Concept art by Chimera Design from the long-planned Dubai World Marvel Super Heroes Theme Park is making the rounds, and its pretty jaw-dropping. While Dubai’s role as the crazy and wasteful oasis of surreal excess may have been scaled back a bit by the Great Recession, this is still in the planning stages. At a cost of over $1 billion, the park is currently planned to open in 2012 (pushed back from 2011). You can see all the pics in the link, and a few more in the jump. From the above, it isn’t clear whether the theme park experience includes actually being plucked up and shaken about by a giant squid, but it would be cool if it did.
Note; It is possible that Marvel’s acquisition by Disney may have some impact on this project.
“Note: It is possible that Marvel’s acquisition by Disney may have some impact on this project.”
As might, Dubai World’s recent plans to restructure the repayment of 26 billion dollars worth of debt, which managed to rock global financial markets last week (although that seems to have settled down a bit in the days since then.)
(Tangentially related, yesterday’s NPR’s “Planet Money” podcast discussed Dubai, interviewing a Canadian woman who’s worked in Dubai for a few years. It’s an interesting–and different from the usual–view of the place…)
I’d heard the total debt figure quoted as $60 billion. Wonder if the 26 is a subset of that.
I think that’s it exactly. this article talks about Dubai World having $60 billion in debt and that seems to indicate that this recent debt restructuring plan addresses $26 billion of that amount.
Thanks for the clarification, Ali.
As for Disney, I’d suspect there might be a buyout clause for use of the characters, assuming that Marveland is still in progress at this point. But when you’re talking about this much money, things get wacky and the rules change.
Wow, did anyone read this article from that site?
http://disneyandmore.blogspot.com/2009/05/why-disney-will-never-build-theme-park.html
Eye opening. I find the debt law portion of this article extremely ironic, given what’s now happening to Dubai, debt-wise. Perhaps they should all imprison themselves…. Ah, but that would never happen. (Dubai, personally, scares the crap out of me. I would never visit.)
How can you not love the idea of a theme park built on slave labor?
That article should be required reading for anyone who’s even heard of Dubai. Thanks for the link.
Advanced reading on the subject: EVIL PARADISES, which covers Dubai, Shanghai and more. From a decidedly Marxist perspective, though I think most of the material was written before the top of the bubble, so the gloating may be at a minimum.
As I’ve said from the beginning….everything in Dubai is full of fail!!! This is ridiculous that they are stull planning this!
You CANNOT, repeat C-A-N-N-O-T rescue nor create a country based on multibillion dollar tourism projects!
But we’re not going to be here in 2012.
Didn’t anybody see the movie? We have to open it in 2011!
~
Coat
I wonder what the Carl Ichan (spelling?) and Ron Perlman (spelling?) rides will be like?