A Disney park ranked as the top visited theme park in the world over the last year, generating over 17 million visitors.
This week, Themed Entertainment Association released its 2022 Global Attractions Attendance Report, which studies attendance for the themed entertainment and museum industries across the world.
According to the report, Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World drew in approximately 17,133,000 visitors during 2022, which was an increase of over 35% over 2021 (12,691,000). In 2020, the park drew in approximately 6,941,000 visitors, which was a dramatic decrease from the over 20 million visitors the park received the previous year.
The Magic Kingdom wasn’t the only local park that claimed a post on the list, with multiple Orlando-area parks ranking in the top 25. That includes Animal Kingdom (6th), EPCOT (7th), Hollywood Studios (9th), Universal Studios Orlando (11th), and Islands of Adventure (12th).
In total, Orlando area parks generated approximately 68.8 million visits during 2022, which is nearly twice the next closest regions of Japan (38.7 million) and California (35.2 million). According to the report, the top 25 theme parks drew in a total of 178,500,000 visitors over the course of 2022. That represents an increase of 43% from 2021, which saw 124,500,000 theme park visitors throughout the year.
Despite peaking in 2019, attendance figures showed one of the “steepest year-over-year attendance drops in history” during the pandemic. According to officials, 2022 marked “a return to normal for many attraction operators around the globe” from the “unpredictable nature of the Covid-19 pandemic and related restrictions.”
The report is the seventeenth annual Theme Index and Museum Index collaboration between Themed Entertainment Association and the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, Operations, and Management (AECOM) firm.
For more information about the companies, or to read the full report, visit the 2022 Theme Index and Museum Index.