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SeaWorld Attendance Rose Along with Revenue in 2018 Due to Cheaper Tickets and New Attractions

The theme park company says cheaper tickets and new attractions helped boost attendance. Photo: Flickr Creative Commons
The theme park company says cheaper tickets and new attractions helped boost attendance. Photo: Flickr Creative Commons

More people took their vacation at SeaWorld in 2018 than the previous year. The theme park company says cheaper tickets and new attractions helped boost attendance.

About 22 million people went to one of SeaWorld’s twelve parks in the United States in 2018. That’s a roughly 8 percent increase from 2017. SeaWorld’s Chief Financial Officer Mark Swanson says cheaper tickets and new attractions like Infinity Falls in Orlando helped drive up attendance.

"We’re doing all this coming into a great attraction year. There's a lot of good reasons and a lot of exciting reasons to visit our parks. Coupled with the pass program. All that taken together gives us a lot of confidence that attendance is sticky and will remain. We're giving people a great value and we're giving them some exciting reasons to come visit our parks."

Swanson says in the last three months SeaWorld brought in more than 280 million dollars in revenue and cut its losses by forty six percent compared to the same time period last year.

Chief Operating Officer John Riley says international attendance also increased in 2018 for some of the same reasons.

“With enhanced marketing and communications initiatives with our compelling lineup of new attractions we believe we'll drive more demand internationally with improved execution."

 A total of 4 million guests visited SeaWorld’s twelve parks during the last three months of 2018. SeaWorld hired a new CEO Gus Antorcha following the departure of Joel Manby last year.
  To listen to the full story, please click on the clip above. 

Danielle Prieur is WMFE's education reporter.