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annual attendance at every single AZA-accredited American zoo, but then due to the fact that many of the numbers were outdated I painstakingly reseached zoo sites on the internet to come up with a list of every single zoo in the United States that currently averages a million or more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.
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
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.
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.
.... 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!
Blacduiker 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.
Interesting article on this topic: Columbia's Riverbanks Zoo runs with the big dogs - Local - The Sun News
@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 .
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.
