My thoughts, since you're all so desperate to hear them.
Top Ten Groups
It's interesting to see Cedar Fair and Six Flags stagnate since they've added some major additions at some of their parks. I guess it's down to them having a fair few parks with nothing new, and not expanding as a whole chain.
Not surprising to see Sea World falling by quite a bit. I think the results next year will really show us what, if anything, the Blackfish effect entails. The whole thing really didn't kick off until later in the summer, and it will be interesting to see if more people, who maybe went earlier in the year before the film was widely released, will avoid it now, or whether people will generally forget and start going back. I'm thinking the latter. People love a 5-minute cause. Despite a drop, those visitor numbers are still pretty huge.
Very interesting to see Fantawild jump into the top ten. They've got a bunch of new parks opening over the next couple of years as well, and while I don't think it'll be enough to move them up any further up the chart just yet (10 million gap between them and Sea World is a big ask), their numbers over the next few years are going to be very impressive.
World Water Parks
I really don't have much of an interest, but Chimelong really came from nowhere. It makes sense given that Guangzhou is China's third biggest city, has a sub-tropical climate and is very close to a bunch of other huge cities with easy access, massive populations, and no (as yet) major water parks of their own.
American Parks
No surprises. The Californian and Floridian parks are never going to be overtaken thanks to year-round operations and huge branding with Disney and Universal.
Asian Parks
No surprises with Tokyo Disney and Universal Japan staying at the top. That won't be changing for a very long time, if ever. Shanghai Disneyland has the potential to cause a bit of an upset in a couple of years though.
Great to see Hong Kong Disney doing so well. Yes, it's still the smallest of the Magic Kingdom parks, but it's still pulling figures that most other parks could only dream of. They've orchestrated the last few years of operation perfectly since a bit of a messy opening.
Lotte World's shift towards the family market has been a big success, though it personally annoys me that they've added nothing substantial for the teenage/thrill market for 10 years.
OCT East is a strange one, as those figures MUST be including the whole resort, including Tea Valley, which is basically just a botanic garden. If the parks were separated, none would make the top 20 in my opinion.
Songcheng Park just shouldn't be on this list. It's an open-air museum, not a theme park as most people would understand it.
The same goes for Hakkeijima Sea Paradise. It's a free to enter park, so its inclusion on the list is very misleading. Those figures will include local dog walkers and teenagers sitting around next to the sea and drinking without using any of the park's facilities. I've said the same thing every year.
I'm quite surprised to see Happy Valley Shenzhen placed above Happy Valley Beijing, though admittedly there's not much in it.
Europe
I honestly think visitor numbers to Disney Paris have basically plateaued, and that if they're down one year, they'll be up roughly by the same percentage the following one. The fact that they're still so ridiculously far ahead of other parks kind of shows that they must be hitting their maximum expected numbers. The disparity between the main park and the studios is still shocking though.
It always surprises me to see the "big" UK parks hovering around the 2m-2.5m visitors mark, which seems pretty low until you realise that the UK is so small and the parks have little international draw. The European market as a whole comes across as really small when you see that a park with less than 1.4 million visitors can make the top 20. What's even more amazing is the quality that is offered by a lot of these parks (Phantasialand, Heide etc.), considering such "low" visitor numbers.