Arabian Nights: Exploring the Coasters of Saudi Arabia (Part 10)

[CedarPoint6]

June 19, 2024

I said in the last post that I'd ridden every coaster in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia as of now. Thankfully that wasn't quite true... there was another that no enthusiast had found yet! I had actually spent a day before this searching various malls to see if I could get lucky with a new coaster and struck out 0 for 5. On the way home I noticed some rides on the upper level of a mall I was driving past and decided to check it out the next day.

While I expected nothing, I was pleasantly surprised to discover a new coaster... if you can call it that. It's definitely a coaster it does indeed coaster and has some uphill sections where the train is not touching a propulsion source, but it's definitely a bit of a silly one. At no more than maybe 5 ft. tall, Coaster at Mega Land is tiny by every definition. It appears to be Chinese in origin-- I've had some searches come up with Guangzhou Letian-- but I haven't been able to confirm anything. The trains are on the more terrifying side, looking like some kind of possessed animals. But regardless, the ride is here so we're gonna ride it.



It took a bit of back and forth with the operator to make her understand that 1. yes, I want to ride the coaster, 2. yes, just me, and 3. yes, I'm willing to pay the card minimum to do so. I think it amounted to like $16. Again, a stupid hobby sometimes. But here's where looks can be deceiving because the ride was actually pretty fun. The vehicles spun a lot. And the seats were large and comfortable especially when I had a car to myself. I'd maybe be willing to say I'd take this over a standard SBF8. What's the world coming too??









I only did the coaster once because I'd already gotten enough side eye from the operator, so I made a spin around the rest of the park which had a variety of Chinese looking attractions as well as this weird transformers top spin looking thing. I debated riding it, but decided to pass in the end.

*Now* I've gotten all the Eastern Province coasters... though there may still be more undiscovered ones out there. I'll definitely keep looking.

Lastly, I swung back by Cobra Entertainment City twice more to ride the Pax again. Both times I found it closed unfortunately, but it let me get a number of daytime pictures of the ride which will eventually go up on RCDB. If you want to see the whole gallery (or any of the ones I've posted, check out my site here:

Saudi Arabia

Photos from parks in Saudi Arabia

amusementacademy.smugmug.com

1. Roller Coaster, L&T junior coaster, Sparky's, Riyadh Gallery Mall
2. Junior Coaster, Zamperla junior coaster, RM Roma Land, Marina Mall Riyadh
3. Formula Fun, SBF Visa custom junior coaster, Sparky's, Panorama Mall
4. Crystal Mine Train, SBF Visa wacky worm, Magic Planet, Riyadh Park Shopping Center
5. Spinning Coaster, SBF Visa figure 8 spinner, Sala City, Park Avenue Mall
6. F1 Roller Coaster, SBF Visa Race coaster, Toy Town, Atyaf Mall
7. Spinning Coaster, SBF Visa figure 8, Funtura, Flamingo Park Shopping Center
8. Crazy Twister, SBF Visa double figure 8, Octo City, Al Nakheel Mall
9. Roller Coaster, IE Park Rolly, RM Roma Land, Marina Mall Dammam
10. Shark Coaster, Unknown, Toy Town Dammam
11. Big Train, Unknown, Dolphin Village Dammam
--. Roller Coaster, Zamperla Powered, Adventure World
12. Cobra, Pax looping shuttle, Cobra Entertainment City
13. Roller Coaster, EOS Rides spinner, Toy Town Al Mubarraz
14. Mine Gold Coaster, SBF Visa double coaster, Tooty Town Al-Hofuf, Fawares Mall
15. Coaster, Unknown spinning coaster, Mega Land, Al Shatea Mall

 

[CedarPoint6]

July 5, 2024

It’s been a couple weeks, but I’ve been in the process of moving to Riyadh from Dammam. It’s certainly been a process, but it’s also nice to finally have an apartment so I can settle in. Oh, and a few more coasters to be had…

On my first free weekend since the move I decided to hit two new credits on my side of town.

