When thinking about theme parks, you may be forgiven for not instantly thinking of either The Middle East or Japan. The most obvious ones would be places such as Disneyland and Alton Towers. I won’t be concentrating on them though, after all there’s so much info out there already. I’m going to be writing about parks you might not be so familiar with.

Have you ever thought of visiting a country without leaving the one you’re in? Well now you can. Several of the largest amusement parks in Japan are designed with the sole purpose of imitating life in other countries, it’s life but not as we know it. For a start, everyone’s got good manners, the streets are clean and nothing goes wrong, so you can effectivly experience Italy without the bad driving and see a bull fight without the blood. The parks take you back to a time before our modern age and show you life in all its idyllic gentleness. The massive cost of building such parks was only made possible due to the so called “Bubble Economy.” Since the end of The Second World War, the Japanese government encouraged its people to save. This cautious attitude towards money, meant that by the mid to late 80s lots of cash was flowing into the Japanese economy, particularly in over seas investment. Japanese businesses now had more money and much of it went into the development of the entertainment industry, including theme parks.

Japanese theme parks contain all the elements essential to their counterparts in the USA and Europe. Great roller coasters can be found in parks like Yomiuriland and Expoland, which contains one of the world’s longest coasters. Unusually in today’s world of tubular steel, many of the Japanese coasters are wooden. This does not mean they are any less safer than the steel ones because the chances are they will have been made using prefabricated wooden tracks, it’s just a different type of ride. Also, Japan can boast a Universal Studios park and a Tokyo Disneyland, so if you go, it won’t be totally foreign. There’s much more to Japanese entertainment than just rides though. Parks such as Parque Espana replicate other countries. These parks are a bit like Disneyland in the way they create their environments but some of the Japanese parks do this on a larger scale, with many of the building materials actually transported from the intended country. The Japanese enjoyment of travel is well known. Figures suggest that more than 1 in 10 Japanese will travel abroad this year, but at a time when people can’t find the time or the money, these parks provide a perfect alternative. One of the most popular of these destinations is modeled on a Dutch village, with everything from Dutch speaking attendence to over three miles of canals. Other parks model themselves on Russia, Turkey and New Zealand. With over 11,000,000 visiters per year, the parks are certainly a success.

Japan is not alone in creating innovative amusement parks. There is work being carried out on creating a huge theme park complex in Dubai, called Dubai World. Located in the desert, it will be larger than Disney World which has been (until now) the largest park in existence. In fact, it is believed that the finished complex will cover an area of just over 3,000,000,000 square feet. It’s almost impossible to imagine that much space so think of it as being larger than the city of Orlando. The location will be split into more than 20 projects, including a LEGOLAND park, Thomas the Tank Engine and Universal Studios. Dubai World will also feature the first Six Flags park to be built outside the US. If this wasn’t enough, Dubai is also attempting to immitate the 7 wonders of the world, but with a difference. The project is called Falcon City of Wonders. The city is to be set out in the shape of a Falcon, with the wonders themselves forming the shape. A life size Egyption pyramid is to contain blocks of flats and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon will be comprised of Restaurants and apartments.

If you want a place to ski chances are you’ll think of somewhere naturally cold; Germany? Switzerland? How about Dubai? Dubai World will contain the world’s largest snowdome. This isn’t your ordinary indoor ski slope though. The dome will also hold a ski training area, the world’s third largest ski slope and the opportunity to take a virtual tour of the Arctic. The idea is that you’ll never have to leave the dome because it will contain everything you need, from hotels to shops. All the buildings around the dome will be built to a winter theme, with the hotels taking the shape of icebergs. Dubai have created the Wild Wadi Water Park. This water based theme park has over 20 massive rides, is spread over 12 acres and contains water slides, pools and surf machines.

Wild Wadi is only one of many examples of how amusement parks are growing both in popularity and scale in Dubai and the Middle East in general. In the next three years between 5 and 10 percent of all available retail space in the Middle East will be devoted to the development of bigger and better theme parks.

Published by Harry Luckhurst on behalf of Play and Stay

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 at 9:20 am 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.