SeaWorld San Diego last year experienced the highest attendance drop among North America’s largest theme parks, even as the industry returned to a year of solid visitor growth.

Both the San Diego marine park and its sister property in Orlando saw double-digit declines in attendance, while the top 20 parks in the U.S. and Canada posted an overall 2.3 percent increase, led by Disney’s Animal Kingdom at Disney World and Universal Studios Hollywood, according to an industry report released Thursday that tracks park attendance.

The single biggest slide in attendance was at SeaWorld San Diego, where visitation sank by 13.9 percent, just a year after visitation there was flat, reported AECOM, a multinational engineering firm that partnered with the Themed Entertainment Association on the attendance numbers. In Orlando, the SeaWorld decline was 10 percent.

While the attendance drops for the still struggling SeaWorld properties are not a surprise given the still lingering backlash from the anti-captivity film “Blackfish,” the decline is a sharp contrast to the rebounding theme park industry.


Coming off a year of slightly down attendance, the top 25 parks worldwide saw especially strong growth — nearly 5 percent — bringing total visitation to almost 244 million in 2017.

“The industry resumed its historic pace of growth in 2017,” said John Robinett, Senior Vice President, Americas, for AECOM. “Major theme park operators had an outstanding year with significant overall growth led largely by properties in China.”

Besides SeaWorld, the only other parks to experience fewer guests in 2017 were Busch Gardens Tampa Bay, also a SeaWorld Entertainment-owned property, and Disney’s Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World, where attendance fell by less than 1 percent. The decline is likely due in large part to much of the park being closed while new attractions, including a new Star Wars land, are developed.

Because theme park companies do not break out attendance figures, the annual report has become the only way the industry can compare visitation trends at the world’s top parks.


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Top North American theme parks by 2017 attendance

Rank, theme park, percent change, total attendance

Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World, 0.3%, 20,450,000 Disneyland, 2.0%, 18,300,000 Disney’s Animal Kingdom At Walt Disney World, 15.3%, 12,500,000 Epcot At Walt Disney World, 4.2%, 12,200,000 Disney’s Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World, -0.5%, 10,722,000 Universal Studios at Universal Orlando, 2%, 10,198,000 Disney California Adventure, 3.0%, 9,574,000 Islands Of Adventure at Universal Orlando, 2.0%, 9,549,000 Universal Studios Hollywood, 12.0%, 9,056,000 Knott’s Berry Farm, 0.5%, 4,034,000

19. SeaWorld San Diego, -13.9%, 3,100,000

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The Magic Kingdom at Disney World remains North America’s most visited park, although attendance was largely flat last year, followed by Disneyland in Anaheim where visitation grew by a modest 2 percent. The AECOM report noted that the Disney parks within North America grew by 3 percent, fueled largely by Pandora — the World of Avatar, a new land at Disney‘s Animal Kingdom.

AECOM acknowledged SeaWorld’s ongoing attendance woes, which have persisted the last four years, but pointed to positive first quarter earnings this year as a hopeful sign that the company may be on the path to recovery.

Attendance across all 12 parks in the SeaWorld portfolio jumped 15 percent during the first three months of this year, the Orlando-based company reported earlier this month. For all of 2017, the San Diego park drew 3.1 million guests, compared with 3.6 million in 2016.

“Beyond increased marketing efforts this year, which should help attendance generally, several of SeaWorld’s parks have major new rides opening, and SeaWorld is also expanding its use of the Sesame (intellectual property) at a number of parks, with additional activities understood to be in the works,” the report said.


Just last week the San Diego park debuted Electric Eel, its tallest, fastest coaster that it hopes will help build attendance.

Until a few years ago, SeaWorld San Diego’s attendance was regularly outpacing that of Knott’s Berry Farm in Orange County, but last year the SeaWorld park’s ranking fell to 19th while Knott’s rose to 10th.

Since 2013, when the “Blackfish” film was released, SeaWorld’s ranking has steadily slipped from its former 11th place spot, based on AECOM figures.

SeaWorld said Thursday it cannot comment on figures that are not reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission, but in a recent interview, interim CEO John Reilly discussed the company’s plan for reviving park performance.


“My priorities are to better show our mission and the good we do,” Reilly said. “And we have to shape our own future with new and innovative attractions. You’ll see rides, you’ll see animals and you’ll see events. The combination of all that is what makes SeaWorld unique.”

Among the top 10 theme park companies worldwide, all showed robust attendance growth, with the exception of SeaWorld Entertaiment, which had a 5.5 percent drop, and Madrid-based Parques Reunidos, posting a 1 percent slide in visitation.

Theme park giant Walt Disney Co. saw its park attendance grow by 6.8 percent around the globe, while Merlin Entertainments Group, which owns Legoland California in Carlsbad, experienced 7.8 percent growth, according to AECOM.

But it was the Chinese theme parks that showed the most stellar growth, all experiencing double-digit gains in visitation, AECOM reported.


No one SeaWorld park had a large enough attendance last year to make it onto AECOM’s ranking of top 25 theme parks worldwide. A year earlier, SeaWorld Orlando ranked No. 25.

The report’s attendance figures rely in part on public filings and published reports, in combination with a model that takes into account weather, competition, economic conditions and reinvestment in parks. In some cases, the park operators will offer attendance numbers in response to queries from AECOM.


Business

lori.weisberg@sduniontribune.com

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Twitter: @loriweisberg