This Is the Amusement Park With the Biggest Price Increase in the Past 5 Years

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Mar 21, 11:45AM EDT

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

This Is the Amusement Park With the Biggest Price Increase in the Past 5 Years — © Courtesy of Funland

The amusement park business was badly crippled by the COVID-19 pandemic. Likely every park in the United States (and overseas as well) was shut down for an extended period. Disney laid off 32,000 people in late 2020. Some theme park companies faced financial extinction.

As people were allowed to return to theme parks, traffic to them surged. Disney said attendance rose above pre-pandemic levels. In the quarter that ended January 1, theme park revenue rose 34% to $21.82 billion. In fact, attendance has been strong enough for Disney to raise ticket prices.

To identify the American amusement park with the biggest price increase over the past five years, 24/7 Tempo reviewed data on price inflation at major U.S. attractions provided by coupon distribution platform and website DealA. The site compared the current price of a single adult general admission ticket as of December 23, 2021, with the equivalent ticket price in 2017, derived from each museum’s 2017 web pages accessed via the Wayback Machine. If online and in-person ticket prices differed, online prices were used. Automatically applied promotional prices were not considered. When ticket prices differed by day, the starting price of a general admission ticket was used.

Some of the price increases have clearly outstripped the rate of inflation. The top spot on the list is claimed by Funland in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where ticket prices have doubled, from $15 to $30, although admittedly starting from a low base.
[nativounit]
The second spot is claimed by Santa’s Village in Jefferson, New Hampshire, where prices have risen by 50%, from $32 to $48. Visitors who expect Santa to give rather than to take will be in for a disappointment. In third place is Fun Spot America in Kissimmee, Florida, with a price increase of more than 34%, from $40.95 to $54.95.

See all the amusement parks with the biggest price increases in the past five years.
[wallst_email_signup]

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.