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.”
