A new theme park has been approved for construction near the commercial capital city of Surat, Gujarat. The yet unnamed project will be spread across 3200 acres of coastal property called Suvali Beach, a 3.3 km stretch along the Arabian Sea coast roughly 20 km away from Surat. Building of the first phase of the project will begin in April 2012.

The massive project is an undertaking of Mumbai based Atlanta Ltd. Strategic partnerships with Wonderland in Canada, Sentossa of Singapore, Disney of United States and Malaysia’s Genting are also being discussed. Initial investment is valued at $2 billion USD, and tt is claimed that the park would be the “largest theme park in Asia”.

The ambitious new tourist destination will have five theme parks: a nature park, an amusement park, a water park, a beach park, and an ice skating and indoor skiing dome. Restaurants, hotels, production studios, forest villas, beach villas, studio lagoon and residential apartments will round out the project which could potentially be bigger in size than Disneyland in California, USA. Atlanta, Ltd. is aiming to open the first phase of the resort within three to five years.

Surat, located along National Highway 8 which links Mumbai, Maharashtra with Ahmedabad, Gujarat, is already a well known seaside resort destination with many established amusement parks. An estimated 10 million tourists, both foreign and domestic, are expected to visit the new theme park each year.