UK Merlin park guest figures through the years

Benjsh · 20th Sep 2022

pluk said:
All these old gate figures don't show one big thing; weather. A prolonged washout in the summer months would do more to damage a seasons gate than a new ride opening would likely do to improve it. In the days before prebook and onsite hotels if the weather looked ropey people wouldn't bother, it was only really coach trips that were committed to visiting in advance.

A very good point also. People in the south don't always remember how much rain we get up north.

Matt N · 20th Sep 2022

pluk said:
All these old gate figures don't show one big thing; weather. A prolonged washout in the summer months would do more to damage a seasons gate than a new ride opening would likely do to improve it. In the days before prebook and onsite hotels if the weather looked ropey people wouldn't bother, it was only really coach trips that were committed to visiting in advance.

That's a good point. I've often heard it said that a fairly significant factor in Swarm's failure could have been how poor 2012's summer weather was; if I'm remembering correctly, 2012 was a horrible summer where it rained loads (even though I was only 9, I certainly remember a lot of rain in summer 2012...), and a bit of reading would suggest that it was quite a poor year for the UK theme park industry all round because of that and numerous other reasons.

If you look at my data, Alton Towers and Chessington also registered fair declines in attendance in 2012 (Alton dropped by over 10%, or nearly 300,000, and Chessington dropped by a good 100,000), and 2012 was even the straw that broke the camel's back to cause the demise of Camelot, so 2012 was a pretty difficult year all round for UK theme parks.

However, weather doesn't explain trends. It could certainly explain anomalies and one-off peaks or troughs, but I don't think sustained trends can really be attributed to the weather. The chance of getting a sustained spell of exceptionally good or exceptionally poor summers for many, many years in a row is surely quite low.

Matt N · 9th Oct 2022

Disclaimer: This post is quite long; I apologise in advance!
If any of you are interested, I decided to play with the attendance data a little more this evening and answer a couple of questions!

For starters, I'd like to apologise sincerely, because I only just realised that I messed up a couple of the numbers so that they were off by about 20,000... sorry about that. I've corrected the incorrect readings now.

The first thing I decided to ask was...
How would the parks be ranked in terms of average all time attendance?
To answer this question, I applied the statistical measures of mean, median and mode to each theme park's attendance.

The first statistical measure I used was the mean. The mean is a calculated average, which I worked out by adding all of the attendance figures together and dividing them by the number of years each park had listed in the graph. When ranked by mean attendance, the parks stacked up as follows:

Alton Towers - 2,429,688 (excluding 2020), 2,389,358 (including 2020)
Legoland Windsor - 1,820,652 (excluding 2020), 1,772,135 (including 2020)
Chessington World of Adventures - 1,425,189 (excluding 2020), 1,397,978 (including 2020)
Thorpe Park - 1,396,250 (excluding 2020), 1,372,664 (including 2020)

I must admit I was surprised at this... I wasn't surprised at the placements of AT and LLW, but for some reason, I was expecting Thorpe to be above Chessington... I guess its #4 placement makes sense from looking at the graph, but I must admit that it still surprised me.

The placements were much the same when I used median (the middle value):

Alton Towers - 2,437,500 (excluding and including 2020)
Legoland Windsor - 1,875,000 (excluding 2020), 1,781,250 (including 2020)
Chessington World of Adventures - 1,437,500 (excluding and including 2020)
Thorpe Park - 1,343,750 (excluding 2020), 1,312,500 (including 2020)

The mode (most common value) for each park was pretty different from the mean and median (which suggests clusters of higher and lower values rather than a fully normal distribution), but the rankings remained roughly the same:

Alton Towers - 2,875,000 (excluding and including 2020)
Legoland Windsor - 1,500,000 (excluding and including 2020)
Chessington World of Adventures - 1,437,500 (excluding and including 2020)
Thorpe Park - 1,093,750 (excluding and including 2020)

So all in all, I think we can conclude that interestingly, the parks' average attendances of all time align pretty nicely with the 2019 attendance ranking, with the parks being ranked as follows under all of the statistical measures:

Alton Towers
Legoland Windsor
Chessington World of Adventures
Thorpe Park

The second question I asked was...
Have any of the parks had anomalous years, or outliers, in their history?
To answer this question, I decided to calculate the standard deviation, which is a statistical measure that tells you how much variation there is in your dataset.

