FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Disney to Open New Park in Abu Dhabi
View Single Post
Old May 7, 2025 | 2:21 pm
  #3  
lincolnjkc
30 Countries Visited
1M
100 Nights
20 Years on Site
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: CLE, DCA, and 30k feet
Programs: Honors LT Diamond; United 1K 1MM; Hertz PC
Posts: 5,573
Originally Posted by uanj
Iger has announced the next new city for a park- Abu Dhabi. Timing- as soon as possible, people are already traveling there for planning and construction.

I remember in the late 80s and early 90s there were always Disney people on the LAX-IAD-CDG and back flights to work on the Paris site. Anyone putting AUH on their United bingo card?
I have a step-relative who has worked on several Disney recent overseas projects and IIRC during the development of at least one of those the LAX-XXX nonstop was referred to as the "Disney Express" based on the % of the flight (or perhaps just the front cabin) that was occupied by mice.

That said, those were routes UA already flew and I don't know that I'd put money on UA establishing a new route just for that (relatively) temporary business -- especially with UA already serving DXB via EWR and at least for the summer the loads looking pretty sparse in places (like a 0/60 and a 4/60 J cabin)... That's a lot of fuel to burn for one customer unless its subsidized... Maybe they could make a go of it as a 1x or 2x weekly frequency but at that point airlines with more frequent service are going to get more of the business overall.

I also wonder what % of the work will be shuttling vs embedded or video conference -- even the most recent parts were when desktop video conferencing/collaboration was in a very different space evolutionarily -- and while there will always need to be "boots on the ground" I can see a more limited set of project executives camping out for months at a time vs a project team that may fly in every couple weeks for a few days of meetings/site inspections.
lincolnjkc is offline