Mickey Mouse is headed to the Middle East.
In a new test for its singularly American brand, the Walt Disney Company said on Wednesday that it had reached an agreement with the Miral Group, an arm of the Abu Dhabi government, to build a theme park resort on the Persian Gulf. The property, the seventh in Disney’s global portfolio, will have a castle and modernized versions of some classic Disney rides, along with new attractions tailored to the climate and local culture.
“It’s not just about ‘If you build it, they will come,’” Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, said in brief phone interview from Abu Dhabi. “You have to build it right. And quality means not just scale, but quality and ambition. We are planning to be very ambitious with this.”
Disney and Miral declined to give acreage, budget or construction timeline details for what they are calling Disneyland Abu Dhabi, except to say it will be a full-scale property on a par with Disney’s other “castle” parks. Miral is footing the entire bill for building the park. (New theme parks of this scale typically cost $5 billion or more.)
Arab leaders have long courted Disney, which expanded its theme park business to Japan in 1983, France in 1992, Hong Kong in 2005 and the Chinese mainland in 2016. At a Council on Foreign Relations event in 2018, Mr. Iger said the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, had made an “impassioned plea” for Disney to build a theme park in his kingdom.
“I explained when we make decisions like this we consider cultural issues, economic issues and political issues,” Mr. Iger said then, declining to give further details of their “very frank” discussion. The region, he added at the time, “has not been at the top of our list in terms of markets that we would open up in.”
What changed?
For a start, the United Arab Emirates has grown into a tourist destination. Abu Dhabi, the capital, attracted roughly 24 million visitors in 2023, according to government figures. Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the country’s president, has set a goal of attracting 39 million visitors annually to Abu Dhabi by 2030. The Louvre Abu Dhabi, which opened in 2017, has been a hit. Warner Bros. Discovery opened a modest indoor theme park in the city in 2018, and SeaWorld Abu Dhabi arrived in 2023.
The Miral Group, which built Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi and SeaWorld Abu Dhabi, made Disney a hard-to-refuse financial offer: In addition to paying for construction, Miral will pay Disney to design the rides, shops, restaurants and accompanying hotels. Once the park is open, Disney will receive royalties for the use of its characters as a percentage of revenue, according to a securities filing. Disney will also receive other fees.
At the same time, Disney has come under pressure to find new areas for growth to offset declines in cable television and at the box office. By opening a theme park in Abu Dhabi, Disney hopes to create an engine that drives demand among the Middle East’s 500 million residents for other Disney products — princess dolls, Disney+ subscriptions, cruise ship vacations, Marvel movies, touring stage productions.
“After studying the region carefully, engaging with potential partners and visiting three times in the past nine months,” Mr. Iger said, “it became more and more clear that not only was the region right and ready for us, but the place to build was Abu Dhabi.”
Disneyland Abu Dhabi could allow Disney to tap into India’s expanding middle class. A direct flight from Mumbai to Abu Dhabi takes 3 hours 17 minutes. Currently, the closest Disney outpost to Mumbai is Hong Kong Disneyland, a six-hour flight away.
“In looking at some research that we’ve done recently, we determined that, for every person visiting one of our parks, there are 10 people in the world that have a desire to visit,” Mr. Iger said. “One of the biggest reasons they don’t — everybody always thinks immediately it’s affordability. It’s not. It’s accessibility. It’s a long trip to get to where we are for a lot of people.”
There will be obstacles. The climate is one. Disney will need to design a park that allows for visitation in scalding desert heat.
Disney could also face criticism for its partnership with the Emirates, which is ruled as an autocracy with limits to freedom of expression, speech and the press, and which provides arms to fighters accused of atrocities in a devastating civil war in Sudan. In November, Human Rights Watch slammed the National Basketball Association, which has made Abu Dhabi its Middle East hub, for helping the country to distract from its human rights record.
To attract more tourists and foreign investors, the Emirates in 2020 improved protections for women, loosened regulations on alcohol consumption and diminished the role of Islamic legal codes in its justice system. Criticizing the government or its leaders remains illegal, however, and can lead to long prison sentences. Migrant workers are often subject to inhumane conditions, according to human rights groups and the State Department. Homosexuality is illegal.
In 2022, the Emirates joined other Persian Gulf nations in banning “Lightyear,” a major film from Disney’s Pixar, because of a blink-and-you-missed-it kiss between a lesbian couple. “Lightyear,” along with some other content that features L.G.B.T.Q. characters, does not appear on Disney+ in the region.
In a statement, a Disney spokeswoman said, “We are respectful of the countries and cultures where we do business, while always adhering to our own standards and values.”
Disney faced a similar situation when it teamed with the Chinese government to build Shanghai Disneyland. In addition to awkward optics, the construction of that park required the contentious relocation of thousands of suburban Shanghai residents. (Disneyland Abu Dhabi won’t have that headache; it will rise on man-made Yas Island.)
Wall Street, however, is likely to applaud — especially given the troubled state of other Disney businesses, including cable television.
“Are theme parks now the best business in media?” Craig Moffett, a founder of the MoffettNathanson research firm, wrote in a report last year. “The answer is almost certainly ‘yes.’”
