Attendance At American Zoos

snowleopard

snowleopard

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With this thread there are now complete attendance numbers for British, Australian and American zoos on ZooChat. Each chart has its own thread, and due to the enormous population of the U.S. the numbers are incredibly high in comparison to Britain and Australia.

I received a comprehensive list of the average annual attendance at every single AZA-accredited American zoo, but then due to the fact that many of the numbers were outdated I painstakingly reseached zoo sites on the internet to come up with a list of every single zoo in the United States that currently averages a million or more visitors each year. The last 4 zoos on the list are just slightly shy of a million visitors, but I included them anyway because many major zoos have been having record years in 2008 and 2009.

Attendance: 35 Zoos

Disney’s Animal Kingdom – 9.5 million
Busch Gardens Tampa – 4.4 million
San Diego Zoo – 3.4 million
Lincoln Park Zoo – 3 million (free zoo)
St. Louis Zoo – 3 million (free zoo)
National Zoo – 2.7 million (free zoo)
Bronx Zoo – 2.1 million
Brookfield Zoo – 2 million
Denver Zoo – 1.9 million
Columbus Zoo – 1.8 million
San Diego Wild Animal Park – 1.6 million
Oregon Zoo – 1.6 million
Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo – 1.6 million
Los Angeles Zoo – 1.6 million
Houston Zoo – 1.6 million
Philadelphia Zoo – 1.4 million
Indianapolis Zoo – 1.4 million
Phoenix Zoo – 1.3 million
Milwaukee Zoo – 1.3 million
Cincinnati Zoo – 1.3 million
Minnesota Zoo – 1.2 million
Cleveland Zoo – 1.2 million
Rio Grande Zoo – 1.2 million
Central Park Zoo – 1.1 million (only 6 acres!)
Woodland Park Zoo – 1.1 million
Lowry Park Zoo – 1.1 million
San Francisco Zoo – 1.1 million
Detroit Zoo – 1.1 million
Memphis Zoo – 1.1 million
Fort Worth Zoo – 1 million
Pittsburgh Zoo – 1 million
San Antonio Zoo – 1 million
Riverbanks Zoo – 1 million
Utah’s Hogle Zoo – 1 million
Toledo Zoo – 1 million

Incidentally, I have visited 12 out of the top 14 and 24 out of 35 overall.
 
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You have done a great job with all those numbers Snowleopard, a total number of visitors all up for the year (35 zoo's) would of been nice, lol
 
MARK said:
You have done a great job with all those numbers Snowleopard, a total number of visitors all up for the year (35 zoo's) would of been nice, lol
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Just adding in my head, they add up to 64.7 million visitors -- in only 35 zoos!
 
No wonder the major American zoos can afford such multi-million dollar animal habitats, as between sometimes getting government support and massive private donations, there are the millions of visitors pouring money into the facility. Smaller, privately-run establishments in the United States and other countries are not even in the same ballpark financially.

Some interesting facts on the attendance numbers: Central Park is a puny little zoo, but because it is in New York City of course a million visitors is not extraordinary; Oregon Zoo receives 1.6 million visitors a year and the population of Portland is only a few hundred thousand more than that total. Oregon is definitely one of the top zoos in America in terms of per-capita attendance. One surpise for me was seeing the Denver Zoo as the #6 zoo in the country of all the zoos that charge admission. With 1.9 million visitors and the 10-acre Asian Tropics zone opening in a few years then that zoo will become more popular than ever.
 
Fort Wayne is having a great year this year. We've had excellent weather, out new African Journey is open, and we must be ahead of last year. For the past few years our attendance has been over 500,00. The population of Fort Wayne is around 300,000.
 
This is a fascinating list with a few surprises! I wonder if there is a list of underperforming zoos in relation to their local populations? One that comes to mind would be Franklin Park Zoo in Boston, which did not make the top attendance list.
 
I have done a very incomplete and informal survey on the internet of US aquarium attendance figures this morning, this is only a tentative unreliable list of those with 1 million or more a year, feel free to add or correct any you know!

