Walt Disney Company’s proposed $10 billion park in Abu Dhabi is a coup for the capital of the tiny Gulf state United Arab Emirates, and opens the door for the global entertainment conglomerate to spread its magic to a new market. But the challenges that come with this new opportunity may be just as striking.
Disney’s first expansion into the Middle East — and specifically the Arabian Gulf — comes with its own distinct hurdles and is sure to raise complex cultural questions. Some of the company’s most passionate fans are in the gay community who say they feel betrayed by the decision to build in a country that bans homosexuality. Still others criticize investing in a country that has been called out for abuses of its guest worker population.
Carlye Wisel, a theme park journalist and podcast host, wrote on X following the announcement, “Struggling to wrap my head around a new Disney theme park in a region that’s so at odds with what the company claims they stand for.”
“From a pure business standpoint, it makes sense, when you look at the people in that region who don’t have easy access to a Disney Park, that gives them something to vacation to,” said Todd Martens, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times who has written for years about about theme parks. But, he added, “Culturally, Disney has a line to walk there.”
And Disney, so far, is walking that line.
“We are respectful of the countries and cultures where we do business, while always adhering to our own standards and values,” said a company spokesman in a statement to TheWrap, declining to directly address the concerns over homosexuality or labor matters.
CEO Bob Iger said in the May announcement that Disneyland Abu Dhabi would be “authentically Disney and distinctly Emirati,” which was a rephrasing of something he said when the Shanghai Disneyland project opened, describing it as “authentically Disney and distinctly Chinese.”
As a formidable exporter of U.S. entertainment, Disney has had to adapt its culture to fit in around the world. Abu Dhabi marks the latest addition to an international portfolio that includes outposts in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Paris and Tokyo.
With it, Disney is entering a potentially lucrative market just as the UAE is looking to forge closer ties to Hollywood. The region has struck social media partnerships with celebrities like Millie Bobby Brown to boost tourism and played host to the production of films like the “Dune” franchise and the upcoming “Now You See Me” sequel.
Josh D’Amaro, the charismatic chairman of Disney Experiences (and one of the candidates to take over for Disney CEO Bob Iger), appeared in a pre-recorded spot last month to talk up the new park, Disneyland Abu Dhabi.
“This groundbreaking resort destination represents a new frontier in theme park development,” said D’Amaro in his official statement and video. “Our resort in Abu Dhabi will be the most advanced and interactive destination in our portfolio. The location of our park is incredibly unique – anchored by a beautiful waterfront – which will allow us to tell our stories in completely new ways.”
Jeff Kurtti, a Disney historian who last year was appointed presidential fellow at Chapman University, said Disney is unique when it comes to international endeavors. “Disney exported a culture that is 100% Disney – the classic characters, the animation, the films, the music. But at the same time, in each region of the world, Disney has allowed those regions to function with a certain degree of cultural autonomy.”
This, it seems, will be the case for this new park.
In the best case scenario, Disney Abu Dhabi will be a big, beautiful theme park, glittering in the desert like some fantastic mirage. But in the Middle East, things have a way of getting complicated.
The Gulf’s theme park boom
Expecting a 2030 opening, the first-of-its-kind theme park on Yas Island was born out of a partnership between Disney and the UAE’s entertainment and leisure company Miral Group.
The new park will join a cluster of other themed experiences overseen and operated by Miral on Yas Island – Ferrari World, SeaWorld, Warner Bros. World and Yas Waterworld.
In 2023, Warner Bros. World became the first theme park in the Middle East to appear on the Global Attractions Attendance report from the Themed Entertainment Association (TEA), with 1.8 million visitors.
Miral and Disney are hoping that the new park will attract 32 million visitors in its first year, which would be quite a feat, considering Abu Dhabi’s population is a mere 3.7 million. Still, the possibility is there.
By comparison, Abu Dhabi’s population is about half of Hong Kong’s, and that Disney park attracted 7.7 million visitors in 2024, which was enough to return the park to profit for the first time in 10 years.
Hong Kong is perhaps the best equivalent to the new Middle Eastern park, since they will be around the same size. While Miral and Disney haven’t officially announced how big the park will be, there is a 300-acre parcel of land waiting to be developed on the island. This would make it the smallest Disney theme park in the world, just a few acres less than Hong Kong. “It constrains what they can do,” an individual who has been shown plans told TheWrap.
Mitigating risk and increasing the likelihood of it actually being built, Disneyland Abu Dhabi will be created through an arrangement that is akin to Disney’s deal with the Oriental Land Company for its Japanese theme parks. In former Disney CEO Michael Eisner’s memoir, “Work in Progress,” he said that the final contract for Tokyo Disneyland, signed in 1979, “gave Disney 5% of the gross revenues on all food and merchandise and 10% of the gross on admissions, in exchange for a token $2.5 million investment in the park.” Eisner said that the deal was “so good that Disney literally couldn’t turn it down.”
For Disneyland Abu Dhabi, Disney is paid a licensing fee and will continue to consult, while Miral will operate and maintain the park. According to someone with knowledge of the situation, Abu Dhabi and Miral will be footing the bill completely for the next two years, as the Walt Disney Imagineers (the secretive arm of the company responsible for Disney’s theme parks and cruise ships) design and conceptualize the new park.
“There is a precedent for this kind of thing,” said Len Testa, a podcast host and the creator of Touring Plans, a system that predates Disney’s own trip-planning technology.
The arrangement between Disney and Miral does, however, almost guarantees that the park will be built. One person with knowledge said that there was a “95% chance it will happen.”
