For theme park number geeks like me, the release of annual TEA/AECOM Theme Index Report is one of the highlights of the year. This report details attendance at the most popular theme parks around the world, providing fans and insiders some numbers with which to debate which parks are winning, and losing, in the industry right now.

The 2022 report, released earlier this month, is great news for Universal and not-so-great news for Six Flags.

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The report said that Universal’s three parks in the United States — Universal Studios Florida and Islands of Adventure in Orlando, plus Universal Studios Hollywood in California — last year drew just less than 1 percent fewer visitors than they did in 2019, the last previous full year without pandemic restrictions. Islands of Adventure was the first major U.S. theme park to exceed its 2019 number, driven by the post-lockdown introduction of two wildly popular and highly rated new roller coasters, Jurassic World VelociCoaster and Hagrid’s Magic Creatures Motorbike Adventure.

Disney continued to top the attendance chart, with Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom remaining the world’s most visited theme park, with a reported 17.13 million visitors last year. But Disney Parks in the U.S. were still down about 30% from their 2019 numbers, according to the report. Unlike Universal, Disney continues to voluntarily limit its daily attendance through advance reservation requirements.

Still, in California, Disneyland and Disney California Adventure were down only about 9 percent in 2022 from 2019. Disneyland’s numbers suggest that its reservation requirements are not reducing overall attendance as much as redistributing it. Disneyland’s post-lockdown policy has reduced the crush of annual passholders who once flooded the parks after work and school, instead encouraging them to show up earlier in the day to take advantage of the reservations that they can get. That’s actually made the parks feel busier in the mornings than they once were, to many fans.

Walt Disney World in Florida, however, does seem to be struggling a bit to get back to its pre-lockdown popularity. Disney World slow-walked its return to attraction development compared to Universal Orlando and the loss or reduction of many pre-lockdown perks for on-site hotel visitors is not helping Disney World’s case, either.

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Still, Walt Disney World is performing wonderfully compared to the Six Flags theme parks that the TEA and AECOM track. The Six Flags parks were the only ones in the report to show a decline in 2022 attendance from 2021 — when those parks were late in opening and restricted in capacity due to the pandemic.

That’s just awful performance. Six Flags corporate’s decisions to cut back on discounting while also not ordering any major new roller coasters after the lockdowns ended have driven customers elsewhere.

The gap between Disney and Universal and everyone else in the industry remains large. But other companies, including SeaWorld and Cedar Fair, are offering new attractions to win fans back after the pandemic. Six Flags is going to need to step with more than food festivals if it wants to keep from falling out of the top tier of U.S. theme parks.