New ways to play

Some theme parks have in the past three years changed their "gated" models from charging for entry to pay-per-play models, she explains.

Non-gated operations have become more popular following their adoption by such large domestic groups as Wanda and SUNAC.

About 30 parks, or roughly 20 percent, of the projects AECOM tracks in China are non-gated.

Yet Chang cautions that shifting to non-gated operations isn't the right approach for all parks.

"This business model is most successful in densely populated urban locations that attract heavy footfall," she says.

Some low-end parks have dropped out of the market, while more competitive ones have survived.

The number of major domestic theme parks increased by more than 20 by the end of 2020, compared with 2018.

Market pressures gave rise to a "survival-of-the-fittest" challenge in 2020, with weaker parks closing due to poor performance, the report says.

Around 20 parks have closed over the past three years, 70 to 80 percent of which commanded an initial capital investment of less than 1 billion yuan ($154.6 million) and had no obvious theme, the report says. Their operations were poor and annual attendance was generally less than 1 million visits a year.