Why The World’s Best Theme Park Rides Don’t Just Drive Attendance

Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi is launching two new DC Comics themed rides.

MSM

On the face of it there doesn’t seem to be any secret about why theme park operators build new attractions. If guests have to pay separately to go on each ride then the more there are, the greater their revenue-generating potential. If the park charges visitors a flat entry fee then building new attractions encourages more guests to visit thereby boosting revenue. Surprisingly, that’s not actually the most magical touch that new additions can have.

There is a simple business model behind theme parks, especially ones based on Intellectual Property such as movies. Watching the movies makes children ask their parents to take them to the parks that are based on them. Gift shops selling merchandise featuring the characters in the rides are cunningly placed at the exits of the attractions so that riders have to pass through them when they are in a carefree frame of mind. This increases the chance that they will buy the merchandise and when their kids see it at home it reminds them of the happy time they had in the park. This causes them to pester their parents to book a return visit and the cycle begins anew. That’s just the start.

Entrance tickets tend to be loss leaders for theme park operators as they often alone don’t cover the colossal energy and staffing costs. However, once guests are inside they are a captive audience so they have little choice but to buy the on-site food, beverage and merchandise which have the highest margins. International guests tend to visit theme parks for longer than their domestic counterparts as they have to travel farther to get there. The longer they stay, the more they spend in the shops and restaurants and, voila, the higher the operator’s profits become.

As an industry pioneer, Disney has got this strategy down to a fine art as many of its resorts don’t just have multiple parks, which extends the length of stay, they are also accompanied by entertainment districts, elaborately-themed hotels and, in some cases, even sprawling sports facilities. The more there is to do on site, the less chance that visitors will leave the resort and the more they spend within it. Although Disney developed this magic formula it is far from the only operator which has mastered it.

As I have extensively reported, in just the past 15 years, Yas Island in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has emerged as comfortably the world’s leading all-in-one resort and not just because it is home to the most pre-eminent parks in their class – SeaWorld, Warner Bros. World, Ferrari World and Yas Waterworld.

Yas Island is also home to a marina, an arena, a mega mall with 370 shops, deluxe hotels, beaches, a race circuit, the world’s largest indoor skydiving wind tunnel, the world’s tallest indoor climbing wall and a golf course which hosts a round of the PGA European Tour. They are all within walking distance of the the four parks easily making Yas Island the world’s most well-connected resort.

Having such a wide variety of on-site entertainment drives tremendous traffic with more than 38 million visits to Yas Island in 2024. This upward trend continued in 2025 as the destination had a record-breaking summer with a 15% year-on-year increase in visits and an average occupancy rate of 85% in its hotels. Guests came from far and wide with 31% growth from China, 86% from Russia and 47% from the United Kingdom, partly driven by Yas Island’s inaugural ad campaign in London as I reported in the newspaper City A.M.

Even that isn’t the end of this holistic strategy. Yas Island is run by Abu Dhabi government-backed leisure operator Miral which plays a crucial role in the UAE’s economic development. Abu Dhabi’s vast fortunes have been built on fossil fuels but as reserves began to dwindle it embarked on a groundbreaking plan to diversify its economy.

Profits from gas and oil have been pumped into the development of a leisure infrastructure to tempt tourists and drive business to local companies. Theme parks are at the vanguard of this strategy as they attract tourists from afar and the colossal complexes have the capacity to welcome millions of people. The more people who visit, the greater the local spending and the more diverse Abu Dhabi’s economy becomes.

The dynamic duo responsible for implementing this strategy on Yas Island are Miral’s chief executive Mohamed Al Zaabi and its chairman Mohamed Al Mubarak, who is also chairman of Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism (DCT).

INSEAD-educated Al Zaabi began his career in business working for the UAE government before switching to ALDAR Properties, Abu Dhabi’s biggest listed property developer where he rose to the role of director of strategic investment. This gave him high-level experience of the role that real estate plays at the heart of the UAE’s economy and also brought him into contact with Al Mubarak, who was ALDAR’s chief executive before he took his role at the DCT.

A graduate of Northeastern University in Boston, Al Mubarak is one of Abu Dhabi’s most prominent business figures having turned the city into a global cultural powerhouse. As this author reported in amusement industry title Blooloop, Al Mubarak’s pioneering approach brought the Louvre, the Natural History Museum and a National Museum to Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island cultural district with a Guggenheim on the way.

