LOS ANGELES – For the first time in 15 years, the Walt Disney Company has announced the development of a new theme park – a resort destination in Abu Dhabi that marks the company’s entry into the Middle East. The Disneyland Abu Dhabi resort will become Disney’s seventh global resort destination, the company announced Wednesday shortly after reporting strong second-quarter earnings. Disney’s parks have arguably been its most important financial driver, representing 59% of its operating income in the 2024 fiscal year as streaming competition heats up. And while domestic parks attendance decreased modestly last year, Disney reported Wednesday morning that US park attendance rose again, and revenue surged in the first quarter. Although the company sees potential in its international resorts, where there’s been more growth in attendance and guest spending, China has been a pain point amid the trade war: park attendance in Shanghai and Hong Kong fell, and international park sales tumbled in the first quarter as a result. Miral, an Abu Dhabi company, will fully develop, build and operate the resort with Disney Imagineers leading creative design and operational oversight. With a potential opening in the early 2030s, the initial project plan includes one theme park and an unknown number of hotels.
“Every time we open a new experience or a theme park… it’s really important not just to take a theme park that might exist somewhere else and plop it into the ground in that new area that we would be going into,” Josh D’Amaro, the chairman of Disney Experiences, told CNN in an exclusive interview with CNN’s Becky Anderson in Abu Dhabi. Each park needs to reflect, in its design, its food and more, each specific location, he added. “And so here in, in Abu Dhabi, we want the same thing.” Both Abu Dhabi and Dubai airports have ambitious plans, with their vision as a pair of world-leading airports connecting a third of the world’s population within a four-hour flight. That includes the 1.4 billion people living in India, many of whom would be able to travel a shorter distance to Abu Dhabi than to Disney’s parks in Shanghai or Hong Kong. D’Amaro said a potential 500 million people in the region have the means to visit a Disney theme park. That easy access, coupled with the country’s future-oriented development, factored into Disney’s decision. “There was no question that for our seventh resort, this is where it was going to be,” D’Amaro said.
Disney’s resort will be located on Yas Island, where Miral has developed other resorts including SeaWorld YAS Island Abu Dhabi, Yas Waterworld, and Warner Bros. World, built under license by CNN’s parent company, Warner Brothers Discovery.
