www.themeparkinsider.com: Remember earlier this year, when the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia announced plans for a Six Flags theme park near Riyadh? I have been planning my trip to the annual IAAPA Attractions Expo in Orlando next month, and I have been struck by the number of sessions that are being sponsored by Saudi Entertainment. With a multi-billion dollar investment in its General Authority for Entertainment, as part of its Saudi Vision 2030 plan to diversify the Kingdom's economy beyond oil, Saudi Arabia clearly is trying to make a big entrance into the global themed entertainment business.
But are theme park fans willing to spend money in Saudi Arabia?
2 comments:
There is an interesting point here about how willingness to accept and welcome others increases the chance of them accepting you; however, what happens when you don't accept them for legitimate reasons? This is something this editor is clearly struggling with as he swings wildly from being skeptical about this new theme park to welcoming to boycotting to curious. Yes the people themselves are separate from the politicians and assassins, but the business is still supporting the country and supporting those regimes whose policies you may not agree with so do you actually want to embrace this? Will showering them with acceptance bring any change especially in an industry that thrives off of being overly accommodating? On the other hand, as this park is not really meant for European or American tourists does it even matter? Yes it may be harder to get American expertise to build this park, but that is a smaller subset of people with different concerns (ethical and monetary) that they must balance themselves. It’s a weird situation and I feel, as this editors seems to by the end, that we kind of have to just wait and see. It must be on our radar given the interconnectedness of the world in our time, but we must remember it is still quite beyond the reaches of our personal spheres of influence.
At first I was interested in this article giving some insight on how recent events have or may alter plans, and while it touched briefly on those things in a very superficial manner, I was absolutely stunned that I read this gem: “That means having the willingness to travel to unfamiliar communities — both far away and close to home — and to do so with a humility and respect that shows others you are there to connect and not to confront.” Immediately I scrolled up and realized that my author here is a white man, who probably has never had to worry about personal safety due to race or gender in a way the rest of us do. While being a Journalist definitely comes with some risks, if he were not a journalist and just a travel enthusiast he still wouldn’t face half the risks that POC and Women do when looking at travel. Themed Entertainment is a definite area of interest for me, but the fact remains that a lot of themed entertainment growth right now is happening in places like Saudi Arabia and similar areas with outdated ideas on gender relations that will make it very hard for someone like me to be an attractive hire for companies looking to create for those projects. This is infuriating not only as someone who wants to get a job, work on cool projects, and so on and so forth, but also as someone who loves to travel. Telling me to have willingness towards the unfamiliar and humility and respect does no good when I’m actively in a place where I may be threatened. This was an unfortunately disappointing article.
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