Why These Brands Are Excluded From The World’s Most-Visited Theme Park

The world’s best attended theme park is turning away top brands that want to be part of the action. (Photo by Waleed Zein/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Anadolu via Getty Images

It shouldn’t shock anyone to hear that the boss of the world’s most-visited theme park says he gets hundreds of partnership requests from the world’s biggest brands every year. However, it is a surprise to find out that he rejects all of them. Strange as it may sound, this approach is what gives the park its most magic touch.

Last month the leisure industry was rocked by the news that the theme park with the highest daily attendance worldwide isn’t operated by Disney. According to the latest data from the Themed Entertainment Association (TEA), Disney’s Magic Kingdom in Orlando, Florida had an average of 48,732 visitors per day in 2024 as 17.836 million guests streamed through its turnstiles giving it the highest annual attendance of any theme park.

However, this report revealed that in the same year, Dubai’s Global Village park attracted 10 million people in just 202 days giving it an average of 49,505 per day thereby dethroning Disney. Indeed, it is so popular that even though it only operates for 55% of the year, its annual attendance beats that of Hong Kong Disneyland, Disney’s Animal Kingdom and Disney Adventure World in Paris even though they are all open year-round.

Designed by the late Eddie Sotto, one of Disney’s most celebrated theme park designers, Global Village is split into two parts. One is formed from highly-Instagrammable pavilions housing shops, restaurants, artisans and shows from 29 countries.

The other part is home to 31 rides ranging from a ferris wheel, a roller coaster and a drop tower to a 5D show, a simulator and a flying theater with seats which move in time to scenes on a curved screen. Static attractions include a haunted house and walk-throughs themed to ancient ruins. In the middle of it all is a stunt show and a lagoon which hosts son et lumière shows.

As this report explained, Global Village started life in 1997 as a pop-up collection of kiosks representing just ten countries. Its path to becoming a fully-fledged theme park came in 2005 when it moved to its current 394.9 acre site and added permanent pavilions and rides. It is only open from late afternoon until around midnight from October to May to protect guests from the peak temperatures in Dubai.

Cleverly, this also gives Global Village five clear months to refurbish its facilities and add new attractions without disturbing guests. It ensures that the park opens every year in top form with new attractions to tempt visitors through the turnstiles. The latest season starts on Wednesday and is no exception.

The Syria and Kuwait pavilions are returning with new facades while Sri Lanka, which was part of Bangladesh last season, is now getting its own home.

The line-up of new attractions is crowned by Tokyo Rush, a new roller coaster featuring tight turns and a thrilling loop. It is one of around 200 attractions including more than 30 rides at Global Village. There are also 45,000 performances with this season seeing the debut of the Fast Live 2: The Police Strikes Back stunt show. Two other anchor stage shows also join the line-up – the Bollywood Idol musical follows two brothers taking different paths through life while Bank Heist is an acrobatic action adventure. Dance show Slam returns by popular demand along with Care Bears and PJ Masks at the Kids Theatre.

The Magic Touch

Like previous years, the highlight is sure to be the 3,500 shopping options and 250 dining locations. Global Village is filled with restaurants and food carts selling local dishes, many of which are so unusual that they have become viral sensations. Straight from London’s Camden Market, Baba G’s serves Indian-inspired street food such as stacked lamb patties while Italian-inspired Roots sells lemon sorbet served in a hollowed-out citrus skin. It took more than the wave of a wand for management to select them.

Global Village is owned by Dubai Holding Entertainment (DHE), a conglomerate which controls everything from the Dubai Parks and Resorts theme park complex, the world’s tallest observation wheel and the Middle East’s only indoor tropical rainforest to the Roxy Cinemas chain, the Coca-Cola Arena and the Arabian Radio Network.

Talking ahead of the launch of Global Village’s latest season, DHE’s supremely talented chief executive Fernando Eiroa explained to this author that “the secret of Global Village is exactly that it’s authentic. One of the things that we spend most time on in Global Village is making sure that if you are in a country pavilion, the products and the people in that pavilion are from that country. So you cannot have products being sold in a country pavilion if they are not authentic. This is something that we try to avoid.

He adds that “we always try to avoid bringing big names or international names or franchises in food and beverage. We receive every year hundreds of requests for these big brands to come to Global Village, and we don’t want that because we want first to offer the opportunity to small companies to promote their concepts. There are a lot of examples of companies and food and beverage outlets that started in Global Village and now have multiple locations throughout the country and throughout the city.” It is no exaggeration.

