Ark Park Attendance Drops Steadily: Righting America

The entrance to the Ark Park, with the fake Ark in the background.
Credit: Northern Kentucky Tribune, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

The fifth anniversary of the Ark Park came up in July, 2021, and the Northern Kentucky Tribune announced in a headline, Ark Encounter marks fifth anniversary with record crowds, announcement of new attractions to come. The claim was not exactly true then – attendance actually began to fall in the fourth year – and William Trollinger, writing this week on the Righting America blog, proclaims in a headline, Sinking Further and Further Below Their Projections: The Facts of Ark Encounter Attendance. Using data provided by the “indefatigable” Dan Phelps, Dr. Trollinger shows that, relative to initial projections, Ark Park attendance has dropped monotonically from 50 % in the first full year of operation to 26 % in the most recent.

As Dr. Trollinger dryly remarks, Williamstown “has not enjoyed the economic benefits that it hoped would come from subsidizing the Ark.”