2022 TEA/AECOM Theme Index

Andrew25

Andrew25

Well-Known Member
Disclaimer: We all know TEA/AECOM numbers are estimates and not actuals. With that said...

WDW has only recovered 80% of 2019 pre-pandemic attendance.
UOR has recovered fully... and increased attendance by 2%.
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Universal market share increased from 24% to 28.5%
Disney's share decreased from 65.6% to 59.3%

Disney is still king... but alarm bells have to be going off in anticipation of 2025.
 
lazyboy97o

lazyboy97o

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
HauntedPirate said:
An 11 million guest drop for all 4 WDW parks comparing 2019 with 2022. The 2 Uni parks were up about 500k.

(Waits for people to claim “the parks weren’t running at full capacity!!!!1!”, which is a lie)
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In order to say the parks are running at or below capacity requires one to first define the capacity. We know attendance was still being restricted with reservations. Even before the pandemic and the introduction of reservations, the maximum capacity was determined by Disney.

What this really clearly demonstrates is how crowding is not a measure of visitation, but is something that can be shaped to create a desired outcome. Despite attendance still being below still rather recent peaks the parks feel just as, if not more, crowded.
 
HauntedPirate

HauntedPirate

Park nostalgist
Premium Member
lazyboy97o said:
In order to say the parks are running at or below capacity requires on to first define the capacity. We know attendance was still being restricted with reservations. Even before the pandemic and the introduction of reservations, the maximum capacity was determined by Disney.

What this really clearly demonstrates is how crowding is not a measure of visitation, but is something can be shaped to create a desired outcome. Despite attendance still being below still rather recent peaks the parks feel just as if not more crowded.
Click to expand...

I don’t for a second believe that the parks were restricting attendance with the park reservation system in 2022. But your last sentence is absolutely true - Crowding was bad because of manipulation, not actual sets of feet in the parks. And crowded parks leads more to buy extras like Genie- and LL and AH tickets. But they’d never do that…
 
Animaniac93-98

Animaniac93-98

Well-Known Member
To simply, the estimates for 2022 are:

Magic Kingdom: 17.1 million
Disneyland: 16.8 million
Islands of Adventure: 11 million
Hollywood Studios: 10.9 million
Universal Studios: 10.75 million
EPCOT: 10 million
Animal Kingdom: 9 million
California Adventure: 9 million
Universal Hollywood: 8.4 million

Typhoon Lagoon: 1.92 million
Volcano Bay: 1.85 million

Disney Studios Paris attendance was actually higher in 2022 than 2019! By about 95K, but still...

Disneyland Paris was also better in 2022 than 2019. By 185K

Islands of Adventure was the only Orlando park to do better in 2022 than 2019.
 
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lazyboy97o

lazyboy97o

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
HauntedPirate said:
I don’t for a second believe that the parks were restricting attendance with the park reservation system in 2022. But this is absolutely true - Crowding was bad because of manipulation, not actual sets of feet in the parks. And crowded parks leads more to buy extras like Genie- and LL and AH tickets. But they’d never do that…
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Reservations filled out with enough frequency to know that limits did exist. Disney was also not secretive about trying to increase per capita spending. They were restricting attendance, but not really for what most would assume meets the criteria of guest satisfaction. I think the big issue isn’t people not visiting but the lack of staffing to support greater visitation.
 
Andrew25

Andrew25

Well-Known Member
lazyboy97o said:
I think the big issue isn’t people not visiting but the lack of staffing to support greater visitation.
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Halfway through last year, I found the parks to be decently staffed. As of the last few months, I haven't had a problem with low staffing at any park.

2022 is definitely still an outlier due to the revenge travel that occurred with international visitors, but the fact that Universal was able to recovery fully and still increase attendance is staggering.
 
cjkeating

cjkeating

Well-Known Member
Interesting to note that Disneyland Park (Paris) and Walt Disney Studios Park are the only two Disney parks in the world that now have attendance higher than 2019 at 9.93 and 5.34m respectively.