First order of business was driving south to an Al Othaim mall. Othaim is a huge mall and development chain with everything from grocery stores to full-fledged malls. On the top floor of a lot of their malls is a Saffori Land, their chain of FEC’s. I’ve visited 2 of these so far to see if there were perhaps some unreported coasters, but no dice. This one was known at least and it was another of the EOS Junior Twister coasters. So I’m always down for some rarer stuff that’s not another SBF. Traveling to this mall was a test of Saudi traffic nerve. I’m learning to work with the aggressive drivers and not get totally run over. But traffic to this mall was another level of crazy with 4 lanes all crunching down to make a U-turn into 4 more lanes to immediately cross all of those and get to a parking lot. But we made it in one piece somehow.

Saffori Land is on the upper floor and like the other two I’ve seen so far, it was pretty large—taking up most of the upstairs area with an adjacent food court. More than any of the other FECs I’ve run into, these have a number of full sized rides. Pirate ships, disko’s, a music express, etc. And of course, our little coaster. A friendly staff member who spoke very good English let me know that I had to buy a package of tickets (no one offs) but I could use this at other Saffori Lands. Fine by me, I suppose. Load it up.



Although the layout was largely the same, this junior twister has clearly seen some design progression from the one I rode at Toy Town the other week. No more almost valleying on the 2nd hill. No more set of kicker tires. This one actually acted like a normal coaster and didn’t need any of that. On the downside, we only got 2 laps vs. the 4 or 5 I got at the other one. A shame because after a dull first lap, the 2nd lap had some pretty crazy spinning. Oh well. I took a spin around the park to photograph some other rides and called it an evening.








Escaping the parking lot was another test in Saudi traffic but soon I was on the way. I’d passed a small fair on the way to this park and I thought I might as well stop and double check for coasters. Thankfully it was only small kiddie rides because I was actually refused entry for wearing shorts. Conservative dress is definitely a thing here, but I’ve had no issues anywhere else thus far so it was kind of funny to be stopped at what was most probably the junkiest place I’ve tried to stop to this point. But no coaster means I wasn’t rushing back home to get jeans.

On the way back home I decided to stop for one more coaster since everything is open late here. Might as well stay up past my bedtime in the name of coasters! I’d already visited the Granada Mall once back during my May visit but the coaster was under maintenance. No such troubles today as I arrived at Fun Oasis. Again I had to buy a ticket package (which has made these FEC adventures fairly expensive!), but I figured I’d also ride the log flume since it seemed like a novelty being indoors.



Animal Coaster is listed as an SBF Visa Indoor Spinning Coaster—and the trains look the part—but it doesn’t spin. I’m not sure if it ever did, but some of those clearances look kind of tight. There is a strip of power pickups about halfway through the ride on a turn which makes me wonder if the ride vehicles maybe just did a single or half spin partway through the layout at one point. But nothing of the sort today. The seats are larger than the figure 8 spinners so I fit a lot better though SBF hard plastic is still not my favorite. This is one of the larger indoor coasters in Riyadh though, so hopefully it would be decent. The chain lift gets us off to a bit of a shaky start as the train slips while engaging and again as it reaches the top resulting in a very loud bang and a very large amount of shaking. That can’t be good for the ride. I rode in the last car facing backwards so for the most part I didn’t really know what was coming. That made the ride far more exciting and there were actually some interesting elements winding through the theming. Track shaping is not a strong point for SBF, especially their older creations. This is no exception and has some very odd suddenly sharp turns and dips followed by other sections of very drawn out elements. It felt like 2 different rides at times. But thankfully I wouldn’t call it rough—just not the most refined. Good use of rockwork and theming, however, to make the ride a lot more interesting. The way it winds around other rides is a fun touch also.





Against my better judgement I also decided to ride the log flume. It has an interesting lift hill of rollers and a dry trough up high through a bit of theming. What I hadn’t seen before boarding is that the splash has Plexiglas guards down both sides of the splashdown so all the water gets diverted right back on top of you. Thankfully that wasn’t a ton, but I was most certainly not dry. Kind of a shame also because it hides what would otherwise be a neat offride point of view. Unfortunately the ride layout is pretty much just a big square, but I’m happy I rode it since it’s semi-unique.






