The world's leading theme park operators—Disney World, Canada's Wonderland, Sentosa of Singapore and Genting of Malaysia—are in talks to set up a Disneyland-style park in Gujarat that could be bigger than the Disneylands in California, Paris or Tokyo.
The $2.1 billion project is being developed by Mumbai-based infrastructure and real estate firm Atlanta, and has already been cleared by the Gujarat Tourism Department. Ernst & Young has done the market research and financial modeling for the project, while the concept plan has been prepared by architecture and design firm Morphogenesis, according to a report in the Economic Times.
One of the sources told the paper that "a leading U.S. investment bank has been mandated to work as the transaction advisor and to rope in a foreign player to join promoters on the project."
Spread over 13 square kilometers, the site—Suvali Beach— has a 3.3 km stretch along the Arabian Sea coast. The beach is located around 20 km from Surat and will have five theme parks, such as a nature park, amusement park, water park, beach park, ice skating and skiing dome, restaurants, hotels, studios, forest villas, beach villas, studio lagoon and apartments and villas among others, the sources said.
"We would not like to comment as details are being worked out," a senior executive of Atlanta said. "We are constantly exploring opportunities to grow our business. As part of that process, we have conversations with lots of entities. While India is an attractive market, at this time, we have no further plans for this region," a Disney spokesperson said however.