Amusement and Theme Parks (United States)

NAICS 2022 code 713110 — North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), the U.S. government's standard for grouping businesses.

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1. Overview

Amusement and theme parks are permanent, fixed-site attractions that charge admission to ride mechanical rides, watch shows, and buy food and merchandise on the property. The U.S. business ranges from a handful of national "destination" resorts that draw travelers from around the world (Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando, Disneyland) to regional parks that serve a drive-in crowd within a few hours (the Six Flags and former Cedar Fair chains, SeaWorld, Busch Gardens), down to small local and seasonal parks.

Why it matters to an investor: this is a consumer-discretionary business — people spend on it when they feel they can — with real pricing power, valuable land, hard-to-replicate intellectual property (IP: the characters, films and brands that fill a park), and very high barriers to entry. Building a major park costs billions and takes years, so the top of the market is a stable oligopoly (a few firms controlling most of the revenue). The flip side is heavy capital spending, sensitivity to the economy and the weather, and safety-and-liability exposure that never goes away.

There are four distinct ways to get exposure, and they are not the same bet:

• Pure-play public operators — Six Flags Entertainment and United Parks & Resorts — where parks are the company.
• Diversified public parents — The Walt Disney Company and Comcast — where world-class parks are one segment of a media/telecom empire.
• Public real estate — a listed net-lease real estate investment trust (REIT) that owns park land and collects rent.
• Private ownership — family-owned chains, private-equity- and family-controlled platforms, and the park real estate itself, most of which never trades on a public market.

Tickers, yields and valuation multiples are reserved for sections 4 and 10.

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2. What it is and how it's structured

In scope (713110): establishments primarily engaged in operating amusement parks and theme parks — fixed-location sites that combine mechanical and water rides, games, shows, themed exhibits, and typically refreshment stands and retail under one admission. Parks may lease space to concessionaires who run some food, shops, or attractions.

What it excludes (adjacent NAICS codes an investor should not double-count):

• Amusement arcades / family entertainment centers → NAICS 713120.
• Single-ride concessions, carnivals, fairs, and traveling/mobile ride operators → NAICS 713990 and 7113.
• Casinos and gambling → NAICS 7132; fitness/rec centers → 713940; zoos and aquariums → 712130; museums → 712110.
• On-property hotels (→ NAICS 721, accommodation), restaurants and concession-operated refreshment stands (→ 722), retail shops (→ 44–45), scenic/sightseeing transportation (→ 487), and cruise lines (→ 483).

This last point is the crux of measuring the industry: a Disney or Universal resort spreads its revenue across many codes, so 713110 captures only the gate-and-in-park "amusement" slice, not the whole resort.

Ownership mix: unusually corporate and concentrated for a leisure industry. Ownership is often split among the landowner, park operator, brand licensor, and concessionaires — a public company may operate a park without owning all its land, while a REIT may own the property without running the attractions. A few large operators (some public, some private, some foreign-owned) run most of the attendance; there is a long tail of small independent, seasonal, and municipal parks that are a small share of revenue.

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3. How big it is (federal figures)

Core U.S. statistics for NAICS 713110. The years and measures differ, so they should not be summed into a single market-size number.

What the concentration numbers say: the top four firms take about three-quarters of all receipts, and the top eight take 86.5%. The HHI (a standard concentration gauge — the sum of each firm's squared market share; ~1,850 sits at the high end of "moderately concentrated") confirms a top-heavy, oligopolistic national industry — though not a monopoly in each local market, where a visitor may still have several parks to choose from.

Where the federal figures undercount — three honest caveats:

1. Employment is a seasonal trough, not the peak. County Business Patterns (CBP) counts jobs in the pay period including March 12 — the off-season for most seasonal parks, many of which are closed or barely open in mid-March. Summer-peak headcount is far higher; seasonal and part-time workers (often students, and foreign seasonal workers on H-2B visas) balloon the workforce from May to September. So 161,508 is a floor, not a typical-day figure.

2. The counts are an employer-business snapshot. CBP excludes nonemployer businesses, self-employment, and most government employees, and the Economic Census generally excludes government-owned establishments [4]. Tiny seasonal operators and municipal parks are therefore under-represented.