I hear you asking "well, how is the standard deviation relevant to outliers?". Well, standard deviation is relevant because the definition of an outlier is any reading that is more than 2 standard deviations away from the mean on either side. With that in mind, I calculated the standard deviation of each park's attendance, and used that to work out the "normal" range of each park's attendance (the range of figures that falls within 2SD of the mean; if the attendance data followed a perfect bell curve/normal distribution, approximately 97.5% of the data would fall within 2SD of the mean). Any figures that fell outside this range were deemed to be outliers, or anomalous years.

Here's how each park fared in this regard...
Alton Towers
Excluding 2020
Mean All Time Attendance: 2,429,688
Standard Deviation: 392,762
Upper Bound of "Normal" Attendance Range: 3,215,212
Lower Bound of "Normal" Attendance Range: 1,644,163
Outliers: 1 (3,312,500 attained in 1994)

Including 2020
Mean All Time Attendance: 2,389,358
Standard Deviation: 458,428
Upper Bound of "Normal" Attendance Range: 3,306,214
Lower Bound of "Normal" Attendance Range: 1,472,503
Outliers: 2 (3,312,500 attained in 1994 and 937,500 attained in 2020)

Chessington World of Adventures
Excluding 2020
Mean All Time Attendance: 1,425,189
Standard Deviation: 259,927
Upper Bound of "Normal" Attendance Range: 1,945,044
Lower Bound of "Normal" Attendance Range: 905,335
Outliers: 1 (875,000 attained in 1987)

Including 2020
Mean All Time Attendance: 1,397,978
Standard Deviation: 301,149
Upper Bound of "Normal" Attendance Range: 2,000,276
Lower Bound of "Normal" Attendance Range: 795,680
Outliers: 1 (500,000 attained in 2020)

Legoland Windsor
Excluding 2020
Mean All Time Attendance: 1,820,652
Standard Deviation: 339,098
Upper Bound of "Normal" Attendance Range: 2,498,898
Lower Bound of "Normal" Attendance Range: 1,142,457
Outliers: 0

Including 2020
Mean All Time Attendance: 1,772,135
Standard Deviation: 408,021
Upper Bound of "Normal" Attendance Range: 2,588,157
Lower Bound of "Normal" Attendance Range: 956,094
Outliers: 1 (656,250 attained in 2020)

Thorpe Park
Excluding 2020
Mean All Time Attendance: 1,396,250
Standard Deviation: 384,292
Upper Bound of "Normal" Attendance Range: 2,164,833
Lower Bound of "Normal" Attendance Range: 627,667
Outliers: 1 (2,187,500 attained in 2010)

Including 2020
Mean All Time Attendance: 1,372,664
Standard Deviation: 405,989
Upper Bound of "Normal" Attendance Range: 2,184,643
Lower Bound of "Normal" Attendance Range: 560,686
Outliers: 2 (2,187,500 attained in 2010 and 500,000 attained in 2020)

It's really interesting to me to see that every single park has had at least one outlier at some point in its history! I knew that every park would have had 2020 as a giant outlier (that one needs no explanation, really...), but surprisingly, every park apart from Legoland had an anomalous year even prior to COVID. In Chessington's case, it was the park's all time low in 1987, while in the case of Alton and Thorpe, it was actually their all time peaks, in 1994 and 2010 respectively, that were outliers compared to the parks' other years attendance-wise.

You're probably wondering how outliers are actually relevant to theme park attendance. In fairness, they're not as relevant to theme park attendance as they would be in, say, a science experiment, but I think they're still important to consider, even though we are talking about theme park attendance rather than the growth of germ cultures in a petri dish or whatever.

