In 2018, Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi opened on Yas Island, near Ferrari World. The 1.65 million square foot indoor property clocks in as the world’s largest indoor theme park. Developed and owned by the Miral Asset Management company and largely designed by the Thinkwell Group in Los Angeles, the project is surely one of the largest theme parks undertaken in the Middle East… and arguably, it’s also the best.
It’s not the first theme park to use the Warner Bros. name – “Warner Bros. Movie World” parks operate in Spain and Australia (with a third in Germany dropping the branding in 2004) and Warner’s one-time ownership and continued partnership with Six Flags keeps DC Heroes and Looney Tunes as amusement park staples across the U.S.
But the Abu Dhabi park is a reboot of the concept. Unlike the usual treatment of Warner IP (namely, “label-slapped” roller coasters), Warner Bros. World really is a proper theme park, pulling serious punches with the studios’ enviable collection of IPs. In other words, Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi tracks closer than ever to seeing what Warner’s characters can be when treated with the kind of reverence and budget typically afforded only to Disney and Universal’s portfolios.
Passing through a golden portal beneath a post-modern waterpower, guests enter into a fully-enclosed theme park packed with impressive environments, unexpected detail, clever ride systems, and some of the most thoughtful and innovative use of DC Heroes and Looney Tunes we’ve seen. There’s a whole lot to discover in this very cool theme park, so let’s take a peek…
Warner Bros. Plaza
Proceeding past the park’s lobby, guests emerge in the park’s central hub – Warner Bros. Plaza. It’s a celebration of Hollywood packed with restaurants and shops, as well as inviting fountains and gardens. The central space serves as a performance venue for the park. But it also introduces an important design trick.
Yes, Warner Bros. World is completely enclosed – practically a necessity in Abu Dhabi, where summer highs regularly reach 110 degrees Fahrenheit. (Winter highs typically top 70 or 80 degrees, too.) But it’s not necessarily one gigantic, echoing facility. Warner Bros. Plaza is self-contained, with its own “sky” of dreamy, sunset clouds and walls that isolate it from the rest of the gargantuan facility.
From Warner Bros. Plaza, four portal diverge: to the southwest, an art deco archway to Metropolis; to the northwest, a gothic facade leading to the alleys of Gotham City; to the northeast, the ACME Corporation factory, connecting to Cartoon Junction, and to the southeast, an enclosed mall leading to the land that’ll serve as the start of our counterclockwise tour…
Bedrock
Proceeding counterclockwise around the park, guests first enter Bedrock – the prehistoric town from the The Flintstones. Yes, it’s worth remembering that Warner Bros. absorbed the historic and beloved animation studio Hanna-Barbera in 2002, adding mid-century American icons like The Jetsons, The Flintstones, Josie & The Pussycats, Johnny Quest, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Top Cat, The Smurfs, and of course, Scooby-Doo to their content libraries.
In Bedrock, the perpetual dusk of Warner Bros. Plaza gives way to a wraparound cartoon-blue sky, lit by flat, fluffy white animated cloud fixtures above. Guests can dine on Bronto Burgers and Mammoth Munchies, or shop at the Bedrock Boutique.
But of course, the highlight is the Flintstones Bedrock River Adventure, visible from the park only as its prehistoric boats plunge out of cavern and drift around a rocky peak of cascading waterfalls and geysers. The ride itself (above) is simple, but includes some wonderful gags and set-ups, a mid-ride turntable, and beautiful lighting and scenic design.
Landed in the Bedrock desert is The Jetsons Cosmic Orbiter – a “Dumbo” style family spinning ride – and the Marvin the Martian Crater Crashers bumper cars. The two futuristic, space-y family flat rides are drawn from two different universes (Hanna Barbera and Looney Tunes), but they serve as the perfect transition to a second desert environment…
Dynamite Gulch
With the prehistoric, bulbous rocks of Bedrock becoming a stylized, Wild West mountain town wrapped in cliffs, the park’s main path becomes a two-lane desert highway into Dynamite Gulch. The park’s second land recalls the vast deserts traversed by the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote in classic Looney Tunes shorts. Yosemite Sam’s Rootin’ Tootin’ Gas Station serves as the land’s retail space, but most eyes are turned skyward.
Named after the 1949 short that served as Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner’s premier, Fast & Furry-ous sees guests strap into inverted roller coaster trains (affixed with genuine ACME rockets), joining Wile E. in pursuit of the lightning-fast desert bird once more. In addition to clever nods to the coyote’s failed catch attempts littering the desert caves of the queue, the ride includes a brief dark ride scene as it climbs the lift hill, as well as several blink-and-you’ll-miss-it vignettes as it weaves and races around lopsided cartoon hoodoos.
The custom, Intamin-made family coaster goes well above the standard off-the-shelf ride you might expect. And by reaching speeds of 30 miles per hour, it’s inarguably both more fast and more furious than a certain ride at Universal Studios Florida… Anyway, Bedrock and Dynamite Gulch together create a sort of desert-stylized introduction to Warner Bros. animation archive… but it really comes together in the next land.
Cartoon Junction
The rocky flat backdrop of Dynamite Gulch paints itself into rolling, grassy hills as we enter Cartoon Junction. Somewhat like a “Mickey’s Toontown,” Cartoon Junction serves as a catch-all for the best of Warner Bros. animation. Centered around the Cartoon Junction Carousel, the stylized little town square brings unlikely companions together.
Serving as a portal into the land from the Warner Bros. Plaza hub is the ACME Factory, an enclosed mini-land just for very young guests. It includes a factory playground as well as three mini-flat-rides: the Daffy Jet-Propelled Pogo Stick frog-hopper drop ride, the Tweet Wild Wockets mini-Dumbo, and the Wild Racing with Taz mini-Whip ride.
Right on the town square is a creepy old manor – home to Scooby-Doo: The Museum of Mysteries. Scooby Doo has had his fair share of dark rides across the world (thanks to Sally Corp.’s licensing of the character for blaster rides that once spread across Paramount and even some Six Flags parks).
But Museum of Mysteries uses trackless dark ride technology. Yes, the ride is fairly simple in its execution, but it’s a cute use of the character, and with three spots along the ride’s course where the vehicles separate and encounter unique scenes.
Tom & Jerry Swiss Cheese Spin is another of the land’s E-Tickets. After one of the best queues in the park tours guests through a perfect mid-century cartoon home, guests suddenly find themselves “shrunk” to the size of a mouse, walking through the spaces between walls. There, they board a spinning family coaster that swerves and spirals through a kitchen in chaos, caught right between Tom and Jerry.
The land’s highlight, though, has to be Ani-Mayhem. Something like a cross between a trackless dark ride, a standard laser-blasting dark ride, and Midway Mania, the ride sees guests step into the swanky offices of the ACME Corporation, where they’re armed with ACME scanners and set loose into the warehouse to begin delivering packages. Combining physical sets and targets with digital ones, the ride sends guests through Cartoon Junction, Dynamite Gulch, Warner Bros. Plaza, and even to the moon before returning with a classic “That’s All, Folks!”
Together, Bedrock, Dynamite Gulch, and Cartoon Junction offer five significant headliners (Bedrock River Adventure, Fast and Furry-ous, Museum of Mysteries, Swiss Cheese Spin, and Ani-Mayhem) as well as six supporting flat rides. But the worlds of cartoon daylight disappear as our counterclockwise tour continues, leading to the dark underbelly of Warner Bros. World… Read on…