Most Popular Theme Parks By Attendance

Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom has been the world's most-visited theme park for 19 years running. In 2024, it pulled 17.84 million guests through its turnstiles, an average of about 48,800 people per day. That sounds like a lot. It isn't, compared to its own peak: the park drew more than 20 million in 2015 and 2018. The COVID-19 pandemic took the top end out of the global theme park business, and 2024 was the first year the combined attendance of the world's top 25 parks (246 million total) clearly cleared its pre-pandemic mark. The 2024 TEA Global Experience Index, published in October 2025, is the most recent comprehensive ranking; the 2025 numbers will land in late 2026. The rankings below are from that 2024 report.

1. Magic Kingdom (Walt Disney World), Florida

Magic Kingdom opened on October 1, 1971, five years after Walt Disney died. Walt's brother Roy E. Disney came out of retirement to see the Florida property through to opening; the dedication plaque on the castle is in Roy's name. At 17.84 million visitors in 2024, Magic Kingdom outdrew the entire population of the Netherlands. The growth was modest: 0.7 percent over 2023, in line with the slow normalization the post-pandemic theme park industry has settled into. The big move ahead is structural rather than incremental. Disney announced in 2024 a Magic Kingdom expansion that the company describes as the largest in the park's history, with new lands themed to "Cars," "Encanto," and "Coco" coming over the next decade as part of a $60 billion company-wide investment in Disney Experiences.

2. Disneyland Park (Disneyland Resort), California

Disneyland is where the entire industry started. Walt Disney opened the Anaheim park on July 17, 1955, an opening day so disastrous that staff later called it "Black Sunday." Fake tickets, gas leaks, a heat wave that softened the freshly poured asphalt, and Tomorrowland literally still under construction. Sixty-nine years later, it remains the only Disney park Walt himself saw open. Disneyland pulled 17.34 million visitors in 2024, half a million behind Magic Kingdom, on a footprint less than a fifth the size. The 2025 opening of Universal's Epic Universe in Orlando is a longer-term concern for Disney's Florida properties than for Disneyland; the California park has no comparable rival within its market. The bigger question for Anaheim is the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. The 2024 Paris Summer Games knocked nearly 2 percent off Disneyland Paris's attendance, and Anaheim sits roughly the same distance from downtown LA as Disneyland Paris does from central Paris.

3. Universal Studios Japan, Osaka

The first Universal park outside the United States is also, as of 2024, the most-visited theme park in Asia. Universal Studios Japan opened in Osaka on March 31, 2001, and pulled exactly 16.0 million visitors in 2024, flat against 2023, which was enough to hold third place worldwide. The park's leverage in the Japanese market is its IP licensing: Super Nintendo World opened there in March 2021 and was the first Mario-themed land at any Universal park (the Hollywood and Orlando versions opened later). The park is also home to one of the better Harry Potter lands, opened in 2014, and Donkey Kong Country, which opened in December 2024 as a Super Nintendo World expansion.

4. Tokyo Disneyland, Tokyo

The first Disney park outside the United States is a structural oddity: it is the only Disneyland in the world not owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company. Tokyo Disneyland opened on April 15, 1983 under a licensing deal with The Oriental Land Company, a Japanese real estate and entertainment firm that owns and runs the park (and its 2001 sister park Tokyo DisneySea) while paying Disney royalties for the use of the brand. Attendance was 15.1 million in 2024, up 2.6 percent. The bigger Disney story in Tokyo is at Tokyo DisneySea, which sits at #7 worldwide with 12.4 million. DisneySea opened its largest-ever expansion, Fantasy Springs, in June 2024, with lands themed to "Frozen," "Tangled," and "Peter Pan."

5. Shanghai Disneyland, Shanghai

Shanghai Disneyland is the youngest park in the global top ten. It opened June 16, 2016 and broke 14.7 million visitors in 2024, growing 5 percent year-over-year, the fastest growth of any park in the global top 25 outside the relative outliers (Chinese newcomers like Chimelong Spaceship and China Dinosaurs Park). It is also a thoroughly localized park: the central Enchanted Storybook Castle is the tallest Disney castle in the world at 197 feet, and the Tron Lightcycle Power Run roller coaster debuted here in 2016 before being copied to Magic Kingdom in 2023. Shanghai Disneyland is 43 percent owned by Disney and 57 percent owned by Shanghai Shendi Group, a Chinese state-owned consortium.

The Universal Disruption

The big 2025 industry story missed the 2024 TEA ranking by months. Universal Epic Universe opened in Orlando on May 22, 2025, the first major new theme park to open in the United States in roughly two decades. The park is themed around Dark Universe (Universal Monsters), Super Nintendo World, How to Train Your Dragon's Isle of Berk, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter's Ministry of Magic, and a Celestial Park hub. It will not show up in a TEA ranking until the 2025 report drops in October 2026. Comcast's Q3 2025 earnings call attributed an 18.7 percent year-over-year revenue jump in its theme park division to Epic Universe's first full quarter of operations. Disney saw a roughly 1 percent dip in US park attendance over fiscal 2025 (ended September 27, 2025) and a 1 percent jump in resort occupancy across Walt Disney World and Disneyland. Guests are staying longer per visit even as the headcount softens.

China's Rise

Six of the world's top 25 theme parks are now in mainland China, a number that would have been zero in 2010 and was three in the 2015 ranking the original version of this article was built on. Chimelong Ocean Kingdom in Hengqin, near the Macau border, sits at #6 worldwide with 12.6 million visitors and holds the largest oceanarium in the world (almost 13 million gallons of water across eight themed zones). Universal Studios Beijing, which opened September 2021, climbed to #12 in 2024 with a 8.6 percent increase. The most extraordinary growth in the entire 2024 ranking, however, came from Chimelong Spaceship in Hengqin, a 241.1 percent jump to 4.6 million visitors, though that reflects the park moving from trial operations in 2023 to a full year of operation in 2024. The marketing claim is that it is the largest indoor theme park in the world.

The European Holdouts

Disneyland Paris occupies the #10 spot worldwide with 10.2 million visitors, down 1.8 percent on the year. Europa-Park in Rust, Germany sits at #18. It is owned and operated by the Mack family, who have been in the ride-manufacturing business since 1780 with 6.2 million, the biggest European park outside the Disney umbrella. The Mack family's Mack Rides has built coasters for parks around the world, and Europa-Park debuts its own new rides regularly; the 2024 addition was Voltron Nevera, a launched coaster themed to the Croatian electric hypercar. Efteling in the Netherlands rounds out Europe's top three at #19 with 5.6 million; the park opened in 1952, three years before Disneyland, and is built around the storybook art of Dutch illustrator Anton Pieck.

What's Coming Next

The biggest pipeline announcement of the past two years was Disneyland Abu Dhabi, planned for Yas Island and to be developed in partnership with the Abu Dhabi state-owned operator Miral. It will be the first Disney theme park in the Middle East and the seventh Disney resort worldwide. Saudi Arabia's giga-project at Qiddiya, west of Riyadh, will deliver Six Flags Qiddiya City and the Aquarabia water park as part of the Saudi Vision 2030 plan, with a likely 2026 or 2027 opening. Universal has announced its first European theme park, planned for Bedford in the United Kingdom, and a Universal Kids Resort opening in Frisco, Texas in 2026. The pattern across all the major operators is geographic. The next decade of growth is being built outside the established North American, European, and East Asian markets.

The 25 Most-Visited Theme Parks Worldwide (2024)

Source: TEA Global Experience Index 2024, published October 2025. The 2025 attendance report is expected in October 2026 and will be the first to capture the impact of Universal Epic Universe's May 2025 opening in Orlando.