Seaworld Florida - 5.9 million
Seaworld California - 4.1 million
Georgia Aquarium - 2.9 million
Seaworld San Antonio - 2.5 million
Steinhart Aquarium - 2.4 million (this is only a projected attendance figure I came up with from a press release that they had hit the million-mark 5 months into opening, and obviously this figure will drop after the initial fervor)
Shedd Aquarium - 2.0 million
Monterey Bay Aquarium - 1.8 million
National Aquarium in Baltimore - 1.6 million
Downtown Aquarium Houston - 1.6 million
Aquarium of the Pacific - 1.4 million
Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies - 1.4 million
New England Aquarium - 1.3 million

Some aqauriums I suspect could make the list are Adventure Aquarium, Downtown Aquarium Denver, Dallas World Aquarium, Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay, but I just can't find anything.

Some aqauriums that I suspected could make the list but saw figures lower than 1 million are Seattle, Birch, Aquarium of the Bay, Mystic, Florida, Oregon Coast, Tennessee.
 
geomorph said:
Some aqauriums I suspect could make the list are Adventure Aquarium, Downtown Aquarium Denver, Dallas World Aquarium, Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay, but I just can't find anything.
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Dallas World Aquarium I was told averages about 700,000 a year.
 
Wow! I'm so surprised at the Detroit zoo attendance. They also most closed awhile ago, and every time I go there isn't many people, then again it is very spread out.
 
kbaker116 said:
Wow! I'm so surprised at the Detroit zoo attendance. They also most closed awhile ago, and every time I go there isn't many people, then again it is very spread out.
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.... then again, Detroit is the USA's 6th-largest city. Also, there's a lot of evidence that this current economic crisis is actually boosting zoos' attendance, as more and more people are foregoing out-of-town vacations and spending their time close to home. The recession has hit nowhere in the US harder than Detroit. So this zoo might be a nice way to temporarily forget about their problems.
 
Seattle Aquarium's attendance is about 800,000, while the Vancouver Aquarium is expected to close in on 1 million this year. With the Winter Olympics in 2010 Vancouver expects to perhaps hit 1.1 million visitors at the aquarium next year. It is amazing how popular North American aquariums are, especially considering that almost every single one of them is 2 acres or less in size. That's a lot of people squished into small spaces!:)
 
ANyhuis said:
.... then again, Detroit is the USA's 6th-largest city. Also, there's a lot of evidence that this current economic crisis is actually boosting zoos' attendance, as more and more people are foregoing out-of-town vacations and spending their time close to home. The recession has hit nowhere in the US harder than Detroit. So this zoo might be a nice way to temporarily forget about their problems.
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Nice to hear at least some ones benefiting from it.
 
Blacduiker

snowleopard said:
With this thread there are now complete attendance numbers for British, Australian and American zoos on ZooChat. Each chart has its own thread, and due to the enormous population of the U.S. the numbers are incredibly high in comparison to Britain and Australia.

I received a comprehensive list of the average annual attendance at every single AZA-accredited American zoo, but then due to the fact that many of the numbers were outdated I painstakingly reseached zoo sites on the internet to come up with a list of every single zoo in the United States that currently averages a million or more visitors each year. The last 4 zoos on the list are just slightly shy of a million visitors, but I included them anyway because many major zoos have been having record years in 2008 and 2009.

