Magic Kingdom is Still the Theme Park Attendance King, but the Lead is Shrinking

Theme parks are big business, and you only need to look at the tens of millions of people who visit them every year to see that. The Themed Entertainment Association keeps track of the state of the industry, including attendance numbers. The full report for 2025 has arrived, and it includes some intriguing insights.

What's Happening:

• The 2025 Themed Entertainment Association Global Experience Index is a report that summarizes the state of the industry, including theme parks, museums, and water parks.
• The most significant piece of information is the attendance numbers, which once again denote Magic Kingdom as the most popular theme park in the world, with 2025 attendance of 17.8 million people.
• What's potentially interesting is that Magic Kingdom actually saw a decline, albeit a tiny one, in attendance compared to 2024. Meanwhile, the next seven parks on the list saw slight increases in attendance.
• The number two park on the list, Disneyland Park in California, saw a nearly half percent increase for a total attendance of 17.4 million.
• All four Walt Disney World parks saw the same 0.2% decline, which adds up to less than 100,000 people in combined attendance.
• When looking to point the finger at a reason for the WDW decline, the obvious answer is Epic Universe. The park itself didn't make the top 25 global theme park list due to only being open since May. It ranked 13th on the list of North American theme parks with attendance of 4 million.
• While Epic may have had a slight impact on Walt Disney World's numbers, it appears to have had a larger impact on the other Universal Orlando Resort parks. They saw declines of over 2% each. Still, the added attendance of Epic Universe more than made up for those losses.
• The total attendance numbers for the top 25 theme parks were down 0.2% as well, so it's possible that Walt Disney World's decline was more due to an industry trend than anything else. Still, it will be interesting to see if these numbers are a trend. Perhaps a day will come in a few years when Magic Kingdom isn't the biggest theme park in the world.
• Here are the numbers for the top 25 global theme parks.

More Walt Disney World News:

• Check out Walt Disney World's holiday food guide.
• A new double album of EPCOT music is now available to stream.
• Magic Kingdom's Columbia Harbour House is getting a new menu starting tomorrow.