{"id":10231,"date":"2026-09-07T21:24:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T21:24:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparkdb.com\/blog\/?post_type=chart&#038;p=10231"},"modified":"2026-09-07T21:24:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T21:24:18","slug":"how-do-attractions-make-money-2026","status":"publish","type":"chart","link":"https:\/\/www.theparkdb.com\/chart\/how-do-attractions-make-money-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"How Do Attractions Make Money? (2026)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 18px; font-family: Geologica; color: #19a48a;\">Decomposing attraction revenue segments into categories &#8211; admissions, games\/arcades, F&amp;B, retail, hotels, franchise\/licensing, and other &#8211; reveals the contrast in business models.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.theparkdb.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/viz_segment_revenue_mix.html\" width=\"100%\" class=\"auto-height-iframe\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Gate-dependent operators live and die by the ticket: Merlin&#8217;s Midway attractions earn 97.7% of their revenue from visitor admissions (FY2024), Joypolis 79.3% from tickets (FY2026), Wonderla 83.4% (FY2025).<\/p>\n<p>Larger and more regional theme parks are able to diversify away from tickets: Six Flags runs 55.4% admissions \/ 35.4% in-park (FY2024); Cedar Fair 49.7% \/ 34.1% (FY2023); SeaWorld is nearly balanced at 53.1% admissions vs 46.9% food, beverage and retail (FY2025); E World takes 69.1% from tickets (FY2024).<\/p>\n<p>Theme park resorts diversify even further away from tickets into hotel and other ancillaries: Tokyo Disney Resort&#8217;s largest single segment \u2014 tickets \u2014 is only 30.1% of revenue (FY2025); hotels add 16.8% and a long tail of merchandise, food and beverage lines makes up the rest. Disney&#8217;s Parks &amp; Experiences runs 36.9% admissions, 29.0% resorts &amp; vacations, 26.7% in-park spend and 7.4% licensing (FY2025). Jeju Shinhwa World is majority hotel (62.7%) with theme park tickets at just 13.1% (FY2023). Legoland (24.4%) and Merlin&#8217;s resort parks (16.6%) show meaningful accommodation shares; Tivoli&#8217;s Nimb hotel contributes 18.8%.<\/p>\n<p>Cruise ships are floating resorts. Royal Caribbean generates 69.8% from passenger tickets with 30.2% onboard spend (FY2024); Carnival splits 64.5% \/ 33.5% on the same basis.<\/p>\n<p>Some FECs and indoor attractions invert the ticket-dependent model: Dave &amp; Buster&#8217;s earns 62.9% from amusements and 37.1% from F&amp;B (FY2025) \u2014 no gate at all; Lucky Strike splits 45.1% bowling \/ 34.6% F&amp;B \/ 20.3% amusements (FY2026); Round1&#8217;s global mix is 60.2% amusements; Chuck E. Cheese ran 54.7% entertainment &amp; merchandise vs 42.8% food (FY2019).<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 20px; font-family: 'EB Garamond';\">Posted 9\/2026<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":10239,"template":"","class_list":["post-10231","chart","type-chart","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparkdb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/chart\/10231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparkdb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/chart"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparkdb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chart"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparkdb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparkdb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}