Theme park history with no guardrails. Kelly McCubbin and Peter Overstreet go deep on Disneyland, Walt Disney World, Universal Studios, and the forgotten amusement parks that deserve to be remembered — uncovering the stories behind the attractions, the Imagineers and showmen who built them, the culture that influenced them, and what could make them even better. A Boardwalk Times Podcast.
Theme park attendance numbers just dropped, and they tell a story that’s bigger than “up” or “down.” We’re on a brief hiatus while Pete moves and I recover from Flu A, but we wanted to check in with a clear-eyed look at what’s happening across Disney, Universal, and the regional park world. With the economy tight, fuel costs high, and travel feeling harder to justify, attendance becomes a real measure of what guests value and what parks are getting right or wrong.
Find my writing at www.kellymccubbin.com and www.boardwalktimes.com
Thanks for listening!
We'd love it if you would give us a review on your podcast platform of choice: iTunes, Spotify, etc... They're really helpful.
And get in touch and let us know about YOUR Plus-Ups for the attractions we've talked about! We'd love to tell them on the air.
Come visit us on Bluesky, Mastodon, Instagram, or whatever social media you like. Just look up Lowdown on the Plus-Up and you'll probably find us. Or drop us a note to comments@lowdown-plus-up.com and let us know any questions or comments about how YOU would like to plus-something-up!
We are a Boardwalk Times production. Boardwalk Times, https://boardwalktimes.net/ Boardwalk Times store, https://boardwalktimes.store .
Hey everybody. Just thought I'd check in. We're still on a little bit of a hiatus. Pete is in the process of moving, and I've had a cold, like a really bad cold. Or a it was actually a flu. It was flu A. I tested specifically. I don't know why I started saying something entirely different. Anyway, we will be back, I'm gonna guess, probably early December, but I just wanted to check in and let you know we were still here, run through a little bit of news that was happening right now. You
probably noticed that the Theme Park Association's uh attendance estimates from last year came out. They were super interesting. Not unsurprisingly, everybody took a bit of a bath. The economy is in rough shape, fuel's been expensive, travel has been restricted to an extent because of the cost. Everyone took a bit of an attendance hit last year, Universal Disney, but you know who didn't take an attendance hit? Dollywood. Dollywood continues to uh surpass expectations. It's starting to look like maybe Disney and Universal ought to think about learning some of the lessons that Dollywood learned from Disney and Universal. Focus back in a little bit on your theming, put a whole bunch more uh performers and craftsmen and quiet spaces in. Just a thought. Seems to be working real well for them.
Universal took a surprising hit for several reasons. One of which is they've had reliability issues with Epic Universe, and we all know about that. And they've they restricted attendance for some time because of the reliability issues and to kind of get things up to speed. They also, and I think this is a little confusing and almost inexplicable, they didn't allow their annual pass holders to use their passes to go to Epic. So Epic was keeping a fairly low attendance rate most of the year. That's okay, it's a smaller park, and um it's to be expected, but I think part of the problem that Universal ran into is that they'd hoped that their stalwart, they're ever consistent, you know, since the late 60s park, uh Universal Studios Hollywood was going to make up for some of the gap. Sadly, however, the Los Angeles area, like uh Altadena, Pasadena, around like Universal City there and Hollywood, they had some pretty horrible fires last year, and that knocked attendance for Universal uh down pretty badly for months on end. And of course, that's not the big thing that we want to be concerned about with these giant fires. A lot of people lost their homes. Um, Altadena is a uh a terror to look at right now. It's so sad. But Universal certainly took a hit because of that, and they and so that park wasn't able to make up any of the attendance gap for the rest of the American theme parks. So it was a little rough on them.
