Disney Plans To Open Theme Park In Abu Dhabi

The Walt Disney Company announced that it’s building a seventh flagship theme park in Abu Dhabi — the first of its destinations to be built in the Middle East.

Why It Hits: The United Arab Emirates has been aggressively trying to court tourists in a bid to make the country — especially its marquee cities of Abu Dhabi and Dubai — the hot travel spots of the region (24 million people visited just Abu Dhabi in 2023). Meanwhile, Disney is doubling down on its theme parks as a growth engine while its linear TV business declines… and the terms for the Emirates park are as good a financial play as you could dream.

Behind the Attractions: The Middle East is getting its own Mouse House.

• Disney didn’t give any specifics on when construction would commence or a target opening date, but it did say Disneyland Abu Dhabi would be “a full-scale property on par with Disney’s other ‘castle’ parks.”
• Miral Group, an arm of the Abu Dhabi government, will cover the entire cost of building the park (a typical expenditure of more than $5 billion), while Disney Imagineers will have complete design and creative control (also paid for by Miral).
• Once the park opens, it’ll be owned and operated by Miral (a similar arrangement to Tokyo DisneySea), with Disney receiving “royalties for the use of its characters as a percentage of revenue,” per NYT. The entertainment giant will also receive other fees.
• The theme park will be built on the man-made Yas Island. Disney Experiences chairman Josh D’Amaro teased that it’ll be the most “modern” and “tech forward” of all its parks, with the ability to pull water right from the Persian Gulf for its various attractions.

The Future: Disney will face several challenges partnering with Abu Dhabi on a park, including issues around climate (the desert is hot hot) and politics (personal freedoms are limited), but the company doesn’t want to pass up the ability to be at the center of a new market — “a third of the world’s population is within a four-hour flight from our our site,” says CEO Bob Iger.

With theme parks acting as the gateway to the entire Disney ecosystem, the destination could supercharge signups for Disney+, make it easier for movies to play theatrically in the region, and maybe even launch a Disney cruise line that has port of calls throughout the Middle East and Eastern Africa.