Remember a month ago, when a lot of people got very angry at the celebrities participating in Saudi Arabia’s comedy festival because the Saudi government “facilitate[s] and benefit[s] directly from serious human rights abuses“?
Apparently MrBeast doesn’t, because he’s opening a theme park in Riyadh, the same capital city where the festival took place.
The theme park, predictably called Beast Land, isn’t going to be a permanent installation. It’ll open from Nov. 13 to Dec. 27, and features “custom games modeled after our videos that don’t exist ANYWHERE else and will have the world’s largest prize wall,” MrBeast (aka Jimmy Donaldson) tweeted. There’s also the usual rollercoasters and other rides.
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Donaldson has built his multimillion-dollar empire on spectacle and interaction. His videos are about about eye-popping premises with click-grabbing amounts of participants and/or money. And, since he hosts so many competitions with tens, hundreds, or even thousands of people, including people he’s pooled from his viewerbase, there’s always the tantalizing, if distant, possibility that you, yes you, could win a million bucks by trapping yourself in a burning house for his next video.
All that is to say, we’re not surprised he’s expanding into a theme park that’s built to be equally grandiose.
Donaldson gave a few examples of park contents, including “this game called ‘Tower Siege’ where you load balls into real catapults and have to land them in these giant 60 foot tubes for points,” and a game called Drop Zone, where “6 people are standing on trap doors. A button lights up in front of each player and whoever presses it last, gets dropped. Last remaining gets the most points.”
In another game, Airmail, “you basically have to drop a weighted bag on to a target below. Closer to the middle, the more points you get.”
“I didn’t want this to be like a typical theme park,” Donaldson tweeted. “Thought of things from first principles and created games I would love to play! Tons of original games created plus of course we have rollercoasters and rides.”
We don’t know what the theme park will look like yet; the above photo is a digital rendering Donaldson posted, but no images of the actual park have been released.
Access to games and rides is paywalled behind higher ticket prices. You can technically get into the park for just seven bucks, but won’t be able to touch any games or rides. $25 will get you access to the games and three rides, and a $66 “Beast Mode+” ticket will let you do everything.
The response to Donaldson’s announcement included scrutiny over why he chose to set Beast Land in Saudi Arabia, given the country’s dismal record of human rights violations.
His justification? “[A] majority of my audience is outside America and we have a big middle eastern fan base [sic],” he tweeted, adding that he believes Saudi Arabia is in the “middle of the world” and that he wanted to “give them a chance to participate.”
Fact-checkers on X were quick to point out that Beast Land is actually part of a deal Donaldson signed with Riyadh Season, Saudi Arabia’s annual winter festival, back in May. Saudi Gazette reported the deal includes “introduc[ing] global attractions such as MrBeast Park and one-of-a-kind challenges debuting for the first time in Saudi Arabia. The partnership also includes MrBeast’s participation in the Season’s opening ceremony.”
“MrBeast has signed with Riyadh Season to produce exclusive content and present global experiences like MrBeast Park and major challenges launching for the first time in the Kingdom,” Turki Alalshikh, Chairman of Saudia Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority, tweeted at the time. “Riyadh Season is going to be different.”
While Donaldson is the only creator opening a theme park in Saudi Arabia, he’s not the only one to bet on a big destination for viewers. Unspeakable opened an adventure park called Bolder in Dallas in 2022, Chad Wild Clay and Vy Qwaint opened their Spy Ninjas HQ in Las Vegas in 2024, and trickshotters Dude Perfect are still planning to open a visitable, sports-oriented headquarters in Dallas sometime in the future.