In statistical terms, outliers are usually excluded from calculations such as averages and predictive analytics models. They are readings that are said to have a low chance of repeatability under normal circumstances, so my data suggests that the parks' anomalous years (both peaks and troughs) have produced attendance figures that there's a fair chance of the parks never hitting again, under normal circumstances at least. And when you look at the circumstances surrounding the parks' respective anomalous years, that would make some sense; the widespread anomalous low of 2020 was likely caused by COVID-19 and the associated lockdowns and social distancing (which certainly couldn't be referred to as "normal circumstances"), the anomalous Chessington low of 1987 was likely caused by it being the park's opening year and it only having half a season (which is unlikely to be repeated... the park will never have an opening year again, and a half-season is unlikely to be repeated under normal circumstances), and the anomalous Alton Towers and Thorpe Park highs were both likely caused by the opening years of freakishly successful major ride installations (I know Thorpe's was 2010 rather than 2009, but 2009 and 2011's figures were on the cusp of being outliers themselves, and 2009's massive increase was almost definitely stimulated by Saw), which likely wouldn't be considered "normal" circumstances.

I know that theme park attendance is a touch too nuanced for outliers to be set in stone, but I still think it's an interesting point to consider.

Another question I asked was...
Which parks have the most volatile attendance?
In order to answer this question, I once again employed our good friend standard deviation to measure the variability of each park's attendance.

In terms of standard deviation, the parks were ranked as follows:
Excluding 2020

Alton Towers - 392,762
Thorpe Park - 384,292
Legoland Windsor - 339,098
Chessington World of Adventures - 259,927

Including 2020

Alton Towers - 458,428
Legoland Windsor - 408,021
Thorpe Park - 405,989
Chessington World of Adventures - 301,149

So in terms of pure numbers, Alton Towers has the most variable attendance and Chessington has the least variable attendance. However, one key piece of the puzzle that pure numbers on their own don't take into account is the mean that the SD varies from in the first place; if the mean is larger, the SD will often be larger by default. To counter this, let's instead rank the parks by their standard deviation as a percentage of their mean attendance...
Excluding 2020

Thorpe Park - 27.5%
Legoland Windsor - 18.6%
Chessington World of Adventures - 18.2%
Alton Towers - 16.2%

Including 2020

Thorpe Park - 29.6%
Legoland Windsor - 23.0%
Chessington World of Adventures - 21.5%
Alton Towers - 19.2%

Interestingly, Thorpe Park actually has the most volatile attendance of the Merlin parks when SD is measured as a percentage of mean attendance; its standard deviation is surprisingly high given that its mean attendance is comfortably the smallest of the 4 parks.

This really puts into perspective how much higher the late 2000s and early 2010s were for attendance at Thorpe Park than any other point in its history, as well as how different Thorpe's growth trajectory has been to that of the other 3 parks. In spite of Thorpe having the most years on the graph, it only had one proper peak that it attained fairly late in its life. The park mostly ticked along at a fairly low attendance in its early years, peaking not much above the 1 million mark (quite often a bit below it, in fact; the park had numerous years of 900k or so, and its low is a little below 850k) for 20 years. The 1.5 million threshold was not breached until 2003, 20 years into Thorpe Park's time on the graph, and the peak of 2.1-2.2 million was only ever hit during the 2009-2011 period, with no year before or since coming even remotely close to it.

By comparison, Alton and Chessington both appear to have managed roughly 2 big growth cycles (or perhaps 1.5 in Chessington's case, as a trough never began in the 2nd one before COVID), and they've maintained a fairly high relative attendance throughout their lives on the graph (since 1984 in Alton's case and since 1987 in Chessington's case). Legoland never really had a trough, with that park having managed a fairly consistent, steady upward trajectory since appearing on the graph in 1997.

On a side note, I guess this also proves why you can't really rely on pure numbers on their own; Alton Towers had the highest actual number as its SD, but this was likely caused by its mean attendance being a solid peg higher than that of the other 3 parks, as its SD actually equated to the lowest percentage of mean attendance out of the 4.

