4. The parks of Dubailand

Perhaps the king of all failed theme park developments, Dubailand was announced in 2003 as a $64 billion entertainment venture that would artificially inflate Dubai in the oil-rich nation of the United Arab Emirates into a world-class destination. Part of the Middle East's jaw-dropping investment  Everyone wanted a piece of Dubai.

 

In March 2008, Six Flags Dubailand was announced with a planned 2011 opening. (The project was re-announced in 2016.) Melding Six Flags thrills with big budget theming, this "next generation" thrill park would've been a flagship of the company. 

And so it went for a (pre-Disney) Marvel Super Hero Theme Park theme park announced in 2007, a DreamWorks Theme Park, an Arabian Legend Theme Park, and a whole park dedicated to a regional children’s show called Freej (the equivalent of a Peppa Pig World, you might say), each earmarked for Dubailand.

 

Three months after that in July 2008, Universal Studios Dubailand was made official. With "Hollywood," "New York," "Surf City," "Epic Adventures," and "Legendary Heroes" areas, the new park was promised by a copy of its iconic art deco archway being built on the desert parcel it would occupy... a tease of what was to come.

Though unconfirmed, there are even rumors that Disney had drafted plans for a compact "Disneyland Dubai," with the unconfirmed concept art above believed to be a draft of the concept.

(If it's to be believed, ideas floated for the park at some stage involved a storybook entry land, a Star Wars land, Cars Land, Adventureland, and an enclosed, indoor Pixar area – though Disney concept art is notoriously flowery and this art could represent the project any any number of stages of development.)

But no one went bigger than Busch Entertainment (then-owners of SeaWorld), who announced in 2008 that they would open a multi-park resort complex called Worlds of Discovery in Dubai, with the iconic Palm Jebel Ali (a man-made archipelago of palm-shaped islands) gaining an orca-shaped island as its crown. That whale-shaped island would contain a SeaWorld, Busch Gardens, Discovery Cove, and Aquatica waterpark, all scheduled to open in 2012.

But Dubailand and its influx of major operators wasn't to be. Even though it felt like a weird fever dream to imagine the all-at-once, master-planned construction of a brand new Orlando in the Middle East, it very much seemed like Dubailand was really going to happen. But... it didn't. The Global Recession of 2008 crippled the tourism industry. Many of the companies who'd planned to license big name brands in Dubailand went under. Quietly and one-by-one, Six Flags, Universal, Marvel, DreamWorks, and other announced projects went silent, then dropped out altogether.

Much of the infrastructure that would've contained the first phase of Dubailand still remains today, overtaken by desert. Though operators tried to make the Middle East happen throughout the 2010s, fans quickly learned to have a "believe it when I see it" attitude when it came to ambitious parks there – even ones tied to trusted IPs.

Small pockets of the Middle East have indeed succeeded. For example, "Dubai Parks & Resorts" contained a LEGOLAND and the infamous MotionGate Dubai; 30 minutes away, IMG Worlds of Adventure is an indoor park licensing Marvel and Cartoon Network; and an hour south in Abu Dhabi, Ferrari World, SeaWorld Abu Dhabi, and Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi are each substantial and unique parks in their own right.

5. American Heartland(?)

... Which brings us back to American Heartland.

The $2 billion endeavor is billed as a "division" of Mansion Entertainment Group – a Missouri-based broadcast and production company that claims to have experience in "film, television, animation, music, theatre, and family immersive entertainment" and "producing high-quality, wholesome content that the entire family can enjoy." 

The next endeavor – announced amid much fanfare in summer 2023 – is American Heartland, a "Disneyland of the Midwest" ostensibly meant to celebrate all that makes the United States great. The 125 acre theme park supposedly coming to a rural town of just 5,000 residents in northeast Oklahoma is positioned as the centerpiece of a larger, 1,000 acre resort that is also meant to include an RV park, campground, a 300-room hotel, and an indoor waterpark.

The park's messaging has majorly centered on the involvement of Disney Imagineers (thanks to the involvement of THG Creative, the firm hired to do the planning a design-build for the park).

According to American Heartland, the park will include "six distinctly American lands" – Great Plains, Bayou Bay, Big Timber Falls, Stony Point Harbor, Liberty Village, and Electropolis. Substantial packages of concept art paint the picture of a park filled with E-Ticket experiences.

If it happens, the park will have a lot to live up to. Concept art certainly suggests that this park would be "Disney quality" in terms and its environments, painting pictures of the "Big Timber Falls" log flume...

... or of Bayou Bay (with a "swamp thrill ride" and a voodoo-themed haunted house)...

... or of Electropolis, where concept art for Universal's VelociCoaster has not-so-subtly been co-opted to suggest that a waterfront roller coaster will launch through a vibrant, neon cityscape. 

There's a "Route 66" that encircles the park, with guests driving themselves rather than riding a railroad as at Disneyland; there are multimedia theaters of American history; explorable sailing ships; a dark ride that sends guests through the legends of a haunted lighthouse... 

In other words, if this park really happens – and if it looks anywhere near as good as the concept art THG has produced – it may actually make us eat our words and rocket this Oklahoma park to the top of many bucket lists. But let's be clear: those are some very big ifs. 

Vice President of Marketing for Mansion Entertainment Group, Kristy Adams, says: "At this time, we don't have any investors involved. It's just privately funded, but the money is secured." While that sounds promising, it's also somewhat vague. If an upstart production company with apparently no real credits to its name in Missouri secretly secured $2 billion – half the price Disney spent to acquire Marvel – it seems like something someone would've noticed?

For now, Mansion maintains that we should expect the first phase of American Heartland (the campground and RV park) to open in 2025, and that the theme park itself will follow very soon after, in 2026. 

But we've got to ask you... would you bet money on American Heartland opening in 2026, or ever? Or do you think this very lofty idea will end up like the other parks on this list, quietly disappearing into "whatever happened to...?" conversations and "yep, it was never really going to happen" territory?