Jim Atchison Steps Down as SeaWorld Parks CEO After a Dreadful Five-Year Run

By Robert Niles: SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment CEO Jim Atchison stepped down from his position today, bringing to an end his five years in the CEO job. During his time running the company, the SeaWorld and Busch Gardens theme parks posted the worst performance relative to the industry of any other major theme park chain.

Explorer's Reef at SeaWorld San Diego

Let's look at the attendance numbers for the four largest parks in the chain since 2009, the year Atchison took over and the parks spun off from the Anheuser-Busch companies. (Data are from the annual TEA/AECOM Global Attractions attendance report.)

SeaWorld Orlando

2009: 5.8 million

2010: 5.1 million

2011: 5.2 million

2012: 5.3 million

2013: 5.0 million

SeaWorld San Diego

2009: 4.2 million

2010: 3.8 million

2011: 4.2 million

2012: 4.4 million

2013: 4.3 million

Busch Gardens Tampa

2009: 4.1 million

2010: 4.2 million

2011: 4.2 million

2012: 4.3 million

2013: 4.0 million

Busch Gardens Williamsburg

2009: 2.9 million

2010: 2.8 million

2011: 2.7 million

2012: 2.8 million

2013: 2.7 million

See a trend here? Attendance has dropped significantly at SeaWorld Orlando, while remaining essentially flat at the other parks — up slightly in San Diego and down slightly in Tampa and Williamsburg. But this has happened during a five-year period that's brought significant growth to the other major parks in the theme park industry. Since 2009, the SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment parks are the only North American parks listed in the annual TEA/AECOM attendance report to see a drop in attendance over this period. Let's look how some other representative parks have fared:

Knott's Berry Farm: Up from 3.3 million in 2009 to 3.8 million in 2013.

Cedar Point: Up from 2.9 to 3.3 million

Hersheypark: Up from 2.8 to 3.1 million

Six Flags Magic Mountain: Up from 2.5 to 2.9 million

Market leader Disney's biggest park, the Magic Kingdom, saw its attendance rise from 17.2 million visitor a year in 2009 to 18.5 million visitors last year. But the real story lies in comparing SeaWorld with what was once its closest competition in attendance, the Universal theme parks.

SeaWorld competes with Universal in both of Universal's U.S. markets: Southern California and Central Florida. While SeaWorld San Diego limped from 4.2 million annual attendance in 2009 to 4.3 million last year, Universal Studios Hollywood surged from 4.3 million a year to 6.1 million. And in Orlando, well, it's been a total wipeout. Fueled by the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Universal's Islands of Adventure grew from 4.6 million annual attendance in 2009 to 8.1 million last year, while SeaWorld Orlando dropped from 5.8 million visitors a year to 5.0 million.

Why have the SeaWorld/Busch Gardens parks performed so poorly? Were they really that dependent upon the free beer they poured when Anheuser-Busch owned them? (Actually, it appears that they might have been.)

While other theme park companies have moved aggressively to develop new attractions and intellectual property in the wake of the Great Recession, the SeaWorld/Busch Gardens parks have stumbled through one challenge after another. The debuts of the two Manta roller coasters, in Orlando in 2009 and San Diego in 2012, provide the few bright spots during this period. Otherwise, the parks have suffered through construction delays on multiple new attractions, including missed projected open dates for major new drop towers in Williamsburg and Tampa.

Looking back through our Theme Park Insider reader ratings, I can't find a single example of a new show debuting during this time period at any of these four parks that scored a higher reader rating than the show it replaced. In 2013, SeaWorld Orlando made what it called the largest capital investment in its history in opening Antarctica: Empire of the Penguin. An effort to compete with the engaging and immersive environment of Universal Orlando's Harry Potter land, SeaWorld chose to go with depicting what might be the most inhospitable environment on Earth: Antarctica. Sure, people love penguins, but SeaWorld's technically innovative Antarctica ride left visitors spending too much time spinning around in low-light caverns with there were no penguins in sight, rather than spending time with cute new penguin character SeaWorld had created for the attraction. At the end of the ride, SeaWorld crafted a new, open display environment for its penguins, but doing show required keeping the guest areas in the exhibit so cold that few visitors could stand spending more than a moment or two looking at the pavilion's most compelling attraction — the live penguins themselves.

In early 2010, SeaWorld suffered its greatest tragedy when trainer Dawn Brancheau died after being dragged underwater by the orca Tillikum in Orlando. The accident understandably left many in the SeaWorld community in shock, but there comes a time when corporate leadership must move forward. Instead, SeaWorld appeared flat-footed when anti-animal captivity activists used Dawn's death to develop the movie Blackfish. It took SeaWorld months to put together a rebuttal that exposed the film's deceptive edits and falsities. Instead of hosting a media campaign with movie critics and reporters when the film first debuted, which could have mortally wounded the film's credibility, SeaWorld stuck its head in the sand, as if it were hoping the whole thing would just go away. When SeaWorld finally did respond, it was with a PDF posted online.

Since then, SeaWorld's primary promotional focus has been on its laudable efforts in animal husbandry and environmental conservation. But, guess what? Zoos don't attract the visitor levels that theme parks do. And the organizations running zoos don't make anywhere near the profits that theme park companies earn. If SeaWorld wants to be a zoo, then it will watch its attendance level continue to fall to the levels that top paid zoos attract. (The top-visited non-theme-park zoo in America, the San Diego Zoo, brings in a little more than three million visitors a year.)

If SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment wants to catch back up to the rest of the theme park industry, though, it needs to get aggressive again, building (or licensing) IP that connects with audiences in well-themed attractions that engage them. SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment Chairman David D'Alessandro will take over as interim CEO. But SeaWorld doesn't need interim help. It needs a long-term vision for what the company and its theme parks will be — a vision compelling enough that it would make more theme park fans eager to book a visit to a SeaWorld or Busch Gardens theme park over visiting the formidable competing parks the company faces.

What would make you feel that way about the SeaWorld and Busch Gardens parks again? (Note: Given our past experience with this subject, we will not be approving anonymous comments for this post.)

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