The final question I asked was...
Which park fills to capacity the most?
Now I know that this one is based upon slightly more spurious reasoning, but I did think that this could be one question where the 2020 data might come in handy. I thought that the 2020 attendances might provide an interesting insight into this because in 2020, the parks were all open for the same amount of time, and all of them had heavily capped attendance, so hit capacity most of the time.

The way I thought I'd answer this question was by ranking the parks by how much lower their 2020 attendance was than their 2019 attendance (the percentage decrease). The park with the highest percentage decrease should, in theory, be the one that fills to capacity the most.

In terms of percentage decrease, the parks' 2020 attendances were ranked as follows:

Chessington World of Adventures - -70.4% (500,000 vs 1,687,500)
Legoland Windsor - -68.2% (656,250 vs 2,062,500)
Thorpe Park - -66.7% (500,000 vs 1,500,000)
Alton Towers - -62.5% (937,500 vs 2,500,000)

So from this, it can be ascertained that Chessington World of Adventures hits capacity the most and pushes the limits of its capacity the most on a typical day, while Alton Towers hits capacity the least by quite some margin. This would make sense given Chessington's well documented capacity struggles, and the fact that I can count on one hand the number of times I've ever known Alton Towers hit capacity.

The 2020 figures would also imply that Alton Towers has the highest capacity of any of the UK Merlin parks by quite some margin; its 2020 figure was close to 1 million, while the others were more like 500,000 (Chessington and Thorpe were joint lowest at bang on 500k, while Legoland was a little higher and edged closer to 600-700k).

One final thing I should reveal is that I have condensed all of this data into a Google Sheet, which has each park's data and statistics listed alongside a labelled line graph showing all of them together for visual perspective:

From: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1T3bmW5I9gyq6AgqogFJ6xSppi8vRw-y2SWoRZPpfdzg/edit?usp=sharing

If you're wondering why every park in the spreadsheet starts from 1983, with the ones that start later than 1983 having 0 listed as their attendance for the early years, this was because the graph didn't seem to like it when I tried to start each park from the year it actually started on Merlin's graph... it got very mixed up, so I just decided to have 1983 as a uniform starting point for all of them and put 0 for any years before the park actually appears on the graph. That's why every park apart from Thorpe has a massive surge from the bottom towards the left of the graph... that's simply that park "entering" the graph, if you like.

I hope you find this interesting! If you find any errors in my calculations, do tell me (I apologise once again for the earlier mess-up of a few of the figures...), and also tell me if you'd like me to ask any more questions about this dataset!

rob666 · 9th Oct 2022

Needs more detail.
Lacks "too long did not read" conclusion in bold print.
Edit...and it was a double post...whip him.

Benjsh · 9th Oct 2022

Still no luck finding that girlfriend Matthew?

Shaggy_Dog_ · 9th Oct 2022

rob666 said:
Needs more detail.
Lacks "too long did not read" conclusion in bold print.
Edit...and it was a double post...whip him.

And he didn’t even feel the need to unnecessarily apologise for the double post! A whipping is far too good for him, send him round for a few laps on a wheel seat on Nash, that’ll teach him!

[mention]Matt N [/mention] Don’t worry, we are just pulling your leg. Your stats and in-depth analysis posts are great and are both impressive and insightful.

Matt N · 9th Oct 2022

I never even realised I was double posting… sorry about that.

The reason I didn’t do a TL;DR was because I didn’t feel I could summarise what I had written very well; I covered quite a few bases, so I think a TL;DR would likely have been quite long in itself.

Matt.GC · 9th Oct 2022

What's TLDR?

Matt N · 9th Oct 2022

Matt.GC said:
What's TLDR?

It’s an abbreviation of the phrase “Too long; didn’t read”. Don’t worry, because it took me a bit of time to work out what they were too, but a TL;DR is basically a concise summary of a long piece of writing to allow people to ascertain your basic points without making them read your entire long piece of writing if they don’t want to.

As someone who is quite partial to writing a good long post from time to time, I now use them quite a bit so that those who struggle with long posts are fully catered to.

