2020 attendance estimates

The TEA/AECOM attendance estimates are out for 2020. Under normal circumstances, I find their numbers suspect, so I can only imagine where they sit this year. But duh, attendance was down. :)

Six reported attendance was down 79%
Cedar reported attendance down 90%

TEA says the top 25 were down only 67%. It's pretty clear to they are underestimating the impact.

I think last year being down is definately expected. Really hard to get people into a park when you are closed for 1/2 or 3/4 of the season. What I have to wonder is what this year will be like. In my visits, the parks did not feel as crowded as normal, but that's a terrible way to estimate without more data.

Jeff said:

The TEA/AECOM attendance estimates are out for 2020. Under normal circumstances, I find their numbers suspect, so I can only imagine where they sit this year. But duh, attendance was down. :)

I'll look up the official numbers published by OLC for Tokyo Disney as this is a good way to see how TEA changed the numbers.

Fun said:

TEA says the top 25 were down only 67%. It's pretty clear to they are underestimating the impact.

Maybe, but Six Flags and Cedar Fair don't have any parks in the top 25 - whereas Disney and Universal had 14 of the top 15. Many of their parks would have had regular operations from Jan 1 to mid-March (when most SIX/FUN parks were closed), and had a longer season after reopening midsummer. So it's plausible that the top 25 parks' attendance was off less than the regional, seasonal parks.

I noticed a glaring mistake: Canada's Wonderland is listed at 1 139 000 visitors in 2020, which is impossible: the park never opened in 2020 due to COVID.

See, I told you their numbers were suspect! 😂

Margin of error: infinity percent.

I noticed the text said Cedar Point opened their new "Snake River Expidition" in 2020 as well. That's not true.

I can tell you from being at Cedar Point 3 days in 2020 that attendance being down 90 percent is a lot of horse doo.

Every day I went the park was busy. With a 3 hour wait for Raptor and boarding passes for most coasters at an hour each, actually 2 hours as you had to wait in line at various times of the day to be sure to get a pass before they ran out.

So if their attendance was down 90%. Their regular daily capacity limit must be a gigantic amount of people. They originally claimed only 8,000 guests allowed in the park each day. And, I can tell you there was way more than that. Like 4 times that many people. And, I did not see them turning anyone away if they did not have a reservation.

Though if you had a platinum pass you did not need to make one. So, I am guessing that 8,000 guest limit must have been for non pass holders only.

Platinum passholders did, in fact, have to make reservations

The parks were absolutely limiting attendance to those factors. But when you limit capacity to 8-10 people on a coaster train and then stop operations every 20-30 minutes to do cleaning procedures, it slows things down. That's why there were 8,000 people in the park with long waits for attractions.

There were way more than 8,000 people in the park. Trust me. Raptor was not the only ride that had a long line. And passes for the coasters that had them had long lines to get the passes too.

So you had to wait an hour to get the pass, and then another hour to ride whatever ride the pass was for. Rides that did not have passes all had long waits. Even Iron Dragon.

Also I did not make a reservation for any of the 3 days I went with my platinum pass. They asked me if I had one, and when I said no, but I was told I would not need one because I had a pass. And, they said, oh ok, and let me walk in.