Orlando firm designs Dragon Ball theme park in Saudi Arabia

A themed-entertainment design company in Orlando is planning and creating a major theme park in Saudi Arabia. Falcon’s Creative Group is turning Dragon Ball, a Japanese manga franchise, into a real-life experience expected to be a few acres larger than Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom theme park.

The attraction is part of the Qiddiya City development, an entertainment push by the Saudi government. Its effort includes stadiums, theaters, a Formula One race, e-sports venues, a water park and several theme parks, including Dragon Ball and one developed by Six Flags Entertainment Corp.

“Qiddiya has a huge ambition to really create this whole city for play,” said David Schaefer, chief development officer of Falcon’s Creative Group.

Falcon’s has said it is hiring up to 200 additional workers for its Orlando headquarters for the park and other projects, another example of Central Florida being a hub for theme park creation beyond Disney, Universal and SeaWorld.

The Dragon Ball theme park, announced at AnimeJapan 2024 in March, will feature seven lands and more than 30 attractions, including a roller coaster built around Shenron, a dragon character more than 220 feet high. The entire park is expected to cover more than 120 acres. Magic Kingdom is about 107 acres.

“I am flabbergasted with how much we can tell you already, how much that they were able and willing to get approved to announce,” said Robb Wilson, Falcon’s vice president for project management. “It’s honestly more than I would have ever expected, more than you would see announced from something like a domestic project at this stage.”

No timeline has been announced for Dragon Ball, but the concept is complete, Schaefer said. “Now we’re moving into technical design,” he said.

There’s plenty to do. Among Falcon’s current employees are theme-park master planners, architectural designers, area-development designers, attraction designers, illustrators, concept designers, interior designers and project managers. Its business includes a digital media studio to produce film and animation for the rides as well as a digital version of the park. It’s also making 3-D visualizations, renderings and video fly-throughs of the spaces.

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“Everything from our core business is done from Orlando,” Schaefer said. Falcon’s has about 140 employees in Central Florida, and in November it said it planned to add 200 people here.The company recently moved into a larger space in MetroWest.

Qiddiya Investment Co. hired Falcon’s, and Toei Animation, the Japanese intellectual property owner of Dragon Ball, is also a partner.

Familiarity with the product’s genre benefits Falcon’s, Wilson said. Some Orlando employees are “superfans from birth,” he said.

“My entire life has absorbed Dragon Ball and several other anime IPs, in what might be a hilarious or absurd kind of level. It really permeates everything. I can’t over-exaggerate it,” he said.

“Our fandom is not just happenstance. It’s kind of tied directly into how we design everything, how the fan would experience it,” Wilson said.

Park planning includes juggling the different time zones of the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Japan for virtual meetings.

“We all have to set our alarms earlier, stay up late occasionally,” Schaefer said.

Falcon’s has been involved with other Qiddiya projects, including a water park, but the Dragon Ball theme park is the largest undertaking.

“We’ve continued to deliver and do well for them. So they continue to come back to us for more and more projects,” Schaefer said.

Landing the theme park deal started with a design competition among global firms. Part of that process was honing in on the goals of the park such as its target audience, its scale and its level of thrills.

While the Six Flags Qiddiya park will go for records – it is touting the world’s fastest, tallest and longest roller coaster plus the world’s tallest drop tower – Dragon Ball will be about immersive experiences, Falcon’s officials said.

Dragon Ball began as a manga comic in the 1980s and grew into animated series, films and videogames. The series follows Son Goku’s martial-arts journey from childhood through adulthood. He joins a girl named Bulma in the search for seven Dragon Balls – thus, the park’s seven lands – that can summon a wish-granted dragon. There’s a lot of lore to work with.

“I think our task would have been much more challenging if they said do one land or one little area because then you’d have to distill it down so much,” Schaefer said.

“The goal here is to appeal to all audiences. So we’re looking through it through that lens,” he said. “It’s very much going to be for broad appeal for the international market.”

Attraction designers are finding Saudi Arabia to be an enticing place to work.

“You could say that Saudi Arabia is one of the hottest markets in the business right now,” said Jakob Wahl, president and CEO of Orlando-based International Association of Attractions and Amusement Parks.

“The population is growing, and we have a very young population, which is open for entertainment activities,” he said. “In addition, we see projects being built there which are so iconic that they want to drive international tourism in a way that will be significant for the future.”

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The Saudis see themselves as a huge growth market for entertainment, Wahl said.

“The governing body of the attractions industry has issued licenses for, like, 24 theme parks and many entertainment centers,” he said.

Attractions in Saudi Arabia attracted 51 million people in 2022.

Wilson, who attended the Dragon Ball announcement in Japan, said the reaction was upbeat there.

“The people in Japan were saying, ‘Wow, this really, really looks and feels like Dragon Ball,’” Wilson said.

The manga creators told Wilson that their original intent was not international distribution.

“There’s a pride, it’s kind of a national pride of that product … being true to themselves and true to their art that happened to become a global phenomenon and sensation when they didn’t have a mindset for the business aspect of it,” he said. “They were just making art for, for their own domestic culture.”

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