How far are you willing to travel to mingle with Wonder Woman, King Kong, Shrek, and Bollywood dancers while dining on hot dogs, pizza, hummus and falafel?
If you don’t mind jetting off to the Persian Gulf then you could be one of the first to visit what is being billed as two of the world’s largest theme parks.
Movie studio execs in the United Arab Emirates are trying to do everything in their power to make the amusement park deals fly in the conservative Muslim region. It might mean that characters such as Captain America won’t be making the rounds at one park and prayer rooms will be as common as restrooms. Regardless, investors are reportedly subscribing to a “whatever-it-takes” approach to capitalize on what some observers call the Middle East’s decades-long fascination with American culture.
Government officials in Dubai, one of the seven constituents of the UAE, want to double their number of annual visitors from nearly 7 million in 2007 to 15 million by 2015. In recent months entertainment giants such as Paramount Pictures and Marvel Entertainment Inc. have struck licensing agreements for theme parks and other attractions in the area.
Visitors can look for the first, a $2.2 billion Universal Studios park featuring movie favorites such as King Kong and Jurassic Park, to open in Dubai in 2010. Meanwhile, Marvel Entertainment Inc. is working on opening a $1 billion theme park in Abu Dhabi in 2011. But execs say visitors won’t be seeing much of Captain America, a superhero draped in the American flag. Rather, the park will focus on other popular comic book characters such as Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and X-Men – none of whom have political ties. As for the bare-shouldered patriotically clad Wonder Woman, unless she is depicted as a Muslim woman execs say she might not fly in the theme park.
A one-of-a-kind amusement park indeed.
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