Dubai: Ben 10, the Powerpuff Girls, and Spider-Man will come together at IMG Worlds of Adventure, when it opens in Dubai on August 15 this year, its owner, Dubai-based Ilyas and Mustafa Galadari (IMG) Group, said on Sunday.
Construction of the 1.5 million-square-foot theme park in Dubailand on the outskirts of Dubai is 96 per cent complete and is in the “final testing and commissioning phases”, Lennard Otto, chief executive of IMG Worlds of Adventure, said at a press conference in Dubai.
“IMG Worlds of Adventure will open fully August 15, 2016,” he said, adding that all rides and attractions will be available when it opens.
Tickets to the indoor theme park will go on sale on the IMG Worlds of Adventure website starting on Monday. Adult tickets are priced Dh300, while tickets for children under 1.2 metres in height cost Dh250, according to Otto.
Prices of the VIP and fast-track tickets will be announced in around a month’s time and can be purchased online in late May, he told Gulf News on the sidelines of the press conference.
The theme park features more than 20 rides and attractions based around Marvel and Cartoon Network characters and dinosaurs, as well as a 12-screen Novo Cinemas, 28 food and beverage and 25 retail outlets. The park has four themed zones in total, including Cartoon Network, Marvel, IMG Boulevard and the Lost Valley-Dinosaur Adventure.
IMG Worlds of Adventure was scheduled to open in 2014, but it was delayed mainly due to the complexity of the project, Otto said. A mix of internal equity and Dh1.8 billion in bank loans were used to fund the project, which is valued at more than $1 billion (Dh3.67 billion), Mohammad Adnaan Oomer Sait, group chief financial officer at IMG Group, said.
In its first full year of operations, IMG Theme Park expects to be profitable and generate around Dh1.5 billion in revenues, Otto said.
A number of amusement parks are scheduled to open in the UAE in the next few years, including Dubai Parks and Resorts in Jebel Ali this October, Six Flags in 2019 and the Warner Bros World theme park in Abu Dhabi in 2018.
Asked what IMG Worlds of Adventure will do to stand out from competition, Otto told Gulf News: “ I think what puts us aside is that we are the first to open within this new space; we are a fully indoor facility so we can operate all year round; the brands we have and the location — we’re 15 minutes away from both the international airports and 20 minutes away from downtown.”
The entertainment and leisure sector in the Middle East and North Africa region is a “fast-growing sector” that has been largely untapped, Otto said. “How we see it shaping up [in Dubai] is very similar to that of Orlando in the near future where you have multiple parks flourishing in the same destination,” he added.
Amusement parks are expected to help attract more tourists to Dubai, which aims to welcome 20 million visitors per year by 2020.
IMG Worlds of Adventure is anticipated to attract 4.5 million visitors during the first year of operations and more than 30,000 per day, with an equal split between residents and tourists, Otto said. Average spend at the park is anticipated to be around Dh400 per person, he said.
The rides at the park include Avengers Battle of Ultron, which is an interactive ride, allowing visitors to fight alongside Avengers characters, and Spider-Man Doc Ock’s Revenge, a 400-metre spinning coaster.
The theme park has space for further expansion, Otto said, adding that the company is looking to launch several new attractions over the next five years.
The standard opening times are from 10am to 10pm from Sunday to Wednesday, and until midnight from Thursday to Saturday.