Bosnian House restaurant and Pakistan’s Bundoo Khan started at Global Village before expanding elsewhere in Dubai and across the rest of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Mini Pancakes has gone even further. Famous for its Nutella, Mars and Bounty sauces, the Dutch dessert brand was awarded Best Retail Award by Global Village in 2014. It went on to become one of the highlights at EXPO 2015 in Milan and at festivals in more than 10 countries.

Mini Pancakes’ chief executive Tomek Aalders told the Gulf News newspaper in 2018 that Global Village “has been an amazing springboard into the UAE and the rest of the world for us. We were one of the highlights of EXPO 2015 in Milan, something that would not have been possible if we had not won the Best Retail Award in Global Village.”

Local Specialities

Success stories like this spurred Eiroa to prioritize local businesses. “We work a lot with small and medium enterprises that we allow to test their products for a season. We work a lot with with Dubai Economic Department as Global Village is a platform for companies to gain customers. It’s an incubator for small businesses. Our secret is that what we have in Global Village is unique. So we cannot, with all due respect, have many other brands, international brands or whatever. We don’t want to have them inside Global Village because then the experience would not be authentic.”

Eiroa has been at the helm of DHE since 2021 giving him great insight into local suppliers, from the established names to the rising stars. With more than two decades of experience at the highest level of the experiential entertainment industry, he also has exceptional experience of global trends which has been crucial when it comes to expanding Global Village’s attraction portfolio.

Talking about Tokyo Rush, he says “this coaster is in the bigger size of what we have in Global Village so we are moving the needle a little bit but always being family oriented. We don’t want to have aggressive thrill attractions because we don’t believe that’s the market of Global Village.”

Its variety is just as important as its positioning. “The concept is that there is something for everybody. If you like food, we have two hundred and fifty to three hundred food and beverage outlets. If you like shopping, we have thousands of huge stores. If you like attractions, we have hundreds. You like music, we have forty-five thousand shows of all kinds – Western, Indian, Arabic – from the different pavilions.

“If you want to spend a lot of money, you can do it. If you don’t want to spend money, it’s affordable. The ticket is very, very affordable. So, I think that the secret is the combination of all these individual aspects.”

Whole New World

The price is the big difference between Global Village and a Disney park. Entry costs around $7 (AED25) per day but separate tickets have to be bought for the rides and they cost between $4 (AED15) and $20 (AED75) each. In contrast, pre-bookable tickets to Disney’s Magic Kingdom recently hit $229 a day for 2027 and although they include access to all of the rides, the queue-cutting passes cost another $5 to $10 each. It can be prohibitive.

As Dubai resident Seema Sabwani commented on Instagram, the Global Village “ticket price is [more] reasonable than other theme parks, families with kids can’t afford theme parks’ heavy entry prices.”

Some other theme parks on the TEA attendance list don’t offer access to the rides with their standard tickets. These include Liseberg in Sweden and Tivoli Gardens, the Danish theme park which was Walt Disney’s inspiration for Disneyland. Likewise, other parks on the TEA list are seasonal such as Alton Towers in Britain and Spain’s PortAventura. Global Village’s theme is clearer and its portfolio of rides is bigger than those of other parks on the TEA list but, bizarrely, it hasn’t historically been included.

This is despite it meeting the TEA’s criteria which state that “for a theme park or water park to be included in the report, at a minimum the property must be gated (entry ticket required).” Indeed, Martin Palicki, the eminent editor of the TEA’s Global Experience Index (the formal name for its attendance list) describes Global Village as a park.

This all spurred Phil Taylor, managing director of local industry experts Team Leisure Consulting, to bring the omission of Global Village to the attention of Entertainment + Culture Advisors, which crunches the TEA’s numbers. “Global Village has definitely now become one of the best performing theme parks in the world and is most certainly worthy of being included in the TEA lists,” he said. Edward Shaw, principal of Entertainment + Culture Advisors explained that “we continuously review our categories and the facilities that merit inclusion and will continue to do so for Global Village in the coming years.”

Global Village hasn’t just proven the test of time, its longevity is at the heart of its popularity. Children who visited decades ago are now returning with their own children to relive their childhood memories. “It’s part of Dubai’s history. It has been here for more than thirty years,” says Eiroa. “Global Village has grown with the city. Thirty years ago Dubai could not be compared to what is today and the same for Global Village. Global Village started in a very small location and today it’s one of the largest theme parks in the world in terms of daily visitation. It’s part of the cultural infrastructure of the city. It’s part of families, it’s a tradition to come.”