Report: Amusement park attendance rises 4.2 percent in 2005

ORLANDO, Fla. — Attendance at North America's 50 most popular amusement parks rose 4.2 percent in 2005, powered by strong investment in new rides, the 50th anniversary of Disneyland and a hurricane season that bypassed the theme park capital of Orlando.

An estimated 176 million visitors went to North America's most popular parks, according to an annual survey released Monday by the trade publication Amusement Business and the research firm Economics Research Associates.

Attendance was off at two Ohio facilities in the publication's list of the top 25 best-attended North American amusement parks. Paramount's Kings Island in southwest Ohio had 3.3 million visitors in 2005 to place 16th, but was down 5.1 percent overall.

Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio, had 3.1 million, good enough for 18th but off 2 percent from last year.

Worldwide, amusement park attendance increased 2.2 percent to 253 million visitors in 2005.

Most major parks don't release their attendance figures, but the Amusement Business numbers are considered the most reliable estimates in the industry.

The Cedar Fair parks saw attendance rise 1.6 percent. But its California-based Knott's Berry Farm park declined 3 percent, mainly because of a rainy first quarter, and its flagship Cedar Point park in Ohio declined despite the introduction of the maXair ride.

Cedar Point planned to lower admission prices by $5 a ticket, a counterintuitive move in an industry that annually raises its prices. The goal is to have more people go through the turnstiles in a market that has struggled economically with layoffs in the automotive industry, said Brian Witherow, a Cedar Fair vice president. The Sandusky-based park's three biggest markets are Detroit, Cleveland and Toledo, Ohio.

"Clearly, we can't control things like gas prices and unemployment rates in our core market . . . but one thing we can control is the admission price," Witherow said.

Neither a rainy spring in California nor a parade of destructive hurricanes in the southeast slowed down growth in the $10 billion industry, which had strong momentum from last year, the first year attendance had increased since the 2001 attacks hobbled the U.S. tourism and travel industry.

Those parks that acquired new rides in 2005 saw their investments pay off while those parks that had an off-year in their capital investment cycle, for the most part, experienced attendance dips, said James Zoltak, editor of Amusement Business.