3. Receipts capture only the "amusement" establishment, not the whole resort or the whole attractions economy. The Economic Census figure of $19.17 billion is well below private market-research estimates of the U.S. amusement-park market (roughly $25–29 billion for 2025) [5], and far below the broader attractions industry that trade group IAAPA (International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions) sizes at about $52.8 billion in direct U.S. revenue supporting ~1.3 million jobs [6]. The gap is definitional, not an error: integrated resorts book hotel, restaurant, retail and cruise revenue under other NAICS codes, and IAAPA also counts water parks, family entertainment centers, and zoos/aquariums. For scale, Disney's Experiences segment alone reported $34.2 billion in fiscal-2024 revenue [7] and Comcast's theme-parks segment $8.6 billion [8] — each larger than the entire 713110 receipts line, precisely because they bundle far more than U.S. gate admissions.

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4. The investable universe

Public companies (U.S.-listed operators):

Only FUN and PRKS are pure-play park operators; for DIS and CMCSA, parks are a minority segment of a much larger media/telecom business. Public filings are useful but imperfect comparables, because these companies bundle parks with hotels, cruises, media, licensing, and other lines.

Public real estate:

• EPR Properties (NYSE: EPR) — a listed experiential net-lease REIT that owns the real estate under amusement and water parks and leases it back to operators. In 2026 it agreed to acquire a portfolio of regional amusement parks (~$331 million) as part of the broader separation of park real estate from park operations [16]. EPR is a landlord/financing partner, not an operator — a way to own park land and rent streams (typically paid as a monthly dividend) without running a park.

Major private owners and operators:

• Herschend Family Entertainment (private) — Dollywood, Silver Dollar City. In May 2025 it completed the acquisition of Palace Entertainment's U.S. attractions (bought from Spain's Parques Reunidos) and added Silverwood, assembling one of the largest private regional operators [13][14].
• Merlin Entertainments (private) — the U.S. Legoland parks (Florida, California, New York). Merlin was taken private in 2019 by a consortium of Blackstone, KIRKBI (the Lego founding family's investment company, which reported a ~47.5% interest in its 2025 annual report) and Canada's CPPIB pension fund [13][15].
• Hershey Entertainment & Resorts (private, controlled by the Hershey Trust and separate from The Hershey Company) — Hersheypark, the largest independently owned U.S. theme park.
• A long tail of regional parks remain owned by families, local investors, municipalities, operating partnerships, and private-equity-backed platforms.

If you want a "pure" bet on U.S. regional parks, the public list is short — essentially FUN and PRKS. Broad exposure to destination parks runs through DIS and CMCSA, where park results are diluted by film, TV, streaming and broadband.

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5. How the money works

Park economics reduce to one identity:

Revenue ≈ Attendance × Per-Capita Spending ("per-caps") + out-of-park revenue

Operators obsess over both halves of the first term and report them every quarter.

• Attendance is bodies through the gate. Per-caps is average dollars per guest, split into admission per-cap (the ticket, parking, online fees) and in-park per-cap (food, drink, merchandise, games, and premium add-ons like line-skipping passes). At United Parks in 2024, total revenue per-cap was a record $80.07 — admission $43.61, in-park $36.46 [12]. At Six Flags in 2025, per-caps were $61.90 [10]. In-park spending is now roughly as important as the ticket, and often carries higher margin. On top of this sits out-of-park revenue — hotels, campgrounds, restaurants, sponsorships, licensing and events — plus concession income where third parties operate on-property.

• Season passes are the flywheel. Passes and memberships convert one-time visitors into repeat guests, smooth cash flow, and — critically — get counted as deferred revenue (cash collected now, recognized as guests visit). A rising deferred-revenue balance is a leading indicator of the coming season; Six Flags carried $308 million into 2025 [10]. A pass can lose money on admission alone yet be very profitable once the holder buys food, parking and merchandise on repeat visits.

• Operating leverage is extreme. Land, rides and a core staff are largely fixed costs, so once fixed costs are covered, each additional guest is high-margin. That is why operators chase attendance and per-caps together and report Adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization — a proxy for cash operating profit). United Parks ran ~$700M of Adjusted EBITDA on $1.73B of revenue in 2024 — roughly a 40% margin [12]; well-run destination parks run higher. The same leverage works in reverse: a bad-weather or closed stretch drops straight to the bottom line, because the fixed-cost base doesn't shrink.

• Capital intensity is the price of the flywheel. New coasters, "lands" and attractions are what refresh attendance and justify price increases, so operators run a continuous capex cycle and judge each project on return on invested capital. Disney is nearly doubling Experiences capital spending to roughly $60 billion over about ten years [17]; Universal's Epic Universe was one of the costliest parks ever built [9]. Investors distinguish maintenance capex (keeping rides safe and running) from growth capex (the next headline attraction).

