The Disney Park That Could Boost Local Property Values By 35%

There is a real incentive to own property near a Disney park (Photo Joshua Sudock/Walt Disney World Resorts via Getty Images)

Walt Disney Resorts via Getty Images

When you think of Disney, property doesn’t spring to mind but it is actually a pioneer of masterplanned real estate near its theme parks. Its outposts attract such a strong stream of vacation rental customers that one of them is set to boost local property values by as much as 35% according to a leading realtor.

The announcement in May that Disneyland is coming to Abu Dhabi was a dream come true for theme park fans across the Middle East. However they weren’t the only ones who were overjoyed.

Disney’s park will be built on Abu Dhabi’s man-made Yas Island and anyone who owns real estate there could be laughing all the way to the bank.

This magic touch isn’t a coincidence but is part of a smart strategy. Abu Dhabi is the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) a country with an economy which was built on fossil fuels. As its reserves began to decline it started to pour the profits it had made from them into leisure investments in order to diversify its economy. It is paying off.

The UAE’s GDP rose 3.9% in 2024 with its central bank saying that this was driven by its non-oil economy. This grew 4.6% last year and is expected to increase by 5.1% in 2025. A great deal of this growth is coming from Yas Island thanks to its world-class collection of theme parks which includes SeaWorld Abu Dhabi, Warner Bros. World and Ferrari World Abu Dhabi.

They are the most-visited theme parks in the Middle East and are on a roll. According to government data there were more than 38 million visits to Yas Island last year, a 10% increase on 2023. Although visitors are attracted by the theme parks, they also spend their money in the local restaurants, hotels and shops which all boost the government’s tax coffers and diversify the economy even further.

The theme parks are ultimately responsible for casting this powerful spell and the man with the magic wand is Mohamed Al Zaabi, chief executive of government-backed Miral, which operates Yas Island.

His groundbreaking deal with the Mouse has propelled him into the top three most-powerful players in the industry alongside the bosses of the theme park divisions at Disney and Universal. They dominate the landscape but Miral is rapidly catching up.

Beating Orlando At Its Own Game

Disney wanted to be on Yas Island so much that it agreed to plant its flag there even though it will be in walking distance from a rival studio’s theme park. Indeed, Disneyland Abu Dhabi will be the Mouse’s only theme park which is part of a destination featuring rival attractions. All of Disney’s other outposts are located in self-contained resorts which also include its shops and hotels with not a competing theme park in sight.

In contrast, not only is Yas Island home to Disney’s Orlando rival, SeaWorld, but over the coming years it will become the first resort outside Universal Studios to feature Harry Potter rides when they are added to Warner Bros. World. It brings Disney’s biggest competitor right to its doorstep as the Potter rides were instrumental to making Universal a theme park powerhouse as this report explained. The key difference is that all of the parks on Yas Island are operated by Miral and Disneyland Abu Dhabi will be no different. It puts all the keys in Al Zaabi’s hands.

A supremely-talented manager, Al Zaabi began his 25-year careeer in business working for the UAE government. He eventually switched to Aldar Properties, Abu Dhabi’s biggest listed property developer, where he rose to the role of director of strategic investment. This gave him high-level experience of the role real estate plays at the heart of the UAE’s economy and he put it to use when he moved to Miral in 2015.

Al Zaabi had a vision of making Yas Island a hub for the world’s leading theme parks and he came up with a magic formula to pull it off. He ensured that the parks on Yas Island aren’t just the best in their category but that they are up there with the best in the world, regardless of their theme. It didn’t just drive customer satisfaction and repeat visitation but also made Yas Island the envy of all theme park operators. Ultimately, the high caliber of the parks is what attracted Warner Bros. followed by Harry Potter and that grabbed Disney’s attention.

A tireless worker and master multitasker, Al Zaabi is a dynamo with a magic touch. It is set to rub off on more people than ever before.

Although Abu Dhabi’s upcoming park doesn’t have an official opening date, Josh D’Amaro, chairman of Disney’s Experiences theme park segment, recently shed some light on when it could be. He told Reuters that a project of this scale could take a year or two to design, and another four to six years to build putting the earliest opening window at five years from now as this report forecast. Property owners on Yas Island could be a lot richer by then.

