TEA: Water Parks and Museums Outpace Theme Parks in 2025 Attendance Growth

Water parks and museums recorded stronger attendance growth than theme parks in 2025, according to the Themed Entertainment Association’s (TEA) 2025 Global Experience Index. Global theme park attendance was broadly flat, while the world’s top 20 water parks welcomed 36.3 million visits, up 3.0% year on year.

The contrast points to uneven performance across the attractions industry. Stable theme park attendance alongside growth in water parks and museums suggests that demand is developing differently across attraction categories. The report also points to regional shifts and changing consumer preferences.

The water park figures provide a specific measure of that divergence, but their scope matters: the 3.0% increase covers the top 20 water parks, rather than every water park worldwide. Likewise, stronger attendance growth at water parks and museums does not establish that visitors are replacing theme park trips with those experiences. Different growth rates alone do not reveal how individual visitors allocate their time or spending.

For attraction operators, the immediate question is where attendance gains are concentrated. If growth is spread across multiple locations, it would suggest a broader change in demand; if concentrated in a smaller group, individual attraction performance could explain more of the increase. Regional and attraction-level attendance figures would help distinguish those possibilities.

Attendance also measures visits rather than commercial returns. Whether the gains translate into stronger business performance will depend on factors such as visitor spending and operating costs. Further reporting on those measures, alongside the persistence of attendance growth, would help establish how far the gap between attraction categories extends beyond visitor numbers.