Fans of Dragon Ball were saddened a few weeks ago when it was announced that Akira Toriyama, the franchise’s creator, had passed away. However, his death is far from the end of all things Dragon Ball. It has been revealed that an entire theme park dedicated to the series is in development as part of Quiddiya City, a major tourism and entertainment project built outside of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
According to the official announcement, the new Dragon Ball Theme Park will boast seven different themed lands tied to the seven Dragon Balls, which will include iconic locations from the Dragon Ball shows, including Kame House Island, Capsule Corporation, and Beerus Planet. There will be more than 30 different rides, including five that it says will be record-breaking, including a Shenron Dragon rollercoaster that will reach 70 meters in height. The park is set to be built on land of 500,000 square meters, making it slightly larger than Disneyland Park, which currently sits on a little over 400,000 square meters. Check out the official announcement trailer below.
This makes it not only a substantial theme park, but a massive one when realizing that the entire thing is dedicated to a single franchise. We’ve seen single IPs get their theme park lands, like the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Parks or Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disney Parks, but this would be like creating an entire Star Wars theme park with multiple lands based on different parts of the story with attractions to match. Which, to be fair, sounds amazing.
Dragon Ball began as a manga series in 1984, so there are decades of material for the park to pull from when it comes to locations, characters and stories for attractions. An entire theme park dedicated to a single property is the logical next step following the success of the Wizarding World and Galaxy’s Edge. We've only seen the idea increase in use, as with the recent Super Nintendo Land at Universal Studios Hollywood. The Wizarding World is getting its third land at Universal Orlando's new Epic Universe park, so one wonders if we might see more theme parks like this in the future.
The location of the new Dragon Ball Theme Park may seem unusual, being based in Saudi Arabia rather than Japan, where the franchise is certainly at its most popular, but the Middle East has become a major theme park hub over the last few years. SeaWorld and Warner Bros. have parks in Abu Dhabi, and Lionsgate has a park in Dubai. The Dragon Ball park won’t even be the only one in the Qiddiya complex, as Six Flags is currently building a location there as well.
Neither an opening date for the park, nor even an exact date for the beginning of construction, has been announced, but certainly a theme park on this scale is going to take two to three years to complete, at the very least. Once it’s done, there will certainly be millions of fans who will want to take the opportunity to immerse themselves in the world of Dragon Ball.
