Inside the £50,000,000,000 Disney World rival that’s still unfinished 21 years on

The hugely ambitious project hasn't gone to plan.

The world is littered with the ghosts of theme parks which may once have welcomed crowds through their doors, only to shut up shop and be left to rot when the turnstiles stopped spinning.

But others have met an entirely different fate. Take the case of Dubailand, for example, a theme park dubbed the ‘Disneyland of the Middle East’ that was set to be a rival to its American counterparts.

There’s just one small problem – nearly 21 years on from announcing the plans the park still hasn’t opened.

Plans for Dubailand were first announced in October 2003, with the project set to cost an ambitious $64 billion (£50 billion) at the time – and be twice the size of Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida.

The site in the popular UAE city of Dubai – known as a favourite with tourists – was intended to cover a vast area of 278 square kilometres and be divided into six different zones, or ‘worlds’ – Attractions and Experience World, Sports and Outdoor World, Eco-Tourism World, Themed Leisure and Vacation World, Retail and Entertainment World, and Downtown.

Meanwhile the Sahara Kingdom theme park, in the Attractions and Experience World, was set to cover 4,951,399 square foot and feature a huge number of high end rides, both physical and virtual.

Other attractions were set to include a state of the art gaming zone, an IMAX theatre, live and virtual entertainment shows, a retail complex, four hotels and residential accommodation.

All sounds amazing doesn’t it? Well unfortunately it hasn’t quite gone according to plan.

Work on the project stalled back in 2008, following the global financial meltdown which swept across the world in 2007 and 2008 – and work didn’t recommence for another five years. The shutdown saw virtually all of the staff and workforce leaving their roles – and over the next few years the project just kept on changing hands.

DreamWorks announced plans for a theme park in Dubailand in 2008, while US entertainment company Six Flags also got involved in 2008, with plans to join forces with Dubai Holding – the company behind the venture – to turn Dubailand into a reality.

Another attempt to revive the project, along with Merlin Entertainments, also came to nothing.

Work on the project eventually resumed in 2013, but over ten years later Dubailand has yet to fully open its doors for business – although several parts of the ambitious project have since done so.

Among the parts which are now open to the public are the Dubai Miracle Garden, which has been welcoming customers since Valentine’s Day 2013. The floral attraction occupies over 72,000 square metres, making it the world’s largest natural flower garden – and it’s home to over 50 million flowers and 250 million plants.

Meanwhile, IMG Worlds Of Adventure opened on the site in 2016, and has staked its claim as Dubai’s largest indoor theme park, with three rollercoasters for guests to enjoy.

The park has also been overtaken by other attractions, as Legoland Dubai, the first park of its kind in the Middle East and the seventh in the world, opened in 2016 just 35km up the road from the Dubailand site.

Legoland is located at Dubai Parks and Resorts, a similarly huge attraction to the planned Dubailand, which spans a huge 25 million square feet, and includes Motiongate, a Hollywood-inspired theme park incorporating rides and attractions inspired by DreamWorks Animation, Columbia Pictures, The Smurfs and Lionsgate.

So where does this leave Dubailand? Well, work is continuing on the site, and latest predictions suggest large parts of it will open by 2025.

However, with vast areas between Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed Road, where it’s located, and the desert still looking rather empty, it remains to be seen whether the hugely ambitious plans become reality.

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