Orlando, Thursday, 30 October 2025.
The TEA attendance report for 2024, published last Wednesday, confirms Magic Kingdom as the world’s most visited park (about 17.8 million visits), while China’s Chimelong Ocean Kingdom again ranks among the global leaders. For retail and operations teams, the headline isn’t just Disney’s scale but the split in growth models: legacy destination resorts drive multi-day stays and IP-led spend, while high-capacity regional parks compete on price, throughput and local demand. That divergence creates different pressure points — sustained crowding and staffing volatility at major destination parks versus throughput and margin management at regional operators. The most intriguing takeaway: Disney still places 12 parks in the top 25, underscoring platform-level advantages that intensify benchmarking demands. Expect capital-allocation shifts toward capacity upgrades, queue technologies and revenue-mix strategies, and sharper KPI sets for network planning. This snapshot should prompt portfolio re-evaluations and operational pilots focused on crowd-flow, staffing elasticity and ticketing/pricing levers.