Study Shows Which Orlando Park Leaves Guests Most Satisfied

Orlando Florida is one of the largest tourist destinations in the world. In 2018, a record 68 million visitors flew into Orlando International Airport. That record is set to be broken in 2019. Mid year data show an almost 7% increase from the previous year.

With so much to do in Orlando, tourists have to map out their vacations carefully. Disney’s Magic Kingdom is the most popular park, not only in Orlando, but in the world, with over 20 million visitors annually. Other Orlando parks are closing the gap quickly. Universal Studios has doubled its attendance in less than a decade. SeaWorld saw a 16% rise in visitors over the past year, the largest increase of any of the Orlando parks.

However, popularity does not always equate with happiness.

So which Orlando park do tourists like the most? Researchers from the University of Florida set out to answer that question. They combed through more than 40,000 comments on the popular review site TripAdvisor. The authors used ratings of the parks as a measure of visitor satisfaction. They also used a computer to categorize the words in the reviews as positive or negative to generate a sentiment score for each of the three major parks. A sentiment score is the ratio of positive to negative words in the reviews. A score of zero would be neutral. Words like “great”, “good”, and “amazing” tip the score towards the positive end of the scale.

So which park leaves visitors feeling the most satisfied?

The short answer is all of them. The overwhelming majority of reviews, 87%, gave a rating greater than 4 out of 5 stars. All of the parks also had a positive sentiment score, with an average of 0.125 on a scale of 1 to -1. The most common word used to describe the parks was “great”.

The real winner is…

Universal Studios. Sort of. They took home the highest satisfaction rating. They also had a significantly higher sentiment score than Disney. SeaWorld had the lowest satisfaction rating, but the highest sentiment score. There were no real losers in the dataset. All three parks were able to leave most of their attendees feeling happy about their experiences.

A deeper dive into the data shows the reasons behind the high praise. Disney character meet and greets were particularly memorable for visitors of Walt Disney World. At SeaWorld, interaction with marine mammals was viewed as a unique experience that no other park could replicate. Quick access to Universal Studios from the hotels boosted the satisfaction of their guests. Visitors also found Universal more enjoyable for all age groups.

Was there anything tourists didn’t like about the parks?

The sentiment analysis also revealed some of the negatives about visiting a park. It will come as no surprise that wait times and high prices account for bad experiences some reviewers had. Expensive food and drink, in particular, left a bad taste in visitors’ mouths.

Overall, there’s a lot that the parks seem to be doing right. Tourists are leaving all three of the major Orlando parks feeling satisfied. If only the parks could find a way to make lines shorts and food cheaper, they could come closer to creating the perfect tourist experience.

TAGS: Orlando Disney Universal News