This park had a couple other unique rides including a decent sized drop tower, rotating balloon tower, and what I would assume is an SBF version of an Energy Storm flat ride. One of the one that fully inverts the seats. I missed getting a picture in operation as I was waiting on the other side of the park for shots of the coaster, but I could believe that an *F*EC with generally pretty sedate rides would have a fairly extreme flat ride mixed in with the rest. Perhaps that explains why I only saw 1 person ride this in 2 hours of being in the area. Missed the mark on that ride choice perhaps. But one of the better FECs thus far for sure—or at least one of the ones with more ‘older kid’ type rides to do.






With that, I add a solid +2 as I approach 1250 coasters.

1. Roller Coaster, L&T junior coaster, Sparky's, Riyadh Gallery Mall
2. Junior Coaster, Zamperla junior coaster, RM Roma Land, Marina Mall Riyadh
3. Formula Fun, SBF Visa custom junior coaster, Sparky's, Panorama Mall
4. Crystal Mine Train, SBF Visa wacky worm, Magic Planet, Riyadh Park Shopping Center
5. Spinning Coaster, SBF Visa figure 8 spinner, Sala City, Park Avenue Mall
6. F1 Roller Coaster, SBF Visa Race coaster, Toy Town, Atyaf Mall
7. Spinning Coaster, SBF Visa figure 8, Funtura, Flamingo Park Shopping Center
8. Crazy Twister, SBF Visa double figure 8, Octo City, Al Nakheel Mall
9. Roller Coaster, IE Park Rolly, RM Roma Land, Marina Mall Dammam
10. Shark Coaster, Unknown, Toy Town Dammam
11. Big Train, Unknown, Dolphin Village Dammam
--. Roller Coaster, Zamperla Powered, Adventure World
12. Cobra, Pax looping shuttle, Cobra Entertainment City
13. Roller Coaster, EOS Rides spinner, Toy Town Al Mubarraz
14. Mine Gold Coaster, SBF Visa double coaster, Tooty Town Al-Hofuf, Fawares Mall
15. Coaster, Unknown spinning coaster, Mega Land, Al Shatea Mall
16. Junior Twister, EOS Rides spinner, Saffori Land, Al Othaim Mall Riyadh)
17. Animal Race, SBF Visa indoor spinning (ha) coaster, Fun Oasis, Granada Mall Riyadh

 

[CedarPoint6]

July 13, 2024

Let’s see if we can avoid riding an SBF coaster for once!

I’m getting close to finishing all the known coasters in Riyadh, which is a bit of a shame as it’s nice to have new things in an easy driving distance. But Riyadh’s a big city and there’s probably at least a few we don’t know about yet. In the meantime, I’ve gotta go a little farther across the city to pick up some of these new ones. As a bonus, both coasters from today are located near(ish) to the National Museum, which is another fun thing to go tour.

First stop is a mall (surprise). This time it’s Al Badeah mall, which is located in the southwest of Riyadh. The mall is split into 2 sections and isn’t particular large. But as luck would have it, I missed the giant RM ROMA LAND sign and walked into the other side first. I got a little confused when I found a small park on the 2nd floor with some rides and arcade games, but no coaster (also no air conditioning which is maybe a bigger problem). But walking to the other section of the mall I found what I was looking for. Taking over at least half of the floor area on the upper level, RM Roma Land is the 3rd instance of this park chain I’ve been to. The theming is quite with murals and sculptures all around the ceiling and definitely and attempt at some decoration throughout. I can appreciate it. The ride selection is also fairly large. A full size disk-o, a number of round rides, bumper cars, simulators, and arcade games made this one of the larger sites I’ve been to.







But we care most about the coaster, so let’s do that. This is another from IE Park and has the hallmarks of their coasters with a funky curved lift hill, an interesting track style, and some twisty track. This is a scaled up version of what we did at RM Roma in Dammam and drops into a tunnel followed by a helix and some turns. The ride itself is fairly smooth, doesn’t have the mid-course kicker wheel bang of the Dammam one and was a fine ride in general. I think we got 3 laps. The ride is certainly not going to make any top lists, but I still appreciate the novelty of this manufacturers with the weird lifts and just having things you don’t typically see on a coaster. And it’s something different from a figure 8 spinner! But more on those later.






With the park completed and a Quiznos spotted, we had lunch and it was off to the next park.