I know there are lots of 'ifs and buts' around DLPs attendance which fluctuates wildly based on numerous internal and external factors but I think it does show the untapped potential the park has. For a quick bit of context with the exception of 2016 which was low DLP has had attendance in the 9.6-9.9m range for 2014-2019.

They do have a reservations system which is pretty strict for Annual Pass holders and do regularly sell out of one day park tickets in school holiday weeks so demand has still be suppressed.
 
LSLS

LSLS

Well-Known Member
HauntedPirate said:
An 11 million guest drop for all 4 WDW parks comparing 2019 with 2022. The 2 Uni parks were up about 500k.

(Waits for people to claim “the parks weren’t running at full capacity!!!!1!”, which is a lie)
Click to expand...

Whats interesting is universal orlando seems to be the only parks in the top 25 that are above 2019.
 
Sir_Cliff

Sir_Cliff

Well-Known Member
lazyboy97o said:
Reservations filled out with enough frequency to know that limits did exist. Disney was also not secretive about trying to increase per capita spending. They were restricting attendance, but not really for what most would assume meets the criteria of guest satisfaction. I think the big issue isn’t people not visiting but the lack of staffing to support greater visitation.
Click to expand...
It would be interesting to know how often the individual parks filled out their reservations to get a sense of what impact these limits may have had on the attendance figures of each park.

On first glance, it's interesting to see Epcot's resilience compared to Animal Kingdom given so much of the park has been a construction zone the past few years. That does, I guess, make sense given it has two of the resort's newest attractions and I'm curious to know how often it ever hit its reservation ceiling as, presumably, capacity is massive.

Overall, I agree an interesting takeaway is that numbers are actually down, whether or not that is by design, but the lower attendance isn't leading to the improved experience that was promised.
 
Dranth

Dranth

Well-Known Member
HauntedPirate said:
An 11 million guest drop for all 4 WDW parks comparing 2019 with 2022. The 2 Uni parks were up about 500k.

(Waits for people to claim “the parks weren’t running at full capacity!!!!1!”, which is a lie)
Click to expand...
Just looking at Universal, the only Uni park above 2019 worldwide is IoA. USJ, USF and USH are all still down which I think proves what we all already knew, IoA is a HUGE draw. It even looks like the pull of IoA has caused USF to recover faster as it is closer than any of their other parks to hitting 2019 levels again.

It would also be interesting to see a breakdown in where the guests are coming from, my guess is locals account for a large chunk of the increase for a variety of reasons.

As for Disney, no they have not recovered as much attendance wise but honestly, is that a bad thing? We all want them to start doing things right again but do any of us really want a return to 2019 crowd levels? Keep the levels where they are while addressing the issues we all see like quality, maintenance, lack of service, closed rides and stores, etc. Once that is done start adding more capacity so those overall crowd levels can increase without it turning the parks into the hellscape that was 2019.

I know most of us don't have a ton of faith in current management to do that, or at least do it well, but we can hope numbers like these make them pause and look at some of those areas.
 
LSLS

LSLS

Well-Known Member
Dranth said:
Just looking at Universal, the only Uni park above 2019 worldwide is IoA. USJ, USF and USH are all still down which I think proves what we all already knew, IoA is a HUGE draw. It even looks like the pull of IoA has caused USF to recover faster as it is closer than any of their other parks to hitting 2019 levels again.

It would also be interesting to see a breakdown in where the guests are coming from, my guess is locals account for a large chunk of the increase for a variety of reasons.

As for Disney, no they have not recovered as much attendance wise but honestly, is that a bad thing? We all want them to start doing things right again but do any of us really want a return to 2019 crowd levels? Keep the levels where they are while addressing the issues we all see like quality, maintenance, lack of service, closed rides and stores, etc. Once that is done start adding more capacity so those overall crowd levels can increase without it turning the parks into the hellscape that was 2019.

I know most of us don't have a ton of faith in current management to do that, or at least do it well, but we can hope numbers like these make them pause and look at some of those areas.
Click to expand...

THAT is an interesting thought. I wonder how many more passes Universal sold with Disney not having them, and how many more people went because of that. I'm not sure it's enough to have that large an impact, but maybe.
 

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