AT86 · 16th Nov 2022

As part of the consultation for the new Waterpark at Chessington Merlin have uploaded an updated version of attendance graph showing 2021 attendance and even 2022 attendance for Chessington.

Good to see Alton Towers 2021 guest numbers were almost back to pre-pandemic levels, in fact it looks like their second best year since 2013.

In comparison Legoland is trailing by some margin, considering they were more highly attended than Towers back in 2017.

Matt N · 16th Nov 2022

Hurray! I’m very happy that this graph made a reappearance in an updated form so that we finally have 2021 (and in the case of Chessington, 2022) figures to view! Now isn’t the best time, as I’m currently sat in university awaiting a 1:15 lecture, but I shall certainly be having a play with this new graph and seeing what precise figures I can unearth at some point!

Alton Towers’ 2021 attendance is very promising indeed; without sitting down and determining in more depth, I’d take a stab at around 2.3-2.4 million for 2021 at first glance. Given that they managed their second highest attendance post-Smiler in a year where the park didn’t even open until April and attendance was still capped until July, I think that bodes very well, personally!

Chessington and Thorpe both look to have recovered pretty nicely too; both parks seemed to be within 250k or so of their 2019 figures in 2021, which I’d say is pretty decent and bodes well for the long term, myself.

In 2022, Chessington seemingly managed to roughly match 2017/18 attendance levels by eye, with only 2019 looking noticeably higher, from what I could see. That all bodes pretty well for the future!

LEGOLAND is the slightly more concerning one. I must admit that I’m surprised to see it have such a sluggish 2021; attendance appeared to be around 1.5-1.6 million by eye, remaining a good 500k below 2019 levels, and it looks like the lowest figure they’ve attained since 2007, at a rough glance. I wonder why LEGOLAND had such a sluggish post-COVID recovery compared to the others?

Islander · 16th Nov 2022

Matt N said:
LEGOLAND is the slightly more concerning one. I must admit that I’m surprised to see it have such a sluggish 2021; attendance appeared to be around 1.5-1.6 million by eye, remaining a good 500k below 2019 levels, and it looks like the lowest figure they’ve attained since 2007, at a rough glance. I wonder why LEGOLAND had such a sluggish post-COVID recovery compared to the others?

I wouldn’t assume this is an indication poor performance - the early 2010’s saw a persistently overcrowded park, so it may be that following forced capacity restrictions during Covid, the park decided that a better experience was provided with slightly capped figures.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Matt N · 16th Nov 2022

Right, then! I've had a play about with the graph, and I've managed to extrapolate some figures!

I should firstly note that I have restated a few of the previous figures following closer examination of this new graph. I apologise for my earlier error; the mistakes have been rectified in my opening post.

The most notable thing I discovered are the 2021 figures for each Merlin park, as well as some seemingly altered 2020 figures and the 2022 figure for Chessington.
Final 2020 Figures

Alton Towers - 968,750 (-61.3%)
Legoland Windsor - 687,500 (-66.7%)
Thorpe Park - 562,500 (-62.5%)
Chessington World of Adventures - 500,000 (-69.8%)

2021 Figures

Alton Towers - 2,343,750 (+141.9%)
Legoland Windsor - 1,562,500 (+127.3%)
Chessington World of Adventures - 1,281,250 (+156.3%)
Thorpe Park - 1,218,750 (+116.7%)

Interestingly, Chessington also had a 2022 figure given. In 2022, the park received 1,468,750 guests, a change of +14.6% on 2021.

Now we have this information, we can work out... which park recovered the best from COVID in 2021?

There are multiple metrics by which we can establish this.