Attendance: 35 Zoos

Disney’s Animal Kingdom – 9.5 million
Busch Gardens Tampa – 4.4 million
San Diego Zoo – 3.4 million
Lincoln Park Zoo – 3 million (free zoo)
St. Louis Zoo – 3 million (free zoo)
National Zoo – 2.7 million (free zoo)
Bronx Zoo – 2.1 million
Brookfield Zoo – 2 million
Denver Zoo – 1.9 million
Columbus Zoo – 1.8 million
San Diego Wild Animal Park – 1.6 million
Oregon Zoo – 1.6 million
Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo – 1.6 million
Los Angeles Zoo – 1.6 million
Houston Zoo – 1.6 million
Philadelphia Zoo – 1.4 million
Indianapolis Zoo – 1.4 million
Phoenix Zoo – 1.3 million
Milwaukee Zoo – 1.3 million
Cincinnati Zoo – 1.3 million
Minnesota Zoo – 1.2 million
Cleveland Zoo – 1.2 million
Rio Grande Zoo – 1.2 million
Central Park Zoo – 1.1 million (only 6 acres!)
Woodland Park Zoo – 1.1 million
Lowry Park Zoo – 1.1 million
San Francisco Zoo – 1.1 million
Detroit Zoo – 1.1 million
Memphis Zoo – 1.1 million
Fort Worth Zoo – 1 million
Pittsburgh Zoo – 1 million
San Antonio Zoo – 1 million
Riverbanks Zoo – 1 million
Utah’s Hogle Zoo – 1 million
Toledo Zoo – 1 million

Incidentally, I have visited 12 out of the top 14 and 24 out of 35 overall.
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Very impressive snowleopard. And to have actually visited 24 of the 35 is very good. Viewing this list, I can only claim having been to 7. But most are on my list to hopefully see one day.
 
@ANyhuis: a very interesting article! What else is there to do near the Riverbanks Zoo? The lack of major attractions combined with a solid fan base creates a situation of a million visitors every year. I've been curious as to why Zoo Atlanta receives only 700,000 visitors in a city of 5.4 million. The zoo has 4 giant pandas, over 20 gorillas, around 10 orangutans, and very little wrong with it...and yet it is in the shadow of the Georgia Aquarium.

My theory is that there is so much to do in Atlanta (aquarium, zoo, CNN tour, World of Coca-Cola, Civil War museums and historical attractions, etc) that the 35-acre zoo gets overlooked. It is the same in cities like London, England, which has a metropolitan population of about 13 million yet the zoo only recently began to hit the million mark began. The same goes with Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo, as I have a coupon booklet of at least 20 major attractions in that area. Thus the Seattle zoo receives 1.1 million visitors per year, while 2 hours away the Oregon Zoo (in smaller Portland), with very little to see or do in that city in comparison to Seattle, receives 1.6 million visitors annually. Portland is very nice, and environementally friendly, but try to find even 5 decent tourist attractions.

In Canada the Toronto Zoo receives about 1.3 to 1.4 million visitors per year, with 6 million in the area and tons of major attractions. However, somewhat amazingly the Calgary Zoo receives 1.2 million visitors in an area of about 1.2 million, and I've visited Calgary twice and there are only a handful of attractions and thus everyone goes to the zoo all the time. There are many instances where smaller cities, with a lack of major attractions in them, have highly prosperous zoos:)
 
Thank you to those compiling and adding to these lists for US and UK.

One thing that I think is important to consider is the price of admisison when considering how popular a zoo really is. For example

Chester and London in the UK, San Antonio & Detroit (two random picks) in the US all get around a million vistors however an adult ticket for San Antonio is $10 Detroit $11 whereas Chester would be $27 London $30.

Keeping the maths simple 1 million adult visitors to london brings in $20'000'000 more in income than San Antonio.

Of course this brings into question the value for money aspect of all these different attendances.
 
with reference to snowleopards recent post

oregon $10 1,600,000 visitors
seattle $16.50 1,000,000 visitors
atlanta $19 700,000 visitors

The visitor income of these places is roughly the same .
 
mark77 said:
with reference to snowleopards recent post

oregon $10 1,600,000 visitors
seattle $16.50 1,000,000 visitors
atlanta $19 700,000 visitors

The visitor income of these places is roughly the same .
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The visitor addmission income may roughly be the same if $3.2 million is not considered much of a difference, however most people spend money once at the zoo.

So I would guess that accounts for a huge difference between the Oregon and Atlanta in this example.
 
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