• The land is a hidden asset. Parks sit on large, often-appreciated real-estate parcels. Operators monetize it (Six Flags has been selling non-core land) or unlock it via sale-leaseback with REITs like EPR — value the operating results don't always show.

Raw revenue growth is less informative if it comes mainly from ticket-price increases, acquisitions, or unusually good weather — so the numbers that matter are attendance per operating day, admission and in-park per-caps, pass mix, maintenance-vs-growth capex, and free cash flow after debt service and leases.

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6. What drives demand

• Consumer discretionary spending and confidence. A park trip is a want, not a need. Attendance tracks household income, employment and consumer confidence, so demand is cyclical.
• New attractions. A marquee coaster or a new "land" (a Wizarding World, a Super Nintendo World) reliably lifts attendance and supports higher prices — the industry's main organic growth lever.
• Intellectual property. Beloved characters and franchises are the moat. Disney and Universal turn films into rides; regional parks license or build their own brands. IP is why guests pick one park over another and pay premium prices — but licensed themes carry royalties and minimum-investment obligations.
• Tourism and travel. Destination parks (Orlando above all — over 75 million area visitors in 2024) depend on domestic and international travel, airfare, hotel capacity, and the strength of the U.S. dollar for foreign visitors.
• The calendar and the weather. School calendars, holidays and operating days set the ceiling; good-weather days within them do the rest. Seasonality is severe — Six Flags reported that roughly 70% of its 2025 attendance and revenue fell in the second and third quarters [11]. Longer term, rising heat and storm intensity threaten peak-season comfort and operating days.
• Price and value perception. Dynamic pricing, tiered passes and premium add-ons let operators raise yield — until guests perceive poor value and pull back, which pressures attendance.
• Competition for leisure time and wallet. Streaming, gaming, sports, dining, travel and other experiences all compete for the same discretionary hours and dollars.

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7. Regulation

There is no single federal safety regulator for fixed-site parks — a well-known feature of the U.S. system:

• Federal (mobile only): the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) regulates portable/mobile carnival rides but, since a 1981 amendment, not permanent fixed-site parks — the so-called "roller-coaster loophole" [18].
• State (fixed-site): oversight of permanent parks is left to the states. Roughly 44 states run their own ride-inspection and permitting programs; the rest rely largely on operators and their insurers. Requirements typically layer daily pre-opening checks, routine maintenance inspections, and annual certified inspections [18].
• Voluntary consensus standards: ASTM International's (originally the American Society for Testing and Materials) Committee F24 writes the technical safety standards the industry uses — for design (F2291), operation and maintenance (F770), and manufacture (F1193). These are voluntary by default, but many state statutes adopt them by reference, turning them into legal requirements [18].
• Workplace safety: the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) applies federal workplace-safety rules to park and water-park employees [19].
• Other regimes that bind operators: the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accessibility rules for rides and access routes; food-safety and water-quality codes; local zoning, building, fire and environmental permitting; labor law, including seasonal and minor-employment rules and H-2B seasonal-worker visas; and, for marine parks like SeaWorld, the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA, enforced by USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, APHIS) and the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA).

The practical takeaway: safety compliance is a patchwork, incident liability sits with the operator, and a serious accident carries outsized legal, insurance and reputational risk that can dent attendance well beyond the direct claim.

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8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

The market has two tiers that barely compete with each other: destination resorts (Disney, Universal) selling multi-day, fly-in vacations, and regional parks selling day trips. Competition is mostly local — on location, price, ride uniqueness, safety, cleanliness, food, entertainment, brand strength, and the ability to refresh the park — but ownership is increasingly concentrated nationally, and consolidation is reshaping the regional tier:

• Cedar Fair + Six Flags merged on July 1, 2024, combining into a single Six Flags Entertainment Corporation operating 42 parks across North America — the dominant regional operator, targeting sizeable cost synergies [10][13].
• Herschend's roll-up: the Dollywood owner completed its purchase of Parques Reunidos' U.S. Palace Entertainment parks (May 2025) and added Silverwood, assembling a large private challenger [13][14].
• Financial buyers own the real estate and the brands: Blackstone, KIRKBI and CPPIB control Legoland-owner Merlin; EPR Properties buys and leases back park real estate [13][16].
• Destination arms race: Universal opened Epic Universe (its first major new Orlando gate in decades) in May 2025, and Disney answered with its ~$60B Experiences investment plan [9][17] — a capital-spending contest that raises barriers even higher.

