With plans to help build a $1 billion theme park in Abu Dhabi by 2011, Marvel Entertainment Inc. is downplaying Captain America, a World War II creation draped in the American flag, in favor of attractions based on popular characters such as Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and X-Men _ none of whom carry the same political baggage.

"One of the things that's nice about our characters is they're either about individuals helping people or they're about teams of people of different types, like mutants, that band together and solve problems," Marvel chairman David Maisel said.

"If anything, that's a good message for today's world with all the different cultures," he said. Park designers also plan to tweak the models used for North American theme parks. Budweiser brewer Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc. will include beer-tasting zones in its four-park complex anchored by SeaWorld, set to open in Dubai in 2012.

The discreet zones will receive little advertising, in accordance with UAE government guidelines. "Realistically, Dubai is a very cosmopolitan market. It's not unlike visiting Paris or New York or London or Berlin or Milan," Busch Entertainment president Jim Atchison said.

The Walt Disney Co., the world's largest theme park operator by far, is notably absent from the rush to the region. Disney parks and resorts chairman Jay Rasulo said Disney is studying the market. Some observers said the cultural barriers might be easier to overcome than financial and infrastructure hurdles.

Massive construction on a variety of projects is causing traffic jams as road construction has failed to keep pace with the building.

"The development in the UAE is outrunning the ability of the infrastructure to keep up," said Keith James, president of Jack Rouse Associates, which is helping develop a Ferrari automobile theme park in Abu Dhabi to open next year.

"I'm not going to say they're not going to happen, I just don't know that they're going to happen on the tight timeframe that everybody is talking about," he said. "There's simply not enough labor and design effort to pull it off."

The scale of the theme park plans, estimated to cost a total of at least $20 billion, puts them on par with developments in Orlando, Fla., home to a dozen parks including Walt Disney World, SeaWorld and Universal Studios.

"Up until very recently, the Middle East has been theme-park deprived," said Paul Ruben, North American editor of Park World magazine. "They've suddenly joined the 21st century."

The parks will also provide Dubai, and to a lesser extent Abu Dhabi, with an economic buffer against diminishing oil reserves, expected to run out in Dubai in a decade or more.

Funded by sky-high oil prices, government-backed companies in both areas have gone on a worldwide investing sprees, taking stakes in everything from casinos and cruise ships to electronics makers, banks and ports.

Studios and their UAE financiers are taking a risk with the theme parks, said Ibrahim Warde, adjunct professor of international business at The Fletcher School at Tufts University.

"There are two separate issues," he said. "One is whether, financially, all those projects will come to completion. The other question is if they do, will the customers show up?"