Star Trek Theme Park in Jordan

In Gulf of Aqaba in Jordan, it’s King, Abdullah II announced building of Star Trek-themed attraction. The biggest investor of this 1.5 billion US$ project is King himself, but Randa Ayoubi, the chief executive of Rubicon Group Holding, the Amman company which makes animated films, says the project is being funded by many investors from the US and the Gulf.
King Abdullah II who is well known Trekkie and even appeared in a small non-speaking role in Star Trek – Voyager, Episode 35: Investigations set the beginning of construction of Red Sea Astrarium to March 2012.
The massive park is set as an idea of Jordan as “a crossroads of civilisations,” and will include four hotels and 17 entertainment developments, theatres, dining and shopping areas. Since Rubicon, the overseers of the project and later park itself have rights to “Pink Panther” and several popular Arabic-language animated characters, we can expect other cute entertaining facilities.
The Star Trek-themed “space-flight adventure” will be created under license from CBS Consumer Products, which manages the licensing of television shows including the CSI series.
Creative development of the park is going to be done by by Paramount Recreation, part of the Paramount group. Callison, architectural firm is engaged to design the project and the engineering firm Arup is behind the infrastructure.
King Abdulah Financial District (KAFD) was established two years after Abdullah II became a monarch to encourage innovation and growth in Jordan’s public and private sectors. Jordan don’t have ‘Brand Jordan’ and for a country that has lot to offer it is important to show what’s on offer, to build that brand out there for promotion of Jordan as tourist destination.