When Walt Disney flung open the gates to his Anaheim “Happiest Place on Earth” in 1955, he minted a pop-culture ritual. Generations have since mapped birthdays, honeymoons and full-on pilgrimages around castle silhouettes, limited-edition ears and the thrill of spotting Mickey on Main Street. Anaheim begat Orlando, then Tokyo, Paris, Hong Kong and Shanghai, each new park triggering the same global outfit-planning frenzy and hashtag storms of #DisneyBounding.
That familiar wave of excitement hit a new crest on May 7, 2025, when The Walt Disney Company and Abu Dhabi developer Miral announced plans to build Disneyland Abu Dhabi on Yas Island. It will be Disney’s seventh theme-park resort and its first in the Middle East.
Set against Yas Island’s glittering coastline, the new resort will join existing attractions like Warner Bros. World, SeaWorld Abu Dhabi and Ferrari World, creating an entertainment corridor that draws visitors from across the globe.
In a departure from Disney’s wholly owned model, Miral will finance, construct and operate the resort under license, while Walt Disney Imagineering leads creative design and operational oversight. Disney will earn royalties on park revenue.
Details are still under Imagineering lock-and-key, but executives promise a park that stitches classic Disney storytelling to Emirati motifs—think pearl-white castle spires reflecting Gulf sunsets and waterfront rides nodding to desert-meets-sea lore.
The resort blueprint sketches hotels, restaurants and retail villages, with design slated to run about two years and construction up to five. “This is about bringing Disney magic to a crossroads of the world in a way that feels uniquely Abu Dhabi,” Iger said. Miral chairman Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak called the project “a milestone that will inspire future generations and supercharge the capital’s visitor economy.”
Abu Dhabi’s strategic location within a four-hour flight of one-third of the world’s population, and its status as home to the largest global airline hub, handling some 120 million passengers a year through Abu Dhabi and Dubai speaks for the project’s potential to reshape the region’s tourism landscape.
