismatched IP isn’t working, and that maybe the best plan for California Adventure would’ve been to stick with the “DCA 2.0” mindset… Oops.
5. Tokyo Disney’s parks get beat by Universal Studios Japan
Like Florida and California, Japan plays host to both Disney and Universal theme parks. However, unlike in the United States, they’re geographically quite far from each other. It’s about a four-hour high-speed train ride between the Tokyo and Osaka areas, leaving Tokyo Disney Resort and Universal Studios Japan to compete much less directly than in the U.S.
But it certainly is interesting that Tokyo Disneyland (12 million) and Tokyo DisneySea (10.1 million) both slot under Universal Studios Japan (12.35 million) when you re-order the attendance list for 2022. That’s on the heels of Super Nintendo World – the all-star new land that debuted in March 2021 as the latest in Universal’s very ambitious “Living Lands”.
None of the Japanese parks are back to pre-pandemic levels (when Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea welcomed nearly 18 million and 15 million visitors apiece), and with its Annual Pass program still suspended, it’s really no surprise that attendance is down at Tokyo Disney Resort. Tokyo Disney also has the massive Fantasy Springs expansion locked and loaded, which will likely see the resort rebound well. But it goes to show that post-pandemic, we’re still learning new norms for the industry…
And maybe more to the point, if Super Nintendo World gave Universal Studios Japan a power-up, is it likely to do the same in Orlando? Speaking of which…
6. Universal Orlando Rises…
By far the most jaw-dropping finding of 2022’s attendance estimates is that Universal Orlando is looking better than just about anyone would’ve expected. Believe it or not, AECOM estimates that Universal Studios Florida welcomed more visitors in 2022 than EPCOT or Animal Kingdom, and was just 250,000 off from beating Hollywood Studios, too.
Even more astounding is the performance of its little sister. In 2022, Universal Islands of Adventure welcomed more than 11 million guests. That not only places it above Disney’s Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom, and EPCOT, but makes Islands of Adventure the fifth most-attended theme park on Earth last year – a meteoric rise from being 12th in 2019. According to AECOM’s estimates, Islands of Adventure is also the only theme park in the top 25 to be doing better in 2022 than in 2019, period. While other parks struggle to return to pre-pandemic levels, Islands of Adventure is nearly 1 million people past its 2019 benchmark.
The reason why must be obvious. Both Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure and the Jurassic World VelociCoaster have opened since mid-2019, and the park’s spectacular performance since reflects the simple but often-overlooked idea that when you add new, big budget, highly-desirable attractions to a park, its attendance grows. Voila!
It’s all a piece of the larger story we explored in our “Universal Rises” Special Feature – a compellingly in-depth look at the increasing gravitational pull of Universal Orlando through the 2010s and on to today…
Of course, the other aspect of this we can’t ignore is that frankly, Disney seems absolutely okay with it. After all, we know that Disney is intentionally limiting its attendance through the use of the Park Reservation system. (Former CEO Bob Chapek infamously held the mindset that Disney Parks should cater to fewer guests, but guests who were willing to spend more.) Disney has also vastly limited the sale of its Annual Passes, favoring high-price, high-spending day tickets over Annual Pass’ bulk, pre-purchased, value admission.
Still, there’s always the big question when it comes to Universal’s momentum…
7. … but will it last?
The key question for theme park fans right now is the one we just explored in our “Universal Rises” Special Feature: is the momentum in Orlando really coalescing behind Universal and not Disney?
In many ways, the answer appears to be yes. With the financing of Comcast to keep the parks afloat during COVID-19 (and Comcast’s insatiable appetite for expanding, updating, and refreshing them), Universal Orlando has seen incredible growth and evolution in the last decade.
Universal will soon introduce a standalone family park in Texas to the canvas, as well as a year-round Horror Nights experience in Las Vegas. But without question, the biggest thing happening in the themed entertainment industry right now is Universal Epic Universe – a novel third gate coming to Orlando that Dragons, Wizards, Mario, and Monsters will call home. (It’s also the first new stateside Disney or Universal park since California Adventure.)
But even the most optimistic Universal fans can’t help but wonder if Epic Universe will be the smashing success they hope… After all, as the constantly-shifting ranks and low ride counts of Disney World’s second, third, and fourth park suggest, three theme parks is a lot of theme parks… It could very well be that once Epic Universe opens, we actually see attendance at the other two parks drop. This concept – which theme park fans call “cannibalization” – could mean that Universal Orlando doesn’t really get any more guests or convince them to stay for longer; they just enter a cycle of constantly needing to balance capital projects to convince guests to go to the park that’s falling the most behind (like Disney World does).
So what will really be interesting is to see where Universal’s parks land in 2025 and beyond, and whether Universal fundamentally adds to its capacity or merely shuffles around the guests it already had.
As the last five years have shown us, anything’s possible… So keep an eye out for major changes in theme park attendance in the years to come! And until then, let us know… were you surprised by any of the shifts we’ve seen in theme park attendance post-pandemic? Let us know in the comments below!