I’m taking advantage of my wife visiting me for 2 weeks—since this park is supposedly for families only. Al Watan Park is located next to the National Museum under a huge water tower and has a really pleasant plaza of restaurants, seating, and water features and a collection of rides and entertainment. The rules sign does indeed say families only and prohibits males above 14 on their own, though it’s not clear how strictly this is enforced. There’s also the typical Saudi dress code in force which is also unclear how strictly it’s enforced, but I went for jeans instead of shorts just in case. When in doubt, go conservative. We had a problem paying with card for some reason, but luckily I had some cash on had and we bought the smallest ride credit card available which came with one entrance ticket and separately bought the second entrance. Happy the ticket guy spoke a bit of English as it was fairly confusing.





Once inside, the park itself was actually really nice. The food area and seating was lively and the water features were cool and featured a lot of ‘never in America’ streams and things without guardrails. The rides section is fairly large and wraps around a center lagoon that has a slow boat ride and an electric car ride through miniatures of Saudi sites. It reminded me of Ferrari World’s car ride. There were no ride operators present when we first arrived, though we later found out this was due to prayer time, which is a fairly common service interruption here. After about 15 minutes, the team turned up and it was time to ride the coaster.



Roller Coaster is from an unknown manufacturer—I couldn’t spot any names on the electrical panel, control panel, or anywhere else on the ride. I know of at least one other clone in Saudi, but that’s it. The layout is reminiscent of a Cavazza Diego Blizzard ride, but it’s certainly not one of those. There’s signs for a separate men’s and women’s line, but my wife was waved around to the general queue with me and we went in together. The camel themed train is funny and the restraints are a little odd with a shoulder strap seatbelt and a lap bar. A steep lift leads into an equally steep drop and a big curving hill to start. This element is absolutely ridiculous in the amount of shaking and shuffling from the train and was an indication of things to come. There’s actually airtime on the little hill up and over the station which is a surprise. The helix that follows is shaky to the point of concern with the train hunting for the rails like a shopping cart with 3 wheels. There’s a kicker tire on the next hill that slows the train up and over. It seems to me like it’d have had plenty of speed on its own, but perhaps it’s merciful that the last corner sequence is taken at walking pace. It’s not a painful ride by any means, but the amount of shaking from the train is incredible and fairly concerning for the longevity of the ride. I suppose it’s already been going for a while, so I guess it’s doing fine. But it certainly didn’t look it!







Having survived the ride, we took a walk around, got a red bull (nonalcoholic) mojito and decided to ride the boat ride. I’m a fan of any kind of long meandering boat ride and this is of course no exception. I wouldn’t say it was a long ride necessarily, but it was pleasant and went past several models of Saudi sites and oil refineries as well as pictures of many of the sites coming as part of the Vision 2030 plan. Glad we rode it. The park was fairly busy on the whole—the Saudis definitely come out at night once it’s a little cooler. Against my better judgement I went back and rode the coaster 2x more, rationalizing that I couldn’t come back on my own and I might as well use up the credits. These 2 laps were equally concerning though my wife got a fun shot of me in the front car that would make a good profile picture.








Apparently you can go up the water tower to an observation deck, but it was closed all night which is a shame as I kind of wanted to see it from up there. Oh well. Perhaps on the next visit from the wife! On the whole this park was actually much better presented than I expected it to be based on pictures I’d seen on Google. I’m very happy we took the time to visit. This may be the last of the ‘larger’ coasters to do in Riyadh, but we’ll find that out over the next few weeks.





1. Roller Coaster, L&T junior coaster, Sparky's, Riyadh Gallery Mall
2. Junior Coaster, Zamperla junior coaster, RM Roma Land, Marina Mall Riyadh
3. Formula Fun, SBF Visa custom junior coaster, Sparky's, Panorama Mall
4. Crystal Mine Train, SBF Visa wacky worm, Magic Planet, Riyadh Park Shopping Center
5. Spinning Coaster, SBF Visa figure 8 spinner, Sala City, Park Avenue Mall
6. F1 Roller Coaster, SBF Visa Race coaster, Toy Town, Atyaf Mall
7. Spinning Coaster, SBF Visa figure 8, Funtura, Flamingo Park Shopping Center
8. Crazy Twister, SBF Visa double figure 8, Octo City, Al Nakheel Mall
9. Roller Coaster, IE Park Rolly, RM Roma Land, Marina Mall Dammam
10