Earlier today Disney CEO Bob Iger announced the company’s seventh theme park resort will be built in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. It’ll be Disney’s first resort in the Middle East, and like their three other Asian theme park resorts, it’ll be a co-venture with a local company—in this case Miral, an Abu Dhabi-based firm that operates multiple theme parks, resorts, and attractions in the UAE. The new resort will be built by Miral with Disney’s Imagineers handling the creative design and consulting on its operations, and it’ll be located on Yas Island, the same island that’s home to theme parks Ferrari World, Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi, SeaWorld Abu Dhabi, and Yas Waterworld. It will follow Disney’s first six theme park resorts: Disneyland in California, Disney World in Florida, Disneyland Tokyo in Japan, Disneyland Paris in France, Hong Kong Disneyland in… uh Hong Kong, and Shanghai Disney in China.
In his announcement Iger said the kind of things you’d expect a CEO to say at a moment like this. The new park will combine “contemporary architecture with cutting-edge technology to offer guests deeply immersive entertainment experiences in unique and modern ways.” He slightly tweaked a phrase familiar from Disney’s launch of Shanghai Disney in 2016, saying the new resort will be “authentically Disney and distinctly Emirati.” It will be “an oasis of extraordinary Disney entertainment,” he said, “that will bring life to our timeless characters and stories in many new ways.”
Disney Experiences Josh D’Amaro, who’s familiar to the kind of Disney parks fans who watch every press conference and media event, boasted that the park will mark “a new frontier in theme park development.” It’ll be “the most advanced and interactive” Disney property yet, using the island’s waterfront “to tell [Disney] stories in completely new ways.”
News of a new Disney theme park tends to excite fans from around the world. Foreign parks tend to have at least a few unique attractions unavailable at other parks, and regularly offer a fascinating glimpse at familiar Disney stories and concepts through a new cultural lens. And when Disney’s partnership with a local partner really works, the result can be truly special—like the company’s Tokyo parks, especially Tokyo DisneySea, which is the most beautiful theme park in the world.
Abu Dhabi has already established a pretty big footprint in the world of theme parks. Ferrari World is home to the fastest roller coaster in the world, Formula Rossi, which hits a top speed of 149 miles per hour. There’s also a SeaWorld on Yas Island and a park themed to Warner Bros. properties like DC Comics, Looney Tunes, Scooby-Doo, and more. Disney will be entering a crowded market, but of course they have a big advantage when it comes to their name and reputation; to borrow a phrase from the sports channel they own, Disney’s the worldwide leader in theme parks.
A post on the Disney parks blog notes that the new resort will be home to “signature Disney entertainment, themed accommodations, unique dining and retail experiences, and storytelling in a way that celebrates both the heritage of Disney and the futuristic and cultural essence of Abu Dhabi.”
There are some things about Abu Dhabi’s culture the park presumably won’t celebrate, of course. According to Walk Free, the international human rights group dedicated to ending global slavery, the United Arab Emirates has “the seventh highest prevalence in the Global Slavery Index;” they estimate that there were 132,000 people living in modern slavery there in 2021. According to Walk Free, migrant workers in the UAE “face risks of forced labor particularly in the construction, domestic work, and service industries… Allegations of forced labor occurred in the construction of, and during, the Dubai Expo 2020, with indications that workers from Bangladesh, India, Kenya, Nepal, and Pakistan had their passports confiscated, wages withheld, were forced to work long hours, and lived in poor conditions.” Migrant workers are often used for construction and domestic jobs, and those workers are essentially governed by their employers, with few rights guaranteed by the state. Walk Free does note that the UAE is “among countries taking the most action to respond to modern slavery in the Arab States region,” but that response remains “average” when compared to the non-Arab world.
Same-sex sexual activity is also illegal in the United Arab Emirates, as is being visibly trans. Both crimes have a maximum penalty of death. The American nonprofit Freedom House gave the UAE a 17 out of 100 on their 2021 scorecard, which measures the political rights and civil liberties a country extends to its occupants. Their report notes that “same-sex relations can draw harsh criminal penalties under vaguely worded laws, and LGBT+ people are subject to widespread social stigma.” Disney has long courted the LGBTQ+ community through Pride Nights, outreach, and special merchandise, and has a gay and trans fan base; it has to be discouraging for them to see Disney team up with a country with laws like the UAE’s.
No timeline for the new resort has been announced, and no specifics have been revealed about the park’s attractions or design. Two pieces of concept art hint at a radically different Disney park, without a visible castle, but early theme park concept art rarely resembles the finished product. Disney also released a video on YouTube about the new development, and you can watch that below.