The first potential metric to use is the percentage increases in attendance that each park registered in 2021...
Percentage Increases

Chessington World of Adventures - +156.3% (1,281,250 in 2021 vs 500,000 in 2020)
Alton Towers - +141.9% (2,343,750 in 2021 vs 968,750 in 2020)
Legoland Windsor - +127.3% (1,562,500 in 2021 vs 687,500 in 2020)
Thorpe Park - +116.7% (1,218,750 in 2021 vs 562,500 in 2020)

This metric would suggest that Chessington World of Adventures had the strongest recovery while Thorpe Park had the weakest recovery. However, this is not a perfect metric. This is because the parks' attendance decreased by marginally different amounts in 2020; while all parks were under the same COVID restrictions, some parks were affected more than others. For instance, Chessington's percentage decrease in 2020 was nearly 70%, while Alton Towers' was barely above 60%. This is important because if a park is coming from a more diminished base compared to 2020 in the first place, then its percentage increase is bound to be higher.

A more reliable metric to use is the net percentage decrease from 2019 to 2021...
Net Percentage Decreases Between 2019 and 2021

Alton Towers - -6.3% (2,343,750 in 2021 vs 2,500,000 in 2019)
Thorpe Park - -18.8% (1,218,750 in 2021 vs 1,500,000 in 2019)
Chessington World of Adventures - -22.6% (1,281,250 in 2021 vs 1,656,250 in 2019)
Legoland Windsor - -24.2% (1,562,500 in 2021 vs 2,062,500 in 2019)

This metric would suggest that Alton Towers had by far the strongest recovery in 2021, while Legoland Windsor had the weakest. Alton Towers' recovery in 2021 was miles stronger than that of all the other parks; Alton's 2021 attendance was only 6% lower than its 2019 attendance, while Thorpe Park's was close to 20% lower, Chessington's was over 20% lower, and Legoland's was nearly 25% lower. Why this could be is anyone's guess... I'm certainly stumped by it, as every park was hit by the same COVID restrictions in 2021.

It should be noted that 2021 was still not an entirely COVID-free season, however, as the parks opened nearly a month late and attendance was still somewhat capped until July. With this in mind, 2022 attendance, when it is available for all parks, may be a better indicator... for what it's worth, Chessington's 2022 attendance remains approximately 11.3% lower than its 2019 attendance, so even in 2022, it has not recovered as strongly as Alton Towers managed to in 2021.

Finally, I should remind you that all of this data is viewable in a Google Sheet:

From: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1T3bmW5I9gyq6AgqogFJ6xSppi8vRw-y2SWoRZPpfdzg/edit?usp=sharing

I hope you find this interesting! I know I certainly found it interesting to compile... I'll hopefully see you again some time soon when the 2022 attendance is made available for all parks!

Matt.GC · 17th Nov 2022

I should take you to work with me Matt. I'm currently trying to build a business case for a certain type of refit and store layout with Covid and post Covid data, average basket spends, footfall changes, category performance changes, average customer age and socioeconomic group, changes in online participation, seasonal event performance changes (into the unknown this year with Christmas and a world cup at the same time!) and all that kind of stuff. Fancy some homework son?

QTXAdsy · 27th Nov 2022

Matt N said:
Right, then! I've had a play about with the graph, and I've managed to extrapolate some figures!

I should firstly note that I have restated a few of the previous figures following closer examination of this new graph. I apologise for my earlier error; the mistakes have been rectified in my opening post.

The most notable thing I discovered are the 2021 figures for each Merlin park, as well as some seemingly altered 2020 figures and the 2022 figure for Chessington.
Final 2020 Figures

Alton Towers - 968,750 (-61.3%)

Legoland Windsor - 687,500 (-66.7%)

Thorpe Park - 562,500 (-62.5%)

Chessington World of Adventures - 500,000 (-69.8%)

2021 Figures

Alton Towers - 2,343,750 (+141.9%)

Legoland Windsor - 1,562,500 (+127.3%)

Chessington World of Adventures - 1,281,250 (+156.3%)

Thorpe Park - 1,218,750 (+116.7%)

Interestingly, Chessington also had a 2022 figure given. In 2022, the park received 1,468,750 guests, a change of +14.6% on 2021.

Now we have this information, we can work out... which park recovered the best from COVID in 2021?

There are multiple metrics by which we can establish this.

