On the roster is
everything from big brands like Legoland and Six Flags, to new concepts
set to make a splash. Literally in the case of Pearl of Dubai, slated to
be the world's largest underwater park when it's completed (the
tentative date is 2020, to correspond with the Dubai World Expo).
Size is a theme for many
of the parks on the list. One proposed project, IMG World of Adventure,
hopes to usurp Ferrari World as the world's largest indoor theme park.
It will include four zones, including The Lost Valley -- a Jurassic
Park-themed segment -- as well as two zones dedicated to characters from
Cartoon Network and Marvel Comics, respectively.
"We want this park to be
one of the center points in the future of Dubai," explains Adam
Alexander Page, the vice president of marketing for IMG Group, the
developer behind the project.
"As such, you don't want
to build something that won't get global attention, and if that means
it's big, that's what you do. There's no point in building it small."
What's in a name?
Many of Dubai's
developers plan to rely heavily on pop culture and name recognition in
bringing people to their parks. This is especially true of the planned
Dubai Parks, planned in an expanse 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Dubai
International Airport. A theme-park conglomerate, Dubai Parks will house
a Legoland, as well as a Bollywood-themed park and the Hollywood-themed
Motiongate Dubai.
"Movies have become the
kind of entertainment that binds people, young or old, across the globe,
because they all watch the same movies," notes John Gerner, a theme
park consultant and the managing director at Leisure Business Advisors.
"It used to be that if
you were to develop a theme park, you'd take an indigenous theme unique
to the area and build on that. Now, it's almost the opposite. You take
an international concept known around the world, like Marvel."
Thinking different
"Dubai has an overabundance of vision," says Patrick Douglas, the CEO of Reef Worlds, an underwater design company.
Pearl of Dubai will be a
five-acre underwater park with a Lost City of Atlantis theme. In
addition to luring scuba divers and snorkelers, the underwater
attraction will also act as a huge artificial reef, designed to attract
and nurture aquatic life.
"We're building for two clients: One has credit cards, the other has fins," jokes Douglas.
When first pitching the sustainable tourism venture, he approached properties in the Caribbean, all to no avail.
"I told them, we'd build
these sites, they wouldn't have to put up any money up front, and if
they happened to make money from them -- which we knew they would -- we
could talk about a revenue share. We didn't get any traction," says
Douglas.
Dubai, however, was a different story.
"They get it. They can conceive of it and they can produce it," he says.
The Orlando of the Middle East?
While Dubai is currently
home to a handful of theme parks -- most notably Wild Wadi and Atlantis
The Palm's Aquaventure -- the city has yet to establish much of a track
record in the industry. Many projects announced prior to the 2008 crash
were assigned to the scrap heap afterwards.
"In our industry, there tends to be more announcements of theme parks than those actually built," warns Gerner.
"It's a quandary for
analysts like myself. Typically we look at new projects as a share of
the existing market, so it's very hard to evaluate the potential for
going into somewhere entirely new."
Then again, building an
entertainment industry from scratch isn't unprecedented. Gerner points
out that Orlando, Florida was virtually unknown until the 1970s when
Disney World moved in.
"Dubai wants to become
an international tourist destination for leisure, one that serves not
just the greater region, but the entire world. Whether they'll be
successful, that's a big question, but that's their goal," says Gerner.
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