However, their picture's downright rosy if you were to start to look at what's going on with the uh with Six Flags. Six Flags and Cedar Fair obviously merged a couple of years ago. Turns out Six Flags had a little bit more debt than they let on. Uh I think there's all sorts of lawsuits and finger pointing going on right now, but they've been baling water like crazy. Six Flags is in an interesting position because they have a lot of theme parks, and most of them are in fact profitable. Uh so you would think, well, that's great. You just wait it out and you'll be fine, but they're not profitable enough. Because the amount of debt that Six Flags came into that Cedar Fair merger with, uh, really just paying the interest on that debt is um causing the company as a whole to lose money in spite of the fact that most of its actual individual parks are making money. So there's this ongoing question of do you sell parks for a quick influx of cash? Or do you try and get an influx of cash from somewhere else to keep the debt from eating you up while you let your parks do their uh you know moderately successful business? It's a really hard call. Um Six Flags obviously had some safety issues and very deeply, unfortunately, uh uh death recently at Six Flags Over, Georgia. This is not helping the situation at all with them. So uh I would expect uh, as they've been doing, more sell-offs of parks, uh the one near me right now, uh uh in Vallejo, the uh uh park formerly known as Marine World Africa USA, but now called Discovery Kingdom. I can't imagine that's gonna make sort I don't think it's gonna survive the year. Uh I think we'll see a lot of other regional parks from Six Flags close down. Potentially, Six Flags itself could declare bankruptcy. Uh if that were to happen, there's a big question as to what would happen with Knott's Berry Farm, uh, which is uh at this point the crown jewel in the Six Flags Cedar Fair portfolio. It's the it is the the great thing that they have. There'll be some question as to what happens to that. So let's keep our fingers crossed. Let's hope that they find some way out of this, but uh don't look great for Six Flags at the moment. What else is going on?
So I went and saw Joe Roadie speak uh about a week ago, and he was terrific. It wasn't what I expected, it was actually better. Uh he came out and first off, you hear Joe Roadie speak, and uh most of you know who this is, but uh if you don't, Joe Roadie is the uh theme park designer behind Disney Animal Kingdom, which I think is my favorite park in Florida. He is the designer behind Alani in Hawaii. He is the person who did um uh uh Guardians of the Galaxy Mission Breakout in California. He did uh he is one of the brains behind much-beloved adventurers club on Pleasure Island in Florida. Uh, a lot of your favorite things that you love about theme parks, Joe Roddy was involved in. His speech at the Walt Disney Family Museum was lovely. It was about working with people, and it was about how you unify goals amongst teams and get them pointed in the right direction, and then you don't have to tell people what to do because they know. Uh, it was it was strangely inspirational. He also talked a lot about working with Jane Goodall and how towards the end of her life he was working in a that was called Dr. Jane's dream. It is an environmental conservationist installation that he described as being a little bit like Meowwolf when um Jane Goodall unfortunately died last year. He evidently got the phone call immediately the next morning that said, We're still doing this, we're still building this thing. So um, if you happen to be around Tanzania, uh go take a look at Dr. Jane's dream. It looks it looks uh pretty spectacular. Anyway, um if you get a chance to see Joe Rhody, he's touring around doing um lectures tied to his new book, Floating Mountains, which is wonderful. And I highly recommend it. It's it's surprisingly inspirational, in spite of the fact that you will spend a lot of your time going, Gosh, what have I done with my life? Anyway, uh Pete and I will be back in not too
long. We appreciate you hanging out there and sticking with us. Uh, we've gotten some really nice uh letters from listeners lately, which just means the world to us. It really does. So, uh, and and we do respond to them. So, so thank you. Uh anyone who's written, and if you feel like writing, please do. Uh in the meantime, there's a whole bunch of episodes to catch up on that you can be listening to. Uh, of course, we unfortunately lost uh the great Walter Koenig and uh the much-beloved Patrick Stewart in the last couple of weeks. Uh both Pete and I were just really crushed by by both of these. They're people that we grew up with that meant a lot to us. If you get a chance, go back and listen to our episode about Star Trek at the theme parks. I think you might uh find some interesting things going on there. Also, um, just as a final note, someone that's very dear to both mine and Pete's heart, John Leeson, the voice of canine from Doctor Who passed away last week. Another voice that was integral to our childhood. So just want to tip our caps to Mr. Leeson. Anyway, uh, we will uh get you something a little formal and a little planned out soon. But I just wanted to drop in and say hello and hope that you're having a nice fun and uh get out and vote.
Podcasts we love
Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.