“Miral is committed, Abu Dhabi is committed,” said a second person involved in the project.
A spokesperson for the Miral Group did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Potential complications
There are, of course, some trickier aspects to Disney’s entrance into the Middle East.
“We’ve been to every Disney park on Earth. It’s too bad that now there is one we will not be able to visit,” wrote one gay fan on Instagram, in response to the official announcement post. Another account, Theme Park Professor, who has more than 56,000 followers, wrote, “What about Disney being an ally? This is disappointing.” The prevailing sentiment from many commenters is perhaps best summed up by Elyse Buckley, whose profile photo has her wearing the iconic Disney mouse ears: “Really disappointed, Disney.”
Apart from attendees, the gay community is hugely important to Disney in terms of the cast members who staff the Disney theme parks (particularly in fields like entertainment) and the creatives who fuel its operation globally — not to mention the paying guests who visit the parks around the world. There is Pride merchandise in the various theme parks for Pride Month and special Pride Nite after-hours events being sold for Disneyland.
Additionally, much of the team that is shepherding the Disneyland Abu Dhabi project are openly gay members of Walt Disney Imagineering.
While regional experts say Abu Dhabi has portrayed itself as more progressive than other areas of the Gulf such as Qatar, there remains the fact that the UAE has multiple laws criminalizing same-sex activity. Article 80 of the Abu Dhabi Criminal Code criminalizes “unnatural sex with another person” with a penalty of up to 14 years in prison. The official system of law in the UAE is Sharia, in which same-sex activity is officially punishable by death, combined with civil law.
TheWrap reached out to representatives for the UAE and the emirate of Abu Dhabi and its judicial department but did not receive comment.
A 2020 Department of State report acknowledged the criminalization of “same-sex sexual activity” but said that “no cases were publicly reported during the year.” The Human Dignity Trust noted that there have been no such reports “since the 2015 iteration of this report.” Any kind of punishment for homosexual activity– much less punishment by death – seems a long way off.
But will gay stories simply disappear? Disney has run into these issues in the past; when an innocuous same-sex kiss appeared in Pixar’s 2022 feature “Lightyear,” it was enough to get it banned in the Muslim world, including Egypt, Iraq and the UAE. This is also at odds with one of Disney’s keys (described as “a core value that serves as a guiding principle for cast members in their daily work”), introduced in 2022, of inclusion. A post by D’Amaro on the official Disney Parks blog outlined why this was so important.
And while the response to the Disneyland Abu Dhabi announcement was overwhelmingly positive, a number of comments on Instagram following the announcement outline the concern over the new project.
This issue is not one official advocates seem eager to take on; GLAAD did not respond to TheWrap’s efforts seeking comment on the issue.
But theme Park Insider editor Robert Niles, who has visited the area extensively, wrote on May 8, “This ain’t Saudi … If you want to enter the UAE and book a hotel room with your same-sex spouse or partner for a theme park visit, go ahead. Nobody cares.”
There will also be questions about how the project will be constructed. Saadiyat Island, a nearby island where Miral also has attractions (its name means “happiness” in Arabic), was created using a system of “intimidation, strike-breaking, mass riots and an employment system trapping thousands of laborers on poverty pay,” according to an investigative report in The Guardian. New York University, another Western institution that partnered with the UAE, built a new campus in Abu Dhabi – one that was similarly created “on the sweat of tens of thousands of migrants, shipped in from North Africa and South Asia.”
While these might be red flags, Disney maintains the Disney International Labor Standards Program (ILS), which was established back in 1996 to “oversee labor standards compliance across the vast supply chain for Disney-branded products.” The ILS Program “requirements in licensee and vendor contracts, reinforce them through regular discussions with licensees and vendors, and benchmark against them through extensive consultations with external stakeholders including NGOs, investors, governments and multi-lateral institutions. To promote company-wide integration, the ILS Program is monitored and reviewed at the highest levels of the Company.”
This means that even if Disney isn’t the one building the new park, the park’s construction will still have to adhere to the strict guidelines of the ILS Program.
Most international Disney theme parks face some kind of opposition – when former CEO Michael Eisner announced what was then known as the Euro Disney, he was pelted with eggs, flour and tomato sauce by protestors not too keen on opening Europe to the company. To the protestors, Disney’s invasion of France’s traditional culture was nearly criminal.
Now, the opposite is true – a beloved brand, which seems to stand for understanding and acceptance, is parachuting into a region whose politics seem outwardly hostile to those responsible for creating and consuming the magic Disney manufactures.
Hope for a fairy tale ending
Disney has time to address these criticisms and concerns; the park won’t open until 2030.
“What’s interesting to me in context of the vague things I’ve seen about Abu Dhabi is, it appears to me, much like in Shanghai, [they] are going to an audience that isn’t us,” said Chapman historian Kurtti. “I see the Disney fans getting upset, but I say, ‘You’re not the audience. You’re a Southern California-based passholder. Quit worrying about it.’”
Kurtti points to legendary Disney Imagineer Marty Sklar, who famously created Mickey’s 10 Commandments. And the first commandment? “Know Your Audience.”
Sklar wrote: “Disney has always allowed a fair degree of latitude culturally. I don’t see Shanghai or Hong Kong or Paris as anything but this tradition of exporting a culture of Disney and adjusting that cultural messaging,” Kurtti said.
There is still time and room for the park to become something that, while “authentically Disney and distinctly Emirati,” can make guests and cast members feel welcome and safe. That international culture that Disney has created, the one that Kurtti said works both ways, could be used as something for good – as inclusive and utopian as any of Walt’s ideals. But this time, with more sand.