Barriers to entry — scarce suitable land, billions in upfront capital, long development timelines, zoning/infrastructure, IP and brand — are formidable, so competition happens mostly through capex (who builds the next must-ride attraction) and pricing/pass strategy, not new entrants. Consolidation can unlock purchasing, marketing, ticketing and loyalty synergies, but it can also add integration risk, leverage, and the temptation to underinvest in aging properties.

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9. Risks

• Economic cyclicality. Discretionary demand falls in recessions; attendance and per-caps both soften.
• Weather and climate. Rain, extreme heat, wildfire, hurricanes and shortened seasons hit revenue against a fixed cost base.
• Capital intensity and leverage. Constant capex plus, in some cases, heavy debt and lease obligations against seasonal cash flow. Six Flags posted a $1.60 billion net loss in 2025, driven mostly by a $1.5 billion non-cash goodwill impairment tied to the merger, while carrying substantial debt and softening attendance [10]. Rising interest rates raise both financing and project-hurdle costs.
• Safety and liability. Accidents, foodborne illness, or even incidents at competing parks cause injury, litigation, regulatory scrutiny, higher insurance costs and lasting reputational damage — a permanent tail risk.
• Seasonal labor. Availability and cost of summer workers (including H-2B visa policy), plus training and retention, affect both capacity and margins.
• Pricing ceiling / attendance saturation. Years of price increases can hit a value wall; popular destination parks also face physical capacity limits.
• Tourism shocks. Pandemics, travel disruption, a strong dollar, or airfare spikes hurt destination parks especially.
• Brand and IP costs. Licensed themes require royalties, renewals and minimum ongoing investment.
• Activism and social license. Marine and animal parks face animal-welfare campaigns; all operators face public scrutiny after incidents.
• Data limitations. Federal statistics omit some government, nonemployer, and adjacent activity, so the industry looks smaller in the official data than in the lived economy.

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10. How to invest, and the outlook

Public-market routes — separate four distinct exposures rather than treating them as one "parks" trade:

• Pure-plays: Six Flags Entertainment (FUN) for the leveraged, turnaround-and-synergy story on the largest regional chain; United Parks & Resorts (PRKS) for a smaller, historically higher-margin operator (SeaWorld/Busch Gardens). Both trade on attendance, per-caps and Adjusted EBITDA, and both are more volatile than the giants.
• Diversified giants: Disney (DIS) and Comcast (CMCSA) give you best-in-class parks inside a media/telecom conglomerate — lower pure-park exposure, but the parks are the crown jewels (Experiences is Disney's biggest profit engine).
• The real estate: EPR Properties (EPR), an experiential net-lease REIT, offers rent-stream exposure to attraction real estate and typically pays a monthly dividend — an income-oriented, indirect way in.
• What you can't buy publicly: the private operators and single-asset real estate below.

For any public route, valuation work should normalize for seasonality, acquisitions, deferred season-pass revenue, maintenance capex, leases and net debt — and compare attendance and per-guest-spending trends before leaning on EBITDA multiples, enterprise value, free-cash-flow yield or dividend yield. Valuation and dividend specifics move constantly; the point for allocation is what kind of exposure each route gives (operating leverage vs. diversified conglomerate vs. landlord income).

Private routes: most of the field is not public. Access comes through private-equity and family ownership (Herschend, Hershey, the Blackstone/KIRKBI/CPPIB-controlled Merlin), sale-leaseback and net-lease real-estate deals, park-adjacent suppliers (ride manufacturers, technology, food service), and local/independent parks that occasionally change hands. A private buyer should underwrite: ownership of land, rides and buildings; historical attendance per operating day; ticket yield and in-park spending; pass/membership renewal behavior; the maintenance backlog and planned capex; insurance, claims, inspection and incident history; debt, rent, permits and environmental obligations; and the quality of management and the durability of the local drive-time market.

Near-term drivers to watch:

• The Epic Universe ramp — whether Universal's new Orlando park expands the total Orlando market or mostly reshuffles it — and how Disney's ~$60B build-out lands.
• Six Flags' merger integration — synergy delivery, attendance recovery, debt reduction and non-core land sales, all under investor pressure after a weak 2025.
• Consumer spending and weather — the two biggest swing factors on any given season.
• Continued consolidation — further regional roll-ups (Herschend and financial buyers) and real-estate monetization.

