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Credit: Inside The MagicLast week, Disney announced that it would bring its seventh theme park to the United Arab Emirates. The new park in Abu Dhabi will partner with Miral, Abu Dhabi’s leading creator of immersive destinations and experiences.
Miral will own and operate the new theme park, with Disney providing its intellectual property and Disney Imagineering providing the oversite and creative design.
The waterfront resort will be located on Yas Island in the UAE. The location was chosen specifically because the UAE is within a four-hour plane ride of one-third of the world’s population and boasts the world’s largest airline hub, with more than 120 million passengers passing through the country annually.
That was the key to Disney’s picking its newest location. Plenty of people had to be within a short plane ride from the new park to ensure that guests would continuously flow through its gates.
While the UAE is thrilled, other countries long rumored to be getting a Disney park were disappointed by the selections. None of them could offer the location or the type of partnership that Disney received in Abu Dhabi.
When the announcement was made, Disney fans in Australia let out a nation/continent-wide sigh as they knew that they were no longer in the running for a Disney Park.
Rumors of Disney opening a park in Australia go back to the 1990s. The initial Disney Park was rumored to be built along Australia’s Gold Coast, but Disney executives decided to build it in Hong Kong instead.
Australia got a second chance in Melbourne in the early 2000s, this time, but that park never materialized. As late as 2023, Melbourne’s mayor even teased the possibility of Disney building a park there.
So, what’s wrong with Australia? There are two downsides to building a Disney Park Down Under.
The first is population. Australia has just over 26.5 million people living on the island, seven million less than California and 13 million less than Tokyo, two other locations of Disney Parks.
The second is distance. Australia is incredibly far from the large population centers of Asia. It’s a 12-hour flight from India to Australia instead of only four hours to the UAE.
Marketing lecturer at RMIT University in Australia Jessica Pallant said:
As much as I would absolutely love it, and would probably be an annual pass holder, there are too many challenges to overcome. Compared to those locations, we are just geographically too far, and I don’t know at this point in time if we have the population to sustain it without the kind of tourism to justify it.
So, while Abu Dhabi gets the Disney Park, other locations wonder what they must do to get Disney to build in their country. Australia is still just a bridesmaid, as someone else gets to dance with Mickey Mouse.
Where would you like to see Disney build a park after Abu Dhabi? Let us know in the comments.