‘Dragon Ball’ goes to the desert with Saudi Arabian theme park

IN THE fictional world of Dragon Ball, the popular Japanese manga and animation franchise, the lead character embarks on a journey to collect seven magical balls to summon a wish-granting dragon.

That wish appears to have manifested as a theme park outside Riyadh for Qiddiya Investment, a real estate developer backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

The Arab Gulf country’s latest attempt to boost tourism will have 30 rides featuring Goku, Freeza and other characters, according to the firm’s website. The park will span 500,000 square metres within Qiddiya City, a plot of desert around 40 minutes from the capital that’s been marked for development as an entertainment district, with plans for a stadium, hotels, a water park, a Six Flags park and golf courses.

Saudi Arabia has been pouring billions of US dollars into development projects that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sees as key to help the country lower its reliance on oil.

The country targets 150 million tourists a year by 2030, and the crown prince has positioned video games and entertainment as a pillar of the country’s future growth.

Japan-based Toei Animation and a unit of MBS’s MiSK Foundation have teamed up on producing anime movies. The country’s sovereign wealth fund is now Nintendo’s largest outside shareholder.

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One of the park’s signature rides will be a 70-metre high roller coaster named after Shenron, the manga’s magical dragon.

The theme park announcement comes just days after the death of Akira Toriyama, the creator behind the Dragon Ball. The franchise has sold more than 260 million copies worldwide as well as inspiring several anime series, video games and Hollywood-produced films.

Although the Saudi desert seems like an unlikely location for a Dragon Ball theme park, it’s guaranteed to be hot: daytime temperatures in Riyadh’s summer can easily skyrocket to more than 50 deg C. BLOOMBERG