Play-and-Stay Blog

Oh joy, oh rapture, oh happiest of happy days! Today is a great day for humanity. Forget the credit crunch. Don’t worry about negative equity. Stop caring about the fact petrol costs so much you die a little bit inside every time you pull into your local BP. Everything is going to be okay, you know why? BECAUSE SEGA ARE BUILDING A THEME PARK!

I may have got slightly carried away there, chances are Sega’s theme park is not going to fix all of Britain’s woes. Mainly because it’s in Dubai. But still, good to know huh? The park is going to be named Sega Republic, 76,000 square feet of unadulterated Sega goodness including games, thrill rides and other such lovely shiny distracting things. Which reminds me, who remembers Segaworld in the Trocadero? That place was awesome but alas, it is now closed. Upside though, I now aspire to explore the deserted Segaworld in a Scooby-Doo costume, just to see if I can find a masked villain to thwart. Cartoons have taught me villians generally live in abandoned theme parks.

I digress, apparently its not just Sega that want to get in on Dubai’s rapid expansion. Busch Gardens, Marvel Comics, Six Flags, Paramount, Warner Bros. and Universal studios are all clamouring to stake some territory in what is shaping up to be the worlds number one leisure destination. Recently Dubai has added/begun construction of the following, increasing its impressive array of tourist bait:

*Burj Al Arab - The tallest hotel in the world at 1,053 feet
*Mall of the Emirates - 6.5 million square feet of shopping pleasure with a 14 screen cinema, theatre and the Middle East’s first indoor ski slope.
*The World - A man-made archipelago in the shape of a world map, the project cost around £7 billion.
*Dubailand -  3 billion square feet of leisure facilities. The project consists of 45 separate “mega-projects” such as LEGOLAND^® Dubai, an IMAX, and a Dreamworks theme park. Completion is due 2015.
*Dubai Autodrome - 5.40 km motorsports circuit.
*Burj Dubai - Projections suggest that upon completion in 2009  Burj Dubai will be the tallest man-man made structure in the world. Standing at 2,684 ft with 162 habitable floors.
*Hydropolis - Currently still in planning stages Hydropolis will be a ten star, £300 million, fully underwater hotel.

Impressed? I am. To Dubai!

This entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2008 at 4:28 pm and is filed under Theme Parks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.