The first potential metric to use is the percentage increases in attendance that each park registered in 2021...
Percentage Increases

Chessington World of Adventures - +156.3% (1,281,250 in 2021 vs 500,000 in 2020)

Alton Towers - +141.9% (2,343,750 in 2021 vs 968,750 in 2020)

Legoland Windsor - +127.3% (1,562,500 in 2021 vs 687,500 in 2020)

Thorpe Park - +116.7% (1,218,750 in 2021 vs 562,500 in 2020)

This metric would suggest that Chessington World of Adventures had the strongest recovery while Thorpe Park had the weakest recovery. However, this is not a perfect metric. This is because the parks' attendance decreased by marginally different amounts in 2020; while all parks were under the same COVID restrictions, some parks were affected more than others. For instance, Chessington's percentage decrease in 2020 was nearly 70%, while Alton Towers' was barely above 60%. This is important because if a park is coming from a more diminished base compared to 2020 in the first place, then its percentage increase is bound to be higher.

A more reliable metric to use is the net percentage decrease from 2019 to 2021...
Net Percentage Decreases Between 2019 and 2021

Alton Towers - -6.3% (2,343,750 in 2021 vs 2,500,000 in 2019)

Thorpe Park - -18.8% (1,218,750 in 2021 vs 1,500,000 in 2019)

Chessington World of Adventures - -22.6% (1,281,250 in 2021 vs 1,656,250 in 2019)

Legoland Windsor - -24.2% (1,562,500 in 2021 vs 2,062,500 in 2019)

This metric would suggest that Alton Towers had by far the strongest recovery in 2021, while Legoland Windsor had the weakest. Alton Towers' recovery in 2021 was miles stronger than that of all the other parks; Alton's 2021 attendance was only 6% lower than its 2019 attendance, while Thorpe Park's was close to 20% lower, Chessington's was over 20% lower, and Legoland's was nearly 25% lower. Why this could be is anyone's guess... I'm certainly stumped by it, as every park was hit by the same COVID restrictions in 2021.

It should be noted that 2021 was still not an entirely COVID-free season, however, as the parks opened nearly a month late and attendance was still somewhat capped until July. With this in mind, 2022 attendance, when it is available for all parks, may be a better indicator... for what it's worth, Chessington's 2022 attendance remains approximately 11.3% lower than its 2019 attendance, so even in 2022, it has not recovered as strongly as Alton Towers managed to in 2021.

Finally, I should remind you that all of this data is viewable in a Google Sheet:

From: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1T3bmW5I9gyq6AgqogFJ6xSppi8vRw-y2SWoRZPpfdzg/edit?usp=sharing

I hope you find this interesting! I know I certainly found it interesting to compile... I'll hopefully see you again some time soon when the 2022 attendance is made available for all parks!

Late to the party for something...again!

That said after looking at Towers' attendance figures between 2017 and 2019, I was struck at how attendance seemed to grow quite considerably in which you could argue in an ideal world had they had a larger ride lineup and ofc no Covid in which it might have been possible for the park to be touching that magic 3 million mark (or something like 2,900,000 to be more truthful) had they managed to keep the momentum up in a trouble free 2020. Then again only way for this to keep a high 2 million or barely reaching 3 million guest mark is by having more days open throughout the year in which I have no doubt that this would be planned in the long term if that is where they want to go. Even if they did have a stronger ride line up far better than we have now E.g more flat rides/dark rides/entertainment etc. Transport has and always will be a problem for the park and I have had more own views of transport but that's going off topic but nonetheless a more rounded public transport link for the park would really make a world of difference and with cost of living with some unable to have private vehicles, this will be a factor that will come to haunt Merlin sooner than later if they kick this issue down the road or just flat out ignore it.

Chessington though was really treated dirty following the purchase of Thorpe and the figures during the 2000's really say it, ironically Thorpe now seems to be in a ropey place and the tables have turned on the London parks which if you were a diehard Chessie fan might feel is karma.

