Dubai’s delayed US$1 billion IMG Worlds of Adventure is set to open on August 15 as it goes head to head with a rival theme park in Jebel Ali expected two months later.
IMG said that the 1.5 million square feet indoor theme park located on Dubai’s outer Mohammed bin Zayed Road is almost complete and is set to be the largest indoor theme park in the world – about the size of 28 football fields. Tickets will go on sale on Monday.
The park, which will include more than 20 rides and attractions, is set to feature Marvel comic heroes, Cartoon Network characters and dinosaurs.
At a press conference on Sunday featuring life-size comic characters, IMG said that it expected to attract 4.5 million people in the first year of opening.
Tickets will be priced Dh300 for adults and Dh250 for children under 1.2 metres tall.
IMG, which is owned by the Dubai conglomerate Ilyas & Mustafa Galadari Group, originally intended to open in 2014, but the company said it had been forced to delay because of both the complexity of the project and a change in construction rules following the 2013 Iranian earthquake.
The IMG theme park opening will now come just two months before Dubai Parks & Resorts expects to open its three linked theme parks spanning a much larger 25 million sq ft and valued at Dh10 billion.
These will comprise the Hollywood-inspired theme park Motiongate, Dubai Bollywood Parks and Legoland, in addition to a water park. On Saturday, Dubai Parks reported that 88 per cent of the construction work and 70 per cent of the utilities infrastructure on its parks had been completed.
The parks form a key part of the Dubai Government’s aim to increase tourist numbers to 20 million visitors a year by the year 2020, up from 13.2 million in 2015.
“Constructing the world’s largest indoor theme park comes with a degree of complexity. Something like this has never been constructed in this market,” said Lennard Otto, the chief executive of IMG Worlds of Adventure. “The Government has never seen an attraction of this scale. So there has been a learning curve for both our parties to be able to build out this scheme to the right level.”
“In general as the competitive landscape is shaping up I think with the amount of attractions coming up, Dubai is moving into an Orlando 2.0 model,” he added.
“Where the market is untapped, we have a four-hour flight radius with no major leisure attractions of this scale. If you look at Orlando, they have multiple parks flourishing in the same location in a competitive environment because the market has shaped up where you have a very high penetration rate. “Today Dubai’s airport is twice the size of Orlando’s, it has twice the amount of visitors. It has more room to use. It has a bigger food and beverage industry.”
Currently the UAE boasts just one major indoor theme park, the 86,000 sq metres Ferrari World in Abu Dhabi.
lbarnard@thenational.ae
Follow The National's Business section on Twitter