Outlook — judgment: The long-run case rests on durable moats — irreplaceable land and location, IP and brands, repeat visitation, and high entry barriers — funding steady pricing power and rising spend-per-guest. The near-term case is more mixed: a heavy capex cycle, cyclical and weather-exposed demand, and, at the leveraged regional operators, real balance-sheet and attendance risk to work through. The most durable moat is the combination of land, brand/IP, repeat visitation and guest monetization — not the ride inventory alone. The opportunity is therefore selective: the strongest assets can compound cash flow, while highly leveraged or underinvested parks can destroy value even in a healthy demand environment.

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2023 (NAICS 713110: establishments, employment, payroll). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
2. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census — Concentration by Largest Firms (NAICS 713110: firms, receipts, CR4/CR8/CR20/CR50, HHI). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/economic-census.html
3. U.S. Small Business Administration, Table of Small Business Size Standards (NAICS 713110, $47M), 2023. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
4. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns Methodology (excludes nonemployers, self-employment, most government), 2025. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/technical-documentation/methodology.html
5. Mordor Intelligence / IBISWorld, United States Amusement and Theme Park Market (market-size estimates, 2025). https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/united-states-amusement-and-theme-park-industry
6. IAAPA, 2024 North America Economic Impact Study (U.S. attractions direct revenue $52.8B; ~1.3M jobs), 2024. https://iaapa.org/research/2024-iaapa-economic-impact-study-north-america
7. The Walt Disney Company, Fourth Quarter and Full Year Fiscal 2024 Earnings (Experiences segment revenue $34.2B; operating income $9.3B), 2024. https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/press-releases/the-walt-disney-company-reports-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-earnings-for-fiscal-2024/
8. Comcast Corporation, Form 10-K FY2024 (theme-parks segment revenue $8.617B), 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1166691/000116669125000011/cmcsa-20241231.htm
9. Blooloop, "Epic Universe boosts Universal theme park revenue" (2025 segment +22%; Epic Universe opened May 22, 2025), 2026. https://blooloop.com/universal-epic-universe-record-earnings/
10. Six Flags Entertainment Corporation, 2025 Fourth Quarter and Full Year Results (revenue $3.10B; attendance 47.4M; per-cap $61.90; Adjusted EBITDA $792M; net loss $1.60B incl. $1.5B impairment; deferred revenue $308M), BusinessWire, 2026. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260219434003/en/Six-Flags-Entertainment-Corporation-Reports-2025-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-Results
11. Six Flags Entertainment Corporation, 2025 Form 10-K (seasonality: ~70% of attendance and revenue in Q2–Q3), SEC, 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1999001/000199900126000048/fun-20251231.htm
12. United Parks & Resorts Inc., Fourth Quarter and Fiscal 2024 Results (revenue $1,725.3M; attendance 21.5M; total per-cap $80.07; admission $43.61; in-park $36.46; Adjusted EBITDA $700.2M), PR Newswire, 2025. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/united-parks--resorts-inc-reports-fourth-quarter-and-fiscal-2024-results-302385681.html
13. Theme Park Insider, "Who owns America's regional amusement parks?" (Cedar Fair–Six Flags merger, 42 parks; Herschend acquisitions; Merlin/Legoland ownership), 2026. https://www.themeparkinsider.com/flume/202604/12386/
14. Herschend Family Entertainment, "Herschend Completes Acquisition of Palace Entertainment's U.S. Attractions" (May 2025). https://www.hfecorp.com/whats-new/herschend-completes-acquisition-of-palace-entertainments-us-attractions/
15. KIRKBI, Annual Report 2025 (KIRKBI ~47.5% interest in Merlin Entertainments), 2026. https://www.kirkbi.com/media/gswo5piy/kirkbi_annual-report_2025.pdf
16. EPR Properties, "EPR Properties Announces Definitive Agreements to Acquire Portfolio of Regional Parks" (~$331M), BusinessWire, 2026. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260304097959/en/EPR-Properties-Announces-Definitive-Agreements-to-Acquire-Portfolio-of-Seven-Regional-Parks
17. The Walt Disney Company, "Disney Plans to Expand Investment in Parks Business" (~$60B over ~10 years), 2023. https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/news/disney-plans-to-expand-investment-in-parks-business/
18. The Regulatory Review, "Amusement Park Regulation's Bumpy Ride" (CPSC mobile-only jurisdiction; ~44 state programs; ASTM F24 standards F2291/F770/F1193), 2022. https://www.theregreview.org/2022/08/31/tunney-amusement-park-regulations-bumpy-ride/
19. U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, "Regulations and Accident Investigation Procedures Pertaining to Carnivals, Amusement Parks, and Water Parks," 2005. https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/standardinterpretations/2005-06-16