Dragon Ball Theme Park Coming to Saudi Arabia
Goku is about to get a training ground to prepare for that fight with Superman. A press release on the Dragon Ball official website announced that a Dragon Ball theme park is coming to Saudi Arabia. The park is being funded by the Qiddiya Investment Company as part of what it calls the “Qiddiya” giga project, an effort to create “entertainment experiences” that will stimulate the Saudi economy and move it away from its dependence on oil. This Dragon Ball theme park will be over 500,000 square meters and recreate various “areas” from the original Dragon Ball series, with “Kame House, Capsule Corporation, and Beerus’s Planet” named in the announcement. The park will feature over thirty attractions, seven of them rides, and it sounds like some of them will be interactive, as the press release promises fans will get to “join an adventure with Goku and pals.” One of these rides will be a roller coaster located inside a seventy-meter-high Shenron, which a Google search tells me is a dragon. And, of course, there will be hotels, restaurants, and the usual theme park features. There’s no time frame yet, but we’re assured that details will be forthcoming.
A Dragon Ball theme park is being built in Saudi Arabia pic.twitter.com/r2xMfByJKY
— Park Hoppin’ (@ParkHoppin) March 22, 2024
It sounds like fun for Dragon Ball fans, and since this franchise has been going strong for forty years this year, that’s a lot of people. It’s also a great time for alternative theme parks to break ground – and when I say “alternative theme parks,” I mean ones that aren’t owned by Disney. Park Hoppin’ has been saying for some time that Universal Studios (or Universal Orlando Resort, or whatever I’m supposed to call it but won’t) has been catching up to and even surpassing some of the Disney parks, and they’ve recently unveiled a huge expansion that is clearly a direct challenge to Disney. Considering how big anime is – and how manga is superseding the American comic book industry, which a trip to Barnes and Noble will prove to you – it makes sense to build some theme parks based on the medium. I’m sure it’ll be a while before the Dragon Ball theme park is ready to open its gates, but it will be interesting to see how well it does and if more anime-themed parks start popping up around the world… like, say, in Orlando, Florida. That particular gauntlet may not be thrown down for a while, but the time is rapidly approaching. And I’d bet money on the people behind the Dragon Ball theme park neglecting to do something as stupid as building an insanely expensive hotel geared towards families and making it too expensive for every family outside the Rockefellers to afford. They’re sticking with roller coasters.
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