So when I saw this park, my immediate thought was, "When can we get one?!" Of course, easier said than done. Warner Bros did this mostly as a licensing effort in cooperation with the Abu Dhabi government and Yas (along with the LLC created to develop it), with the creative handled by Thinkwell. The ultimate issue is who owns the rights for the park and attractions themselves developed under them? WB owns the license, but not necessarily the product created from that license. So it's less about whether or not WB would do it, it's whether or not Miral Asset Management would want to go forward in America. That's uncertain... but if Warner Bros was able to secure a handshake and move forward, well... then let's get talking blue sky!
And obviously the discussions are coming up about my neck of the woods. It's complicated.
Didn't they try to bring more family-oriented shows and attractions to Vegas at one point and it just ended up not doing well? I could see a theme park going either way--being a great addition, or just not a good fit for the area. I'm not sure where else they'd put a theme park that wouldn't die off due to bigger competitors, though. Unless they partnered more fully with Universal (I can't imagine them working well with Disney--or if they tried to partner with Disney, it would be a huge mess of egos, opinions and ideas clashing endlessly, thus delaying any project by years), I'm not sure where else they'd put it that would also allow it to be a year-round operation.
I really think vegas is absolutely starved of high level theme park attractions and could support a mostly clone of current Yas island in the future. No doubt the two markets have very little overlap of visitors.
I'm ultimately of the thought that the 90's-era Las Vegas failures were a combination of poor products, severely crowded market and placement issues. This is easily surmised by what has survived: the Forum Shops, the bulk of the theme resorts, the Stratosphere, the Adventuredome. Icons that were smartly devised and had a cross-generational appeal.
MGM Grand Adventures had a myriad of problems, so distilling that to simply "family friendly doesn't work in Vegas" is oversimplifying the issue. However, with the exception of Circus Circus, appealing to merely only families on the Las Vegas strip seems to be the biggest stopgap.
The locals were burnt by the overcorrections that commerce made in response to their foibles. Wet 'N' Wild was unimaginably huge when it opened in Summerlin earlier this decade, the crumbling Boulevard Mall is currently saving its hide by constantly adding indoor family attractions. (why they haven't contacted Merlin for a Legoland Discovery Center is beyond me) When the "Broadway shows on the Strip" idea fizzled out, the city responded by giving locals the Smith Center, letting them finally have a touring house for production shows.
But ultimately, locals can not fund a destination park that WB World would be. We don't even have the feeder markets to support a Six Flags or Cedar Fair-style regional park. At the same time, the Strip can not handle too much family entertainment on its own, because it's generally off-putting. You have to find a place in the valley that has enough space to support it, a hotel/casino resort and possibly an entertainment district, and would still be able to attract a steady audience. It's a gamble, especially in a precarious and touchy town such as Vegas.
I'd love to see it happen, but I have no idea if anybody would be so bold to just go for it.
You have your waterparks and two decaying theme parks though. And that, I would doubt that a proper WB-oriented resort complex with the theme park would easily decay.
Two? Do you mean Buffalo Bills because that's hardly a theme park.