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Warner Bros. Announces Premiere Of Its First Hotel

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Media giant Warner Bros. has come one step closer to challenging theme park titans Disney and Universal by announcing that it will open its first-ever themed hotel in 2021.

The eight-storey property will be located next to the cutting-edge Warner Bros. World indoor theme park in Abu Dhabi which opened last year to great acclaim. It is the crown jewel in Warner’s portfolio of visitor attractions which includes a theme park in Spain, a studio tour in California and an exhibition of props and sets from the Harry Potter movies in Britain.

A restaurant featuring Warner’s DC Comics characters, such as Batman and Superman, is believed to be under development in London so a themed hotel was a logical next step.

Known as the WB Abu Dhabi, the sweeping steel and glass structure will be home to several restaurants, a spa, a shaded rooftop pool, a ballroom and more than 250 rooms. They will be inspired by Warner’s most famous franchises including Looney Tunes and Hanna-Barbera cartoons as well as DC.

“This new venture will pay tribute to Warner Bros.’ legacy of rich entertainment, offering fans a unique way to experience their favorite brands and characters,” says Pam Lifford, President of Warner Bros. Global Brands and Experiences.

Concept art of the rooms shows superhero comic covers in display cabinets and cushions featuring the face of Warner’s mascot Bugs Bunny. It will take more than the wave of a magic wand to build it.

The hotel will cost a total of $112 million and it is understood that this is being funded by Miral Asset Management, the Abu Dhabi government’s real estate developer which holds the license to build Warner parks in the region.

Warner, which is owned by telecoms giant AT&T, is the first movie studio to have its own theme park in the Middle East and Miral spent $1 billion on it. At 1.7 million square feet Warner Bros. World is the world’s biggest indoor theme park and it is also one of the most innovative.

As we have reported, it was created by leading independent theme park design company Thinkwell which cast a powerful spell. Only around a third of the park is on show to guests with the remainder being the rides themselves which are hidden behind internal walls. Elaborate ride entrances are set into the walls which has a magic touch as it means that you don’t know what you’re getting until you step inside.


It makes the ride entrances seem like portals to different worlds and this effect is magnified as some of them are actually the front doors of brightly-coloured houses. They appear to have been designed like an actual town. There’s a theatre where Bugs and Daffy Duck perform for kids, a Scooby-Doo ride set in a spooky mansion and even a factory which contains a high-tech marvel called Ani-Mayhem.


Remember ACME and its wacky cartoony killing machines which injured the user but not the target? Ani-Mayhem sees guests working as a deliveryman for it.


Many theme parks have rides which require guests to fire at a 3D screen whilst others are trackless and some allow riders to interact with the scenery. Ani-Mayhem does all that and stars toons like Tweetie Pie and Sylvester who help you hit parcels on 3D screens and in the physical sets with a gun in the shape of a barcode scanner.


Even the Flintstones log flume features some high-tech wizardry. At one point the boat mounts a turntable and slowly spins in time to footage on a semicircular screen to make it seem like it’s moving with the action.


As we have reported, the park is part of long-term strategy to diversify Abu Dhabi’s economy which is currently fueled by oil.


Just minutes away from Warner Bros. World is high-tech water park, a sprawling shopping mall, the Ferrari World theme park, featuring the world’s fastest roller coaster, and the Formula One track where the season-ending race took place at the start of this month. A few days earlier Abu Dhabi also inaugurated the world’s tallest indoor climbing wall and a SeaWorld park is set to swing open its doors in 2022.


Miral’s chairman Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak says that the WB Abu Dhabi “is yet another step in our journey to position Yas Island as one of the top global destinations for entertainment, leisure and business. Our partnership with Warner Bros. is a unique collaboration that adds another dimension to the outstanding immersive experiences available on Yas Island.”


A self-confessed comics fan, Al Mubarak signed the theme park deal with Warner’s former chief executive Kevin Tsujihara. It is the third part of an agreement which began in 2007 when Warner and state-owned Abu Dhabi Media agreed to jointly finance two $500 million funds - one for making movies and another for developing and publishing video games.


Last year Al Mubarak said that “we have finished the first two agreements and accomplished what we set out to do. It was collective investment in movies and gaming and the last tranche of that agreement was of course the theme park. Right now that is our focus.”


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