Some operators would sit back with all that under their belts but Al Zaabi and Al Mubarak are far from complacent. In fact, last year they cast perhaps the most powerful spell in Yas Island’s history when they announced that Disney had chosen it as the home of its seventh resort. As the most well-known name in the theme park industry, Disney has the greatest potential to drive tourism and, as I reported, six steps were essential to ensuring that it picked Abu Dhabi.

At the top of the list was Miral’s strategy of perfecting its theme park portfolio. Each of its parks is a step up from its predecessors as Al Zaabi explained to this reporter. The “next experience will be better than the previous one. That’s what we do always at Miral. We keep pushing the bar,” he said.

It hasn’t escaped the attention of the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA). Every two years IAAPA presents the Liseberg Applause Award to a theme park which has inspired the industry with its management, operations and creative accomplishments. It is the themed entertainment industry’s equivalent of winning an Oscar for the world’s best park and this year it was handed to Warner Bros. World making it the first destination in the Middle East to receive the top honor.

Still, Miral isn’t resting on its laurels. It is in the midst of expanding Warner Bros. World with a massive land themed to Harry Potter and earlier this week announced that two new rides based on DC Comics characters will also be coming to the park. In 2028 it will swing open the doors to Superman Up and Away, a next-generation roller coaster which will allow guests to ride face-down in the same flying pose as the Man of Steel himself.

Groundwork for the coaster can already be seen outside the park so that wasn’t a complete surprise to industry observers. However, Miral also announced that on July 26 it will open a ride called Kryptonite Collider and this came completely out of the blue. Believed to be a NebulaZ ride from Italian manufacturer Zamperla, it features seats attached to pendulums which swing and spin around a central column. The exhilarating ride experience alone looks to be enough to draw a crowd but Miral isn’t stopping there.

As part of its announcement Miral unveiled a detailed story behind the attraction which will place riders in the middle of a fictional experiment led by Superman’s arch-enemy Lex Luthor. The immersion starts before guests set foot on the ride as the scenery surrounding the queue tells them that they are test subjects in Luthor’s Everyman Project which is meant to give them superhuman powers. Onboard audio, lighting effects and digital elements convey the experience during the ride and it is followed through on interactive digital screens after it ends.

No stone has been left unturned in the story thanks to Al Zaabi’s astounding eye for detail along with tireless work from him and his team. The announcement was even accompanied by a slick promotional video set seamlessly in the world of last year’s Superman movie and the recreation of his home town of Metropolis in Warner Bros. World. “Miral keeps dreaming up these incredible experiences, and our job is to turn that ambition into stories people can feel, often before the experience itself is ready for guests,” said the company’s talented marketing director Khaled Attallah.

There is good reason why Miral puts so much stock in details like this for individual rides. They are the building blocks of the entire theme park flywheel as Chris Buker, Miral’s vice president of strategic planning and revenue management, explains.

“The strongest destination businesses don’t view attractions as standalone products. They view them as portfolio assets within a larger ecosystem designed to drive visitation, engagement, loyalty, and ultimately lifetime value,” says Buker.

“A guest rarely decides to return because of a single attraction. They return because the destination continues to feel fresh. Every new experience extends the relevance of the overall portfolio, creates new marketing moments, strengthens the value proposition for repeat visitation, and deepens the relationship guests have with the brand.

“It’s a simple but powerful flywheel: New product creates a reason to visit. Visitation creates engagement. Engagement builds loyalty. Loyalty increases lifetime value. Then the cycle begins again.”

Buker is a supremely-skilled veteran of the entertainment industry with a career stretching back to the late 1990s when he worked in merchandising for Paramount Pictures. Proving his credentials as an innovator, he went on to found K.A.B. Productions which pioneered the theme park industry’s first digital video platform. This enabled digital photo sales, custom DVDs and downloadable content which were rolled out across Cedar Fair, Six Flags and Paramount, culminating in a successful acquisition by a major media company.

Most recently, he worked as a strategy director for Disney where he operated across its Imagineering design division, consumer products, franchise ownership, brand growth, destination and commercial strategy. In April this year he switched to Miral and moved to Abu Dhabi. With his former employer bringing a park to the region, his move comes at just the right time.

As he explained “it represents an opportunity to shape the broader destination strategy, commercial platform, and long-term growth model supporting the future of tourism and entertainment in the region – including the long-term vision surrounding Disneyland Abu Dhabi.” It will take a lot to top Yas Island’s attractions but if anyone can do that it’s Miral.

Additional reporting by Chris Sylt