I'm off for Dubai next week to attend the 14th annual DUBAI ENTERTAINMENT, ARTS & LEISURE EXPO (DEAL) at the Dubai World Trade Center, which is pretty much a trade show for theme park developers. Dubailand, if you haven't heard about it yet, is a multi-phase development project that, when completed, will be larger than Walt Disney World. Twice the size of Manhattan—larger than the city of San Francisco.
The Dubailand Wikipedia entry has some pretty good information on the project. The area is planned like a full-scale city, with multi-use residential, shopping, commercial and entertainment districts. Six Flags, Paramount Parks (now Cedar Fair), Universal Studios and Dreamworks have all signed on to design and develop parks, with Dubai Holding, the parent developer, picking up the construction costs. there are four initial stages planned, with full project completion due sometime between 2015 and 2018.
I’ll have five nights and six days to take in the city. Apart from attending the conference and meeting some folks involved in the theming industry, there are several venues I plan to visit and photograph, and—wi-fi willing—I’ll be able to post some observations every night. Internet in Dubai can be spotty, I’m told (due to proxy servers censoring sexual and political content). After meeting with my thesis advisor this past week, we roughed out a plan of attack for my visit. The theming conference runs for three days, and i’ll have a day and two nights in the city before that begins. I will probably start by checking out some of the more famed themed shopping districts, like the Ibn Battuta Mall (their website is currently undergoing maintenance, but the mall's Wikipedia entry is pretty good). Ibn Battuta is divided into six elaborately themed geographical areas; China, India, Egypt, Tunisia, Andalusia and Persia. Interestingly, the mall has an educational agenda for visiting westerners as well—intricate museum-quality historical displays on each culture are peppered throughout.
After attending the conference, I'll have a few more days left to poke around. I think it's wisest to save the major theme parks until after the event, because anyone I talk to will probably inform my observations for the better. I'll be hopping on the slopes at Ski Dubai, which claims to be the largest indoor skiing facility in the world. The massive structure is part of The Mall of The Emirates, one of the world's largest shopping complexes. I also plan to go to the Wild Wadi Water Park, at which the theme is the voyages of Sinbad the Sailor—exquisite artificial rockwork and landscaping abound.
I listened to an interesting interview the other day on NPR, available here, with a New York Times travel writer who recently did a "36 hours in" feature on Dubai. One of her most insightful comments was that as she walked through the marketplace stalls selling knock-off designer goods, the vendors were shouting “genuine fakes!” She felt this summed up the entire city, and I couldn’t agree more. Dubai is where theming intersects with lifestyle, where brandscape meets simulation. It’s the future of thematic design—as much a departure from Disneyland as a descendant.