Credit: DisneyIn 1992, the Baltimore Orioles opened Camden Yards downtown, revitalizing the city’s waterfront area and bringing tourists back to Baltimore. Suddenly, every city wanted to bring its baseball or football team back downtown to help revitalize the area.
The same can be said for theme parks. What was Central Florida before the Walt Disney World Resort opened? Orange groves and swamps. Now, it’s a multi-billion-dollar juggernaut that is one of the United States’ leading tourism destinations.
What cities and areas miss about that story is that not everyone can have Camden Yards, and not everyone can have Disney World. While it worked in some places, in others, it threw precious tax dollars down the drain chasing a dream.
Despite that cautionary tale, it hasn’t stopped other areas from trying to take Central Florida’s throne as the theme park capital of America. With Universal Kids Resort expanding to the Dallas area, that part of the country now boasts several major theme parks, including Six Flags Over Texas and Legoland Discovery Center, as it vies for theme park dominance.
However, a new area of the country is entering the fray to take over the theme park landscape: Arizona. Yes, that Arizona. The place where you can bake cookies on the sidewalk in the summer.
Arizona has had a theme park for years, but it was a water park: Six Flags Hurricane Harbor, which is only a water park, not a traditional Six Flags. But now, Arizona is getting a brand new theme park and has the potential for a second.
Mattel is building its own theme park in Glendale, Arizona, which will include 160,000 square feet of air conditioned, indoor space. It partially solves the problem of the extreme Arizona summer heat.
Much likes its rivals in Florida and California, Mattel’s theme park will include shopping, restaurants, and a hotel district that will keep guests busy all day long. However, the Mattel theme park was set to open by the end of this year, but it’s looking more likely that it won’t until 2026.
With Mattel opening in Glendale, Mesa, Arizona wants to get into the theme park game. The Mesa City Council just approved a new theme park zone for an 80-acre parcel of land that was once occupied by the Fiesta Mall.
Mesa is roughly 27 miles away from Glendale, where the state’s other two theme parks reside. To put that into perspective, the Walt Disney World Resort is roughly 16 miles from the Universal Orlando Resort or with Central Florida traffic, it’s about the same distance.
The 80-acre parcel will include a multiuse soccer stadium as the city hopes to persuade an MLS team to move to the area. Even with the soccer stadium and parking, there is more than enough space for a theme park. The new Mattel theme park will only cover nine acres in Glendale.
Presumably, the Mesa theme park will also be mostly indoors to beat the heat. However, so far, no theme park developer has stepped forward to build in Mesa.
So, with two cities in Arizona looking to enter the them park game, it’s vying to take Central Florida’s crown as the theme park capital of America, but that won’t be for a few years.
Would you want a theme park built in your city? Let us know in the comments.