Casting A Spell On Property Values

“In five years time, by 2030, the prices should increase at least 30-35% for apartments and a little bit less for existing community villas. We don’t think they will exceed 25%,” says Evgeny Ratskevich, chief executive of Metropolitan Capital Real Estate. Metropolitan is one of the UAE’s leading real estate agencies and recently revealed that in just the past six years, 135 of its agents have earned more than $1 million in commissions, with four of them surpassing $10 million, so Ratskevich has got his fingers on the pulse of high-end property.

He explains that the sparkle Yas Island gets from Disney could be so transformative that it may be “difficult to compare the real estate market of Yas Island these days to what will happen in five years.” It could be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Disney announcement put Yas Island on the agenda of real estate investors as the more tourists that are attracted to the destination, the greater the need for vacation rentals there. As Ratskevich says, “the demand for apartments will be led by the popularity of short-term rentals due to all the theme parks being in one place. Families coming to Abu Dhabi with children will be looking for these options on Yas Island.”

In turn, the higher the occupancy of the apartments, the greater their Return On Investment (ROI) which currently stands at around 7% according to Ratskevich. An increase in ROI would raise prices and attract increasingly luxurious developments to Yas Island which already has a plethora of them. This would drive property values even higher which is why Ratskevich says that in five years “the launches will be completely different.” There are already clear signs of this.

Just five days after Disney revealed that it is coming to Yas Island, Aldar announced that it will build residences there themed to the ultra-upscale Waldorf Astoria hotel chain.

The announcement was made on the pristine greens of the Yas Links golf course, the first true links course in the Middle East and the location of the upcoming Waldorf Astoria residences. They were the brainchild of Dan Wakeling, Hilton’s supremely skilled vice president of luxury residence development in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He signed the Yas Island Waldorf Astoria deal with Jonathan Emery, Aldar Development’s chief executive and one of the world’s most experienced real estate managers.

Emery spent 19 years at British property development titan Hammerson before moving to Middle Eastern entertainment conglomerate Majid Al Futtaim in 2008. As this author has reported, like Disney, Majid Al Futtaim develops master-planned residential communities and Emery grew the business from a start-up to a value of $5 billion. He repeated the trick at Aldar Development which he steered to three consecutive years of growth after he joined in November 2020. Its sales grew from $1 billion in 2021 to $8 billion last year but it doesn’t stop there.

In the first half of 2025, Aldar Development’s sales rose 31% to $5 billion (AED18.3 billion) with 24% year-on-year net profit growth. Remarkably, the Waldorf Astoria was partly responsible for this glow even though it will be years before the first residents move in.

That’s because the Waldorf Astoria residences broke records by becoming one of Aldar’s fastest-selling properties. All 133 homes sold out within 24 hours of going on sale in May netting Aldar $231.4 million (AED850 million). Just 24% of the buyers were UAE citizens as expats and international investors reportedly accounted for remainder with customers from the United Kingdom and China driving the demand.

The sell-out was all the more impressive given that each property was priced at $1 million (AED3.8 million). It was a dream ticket for Aldar but it could be a steal for the buyers.

“For the properties that will be launched in 2027-28 and handed over in 2030, the price per square foot could double compared to what we have now,” says Ratskevich.

Disney’s Magnetism

He adds that “the countries buyers are coming from today are completely diversified, unlike five years ago when it was predominantly investors from Arab countries.” Although many buyers are still from the Middle East, they also come “from all over the world; from the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States], Europe as well as a growing interest from the U.S. We are also seeing less investors from the UK and an increase in Indian investors who, we feel, will be the dominant investor demographic for Abu Dhabi in the future.”

Disney’s worldwide brand recognition should drive further diversification of the mix of buyers and create more competition. This would pump up the sale prices even higher, especially for property close to the beach in the north of Yas Island which is where Disneyland is expected to be located as this report explained.

It hasn’t been lost on realtors as they are already using Mickey and the Disney brand in their advertising along with the promise of being able to “live next to Disneyland.”

The higher the property prices, the greater the fees to the government and the more diversified the economy becomes. That’s all thanks to Al Zaabi’s vision and it’s far from fantasy.

Although Disneyland Abu Dhabi is far off opening, there is surprisingly plenty of precedent for the forecast of rising property prices.