Matt N · 5th Sep 2023

Disclaimer: This is a very long post with a fair amount of statistical talk. I'll try my best to simplify some of it a bit and explain a few things, but if you don't like statistics, this post may not be for you! There is a TL;DR at the bottom condensing the overall findings into a more concise format.
Sorry to bump this particular thread, but following a really interesting topic I read on another forum earlier about 2012 vs 2023 in terms of UK theme park attendance and what effect various factors have on attendance, I was inspired to revisit this dataset and explore the relationship between UK theme park attendance and various extrinsic factors, as these have previously raised some interesting discussion points surrounding the topic of UK theme park attendance.

Before I explore various different factors and their effect upon UK theme park attendance, I should firstly set out that the attendance I use is the combined attendance of all four theme parks from 1997 (the first year where all four are listed under their current guise) through until 2021. I tried all of my tests for the dataset including both 2020 and 2021, the dataset excluding 2020 only and the dataset excluding both 2020 and 2021, as I felt that the circumstances of 2020 in particular were too anomalous not to consider and I was unsure whether to even place 2021 among "normal" years, as the parks were still restricted to some degree for part of or all of the season. As such, I tested the data both including and excluding the COVID years, so that we could see the relationships exhibited pre, during and post COVID.

To test out whether a significant causal relationship exists between two variables, I used a Pearson correlation coefficient test, and the two metrics I used to determine this were the correlation coefficient itself and the p-value. To explain what each is:

The correlation coefficient is a number between 1 and -1 that denotes how strong the causal relationship between two variables is. A correlation coefficient of 1 indicates a perfect positive correlation (i.e. "as x increases, y also increases"), a correlation coefficient of 0 indicates no correlation (i.e. "x has no significant effect on y"), and a correlation coefficient of -1 indicates a perfect negative correlation (i.e. "as x increases, y decreases"). As it is staggeringly rare to have a perfect correlation, I will denote the strength of the correlation by using the absolute value of the correlation coefficient as follows; an absolute coefficient of 0-0.25 indicates no significant correlation, an absolute coefficient of 0.25-0.5 indicates a weak correlation, an absolute coefficient of 0.5-0.75 indicates a moderate correlation, and an absolute coefficient of 0.75 or higher indicates a strong correlation.
The p-value is the probability that a relationship does not exist, and it is a decimal falling between 0 and 1. It can be represented as a percentage; for instance, a p-value of 0.55 indicates that there is a 55% chance of a relationship not existing. In hypothesis testing, you want the p-value to be low if you are wanting to prove your hypothesis (in this case, that a causal relationship exists) and disprove the null hypothesis (in this case, that no causal relationship exists). I will denote how strong the evidence for a causal relationship is by using the p-value as follows; a p-value of 0.1 or higher indicates insufficient evidence in favour of a relationship, a p-value of 0.05-0.1 indicates marginally significant evidence in favour of a relationship, a p-value of 0.01-0.05 indicates significant evidence in favour of a relationship, and a p-value of less than 0.01 indicates extremely significant evidence in favour of a relationship.

Now I've explained some of my processes, let's move onto the analysis! The first external factor I tested out is one that has been particularly relevant this summer... it's that good old chestnut known as the weather!
The Weather
The weather is often referenced as a factor that could potentially be affecting UK theme park attendance, so I thought; why not test that theory out? Now, I hear you asking "Matt, there are so many different metrics of weather; which one did you test out?". That would be a fair question, and in answer, I tested out three different weather metrics; average rainfall in millimetres, average maximum temperature in degrees Celsius, and average number of hours of bright sunshine. To gain the relevant weather data, I took the months between April and October (the 7 months in which the parks are operating for the full month) for each metric for every year since 1997 from the Met Office weather data archive (https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-and-regional-series). I averaged out the values for the months from April-October of a given year and used that as that year's value for a given metric. I set the region as "England"; as all four Merlin parks are in England, I figured that the weather in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland was irrelevant for this particular investigation.

Average Rainfall (in millimetres)
So for our first metric, average rainfall in millimetres, the distribution of the data including 2020 and 2021 was as follows: