Theme park attendance hits a dip

Earlier this week, Disney reported profit from its Experiences unit — which is mostly its theme parks — fell 3% this past quarter and the company warned things probably aren’t going to get much better in the near future. Disney’s chief financial officer CFO said: “Lower-income consumers are a little stressed and shaving a little bit off their time at the parks.” 

Meanwhile Comcast reported a 10% dip in revenue from its Universal parks.  

Megan Heneghan is a Disney superfan. She visits Disneyland in Southern California about three times a week with her season pass and has a podcast and Instagram account about it.

She has a pretty simple test for how crowded the park is: open up the Disneyland app and see how long the wait is for the popular Indiana Jones ride.

“At four in the afternoon, Indy has a 35 minute wait? That for summer? Wow, I’m like, the park is empty,” Heneghan said.

Inflation is partially the explanation. Higher prices are squeezing everybody’s budget, and Disneyland is expensive.

Heneghan said even her superfan spending is being pinched.

“I’ll tell myself, let’s have lunch at home and then go to the park so we don’t have to spend money on Disney lunch,” she said.

A Saturday Disneyland ticket will cost you almost $200, and that obviously doesn’t count airfare or hotel or that Disney lunch.

“The first thing to go when you’re when you’re being hit with with any kind of financial issue is going to be your travel, your leisure, your entertainment spending,” said Carissa Baker, an assistant professor of theme park management at the University of Central Florida.

But Baker said it’s not just inflation causing a theme park slowdown. Some of it is just attendance returning to normal after a post-pandemic surge. Bad summer weather also hurt.

But while strapped consumers may be skipping the multiday visit to Disney World or Universal Studios, regional theme parks like Six Flags are doing all right.

“If there is a local regional theme park where the pass price is more affordable and there is no need to incur airfare costs, the regional looks fairly attractive,” explained Paul Golding, an analyst with Macquarie Golding.

And with the money you save, you can buy your kid some extra funnel cake after they ride the roller coasters.