Aquaventure Dubai Beats Disney’s Water Parks’ Attendance For Second Year Running

Dubai’s Atlantis Aquaventure water park had higher attendance than its rivals run by Disney in Orlando last year, according to data released yesterday by the Themed Entertainment Association (TEA).

It is an astonishing feat given that the park only opened in 2008 while Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach began operating in 1989 and 1995 respectively. The former attracted 1.8 million visitors last year making it the most-visited water park in North America. Aquaventure didn’t just sail past it for the second year running, it extended its lead.

What makes this even more impressive is that Aquaventure is essentially an on-site water park for two hotels. Themed to the fabled lost city of Atlantis, the park sits on the sandy shores of a palm-shaped island in the middle of two massive resorts. On one side is the palatial coral-colored Atlantis and on the other is its avant-garde neighbor The Royal. Guests of both get complimentary access to Aquaventure and this has contributed to a surge in its attendance since the Royal swung open its doors in 2023.

A total of 2 million guests streamed through the turnstiles of Aquaventure last year and the TEA notes that the attendance “shifted toward a higher proportion of resort guests rather than day visitors, indicating the value of integrating a water park into a larger destination with accommodations and other amenities.”

In 2021 the park launched an expansion which has a similar architectural style to the Royal and brought with it 28 new slides. By last year the new attractions were well-established so Aquaventure’s attendance didn’t increase on 2024. However, the gap with its chief rival at Disney World in Orlando widened as Typhoon Lagoon’s attendance sunk by 3% last year. There is good reason for this.

In contrast to Aquaventure, no new rides have been added to Typhoon Lagoon over the past five years and the same goes for Blizzard Beach with the only significant change there being a retheme of its existing children’s area to Disney’s Frozen movies. Water parks have few opportunities to sell high-margin merchandise and food and beverage so they are often last in the queue for new attractions. Theme parks are the priority because they are awash with shops and restaurants. Building more rides there attracts more guests which increases the merchandise and food and beverage sales thereby driving up the profits.

The lack of new additions to the water parks partly explains the plunging attendance at Typhoon Lagoon in 2025 but it isn’t the only reason. As the TEA report explains, last year “Disney World operated both of its water parks simultaneously during the summer season for the first time since 2019.” They both closed in 2020 due to the pandemic and re-opened over the following years in stages with the simultaneous summer operation being the final step.

Last year was the first time since 2021 that Blizzard Beach had been open during summer and the report states that, as a consequence of this, it “produced the largest increase among the leading parks, growing from 897,000 visitors in 2024 to 1.35 million in 2025. The increase reflects the return of both Disney water parks to regular seasonal operation after alternating schedules during the pandemic recovery period.”

Having two parks open for protracted periods of time split the audience somewhat. Blizzard Beach was favored as it had been closed over summer in previous years and Typhoon Lagoon lacked new attractions to tempt tourists.

It’s a different story at Atlantis. The entire resort is majority owned by the government-backed Investment Corporation of Dubai and one of its objectives is to drive tourism in order to diversify the economy. Dubai’s vast fortune has been built on fossil fuels but they are beginning to run out. Funding the construction of new slides at Aquaventure attracts visitors to the park and their spending diversifies Dubai’s economy which achieves the government’s objective.

As a result, Aquaventure hasn’t just steamed past Disney’s water parks but also Universal’s Volcano Bay in Orlando, which is the second most-visited water park in North America with 1.6 million visitors last year.

Aquaventure sits on the crest of the wave thanks to the continued investment in the property, the wide range of record-breaking slides, masterful leadership from its managing director Kym Barter and premium brand positioning from its marketing maestro Karim Bidri and his supremely-skilled PR colleagues. Testimony to this, despite being in a fiercely competitive local market, Aquaventure is the only Middle Eastern water park in the worldwide top ten attendance ranking.

However, it isn’t home and dry just yet because one water park stands in its way from the top spot. Chimelong in Guangzhou, China had 2.56 million visitors last year though its attendance was down 8.8% on 2024. If it continues to dive it may only a matter of time before Aquaventure overtakes it and Atlantis emerges on the throne.

Additional reporting by Chris Sylt

This article was originally published on Forbes.com