Disney’s Real Estate Pedigree

Disney isn’t famous for pioneering in real estate development but in fact this has been at the heart of its theme park strategy for decades. In fact, Walt Disney himself was so fascinated by town planning that he commissioned the construction of an experimental city in Orlando which was due to have 20,000 residents who would be ferried around by monorails whilst road traffic was kept underground in order to protect pedestrians.

The plan died along with Walt in 1966 and instead Disney built a science-inspired theme park in Orlando which is known as Epcot in a nod to its predecessor as it stands for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. Elements of the original plans were revisited in 1994 when Disney opened Celebration, a quintessentially-American new town which sits next to its theme park complex in Orlando.

Since then an even more exclusive gated community called Golden Oak has also sprung up on the sprawling site. Homes there with Disney-themed rooms have recently sold for as much as $12 million.

Over at Disneyland Paris, the Mouse’s real estate division arose almost out of necessity. Its origin dates back decades before the theme park complex opened in 1992.

At the instigation of president Charles de Gaulle, new towns began to emerge in France at the end of the 1960s as a counter to haphazard urban growth. One was due to be built on a vast plot of land to the east of Paris and the five existing villages there were meant to be integrated into it. The plan was put on ice following the 1973 oil crisis but it wasn’t forgotten.

In the 1980s Disney began negotiating with the French government about building a Parisian theme park and one of its objectives was to acquire far more land than the space on which its theme parks would sit.

Disney needed more land so that it could maintain its meticulous standards throughout the entire resort from the parks to the surrounding hotels and even the roads and nature reserves. This strategy stems from when Walt Disney bought land for his original Disneyland park in California and soon after it opened in 1955, motels and restaurants began springing up next to it spoiling the fantasy theming of the resort.

To prevent a repeat of this in France, Disney requested a plot of land almost a fifth the size of Paris. It got what what it wanted but it came with a catch.

The government agreed to sell Disney the land provided that the majority of it was developed in accordance with its own vision. To ensure that it benefits the local area and isn’t rushed through, the government only sells land to Disney in stages once previous plots have been completed. This relieves pressure on Disney and it has a wide window to develop the land since its 1987 masterplan with the French government runs until 2036.

A new town, called Val d’Europe, has been built there although there are no cuddly characters or Star Spangled Banners on display. There is good reason for this.

Disney itself doesn’t design the buildings in Val d’Europe. Instead that was left to American architects Cooper Robertson while foreign consultants also had a hand to give the town European flair. The central café was conceived by Belgian Léon Krier, a close collaborator of Britain’s King Charles, whilst Italian Pier Carlo Bontempi devised the town’s oval-shaped plaza, Place de Toscane.

Although Disney didn’t develop the town, it shares the studio’s spirit of innovation. Buildings in the town center don’t have a modern appearance and instead were designed in a 19th century Parisian style so that they stand the test of time. They are largely cream-colored so that they look less gloomy in winter and in order to increase light at street level, the largest buildings are no taller than five stories. The plazas are smaller than those in other town centers, so passers-by don’t feel lost, and parents have no trouble pushing their strollers down the streets as the sidewalks are extra wide.

Thanks to these kind of touches, 94% of the more than 53,000 residents have a positive image of their region according to an Ipsos November 2024 study. Second homes represent 9.2% of the property there which is logical as Disneyland Paris is only around 10 minutes away by car making the town a perfect location for vacation rental properties.

It is no coincidence that Cooper Robertson was chosen as it was also behind Celebration. Like Val d’Europe, it is just minutes by car from Disney’s theme parks in Orlando and looks like a traditional southern town with pastel colored clapboard walls and picket fences. Strict rules keep it looking picture perfect. No more than two cars per household can be parked on the street and trash cans must be stored out of sight on non-pick-up days. It is a magic formula for residents.

Data from real estate agent Redfin shows that the current median sale price of a property in Celebration is $665,000 compared to $415,000 across the whole of Orlando.

This trend has even been seen in Shanghai where Disney’s previous park opened in 2016. The cost of homes in the local Chuansha area reportedly skyrocketed by more than 162% over the seven years after park was announced with one 56,500 square meter plot of land selling for 264% of its premium just one and half hours after the announcement. That really is a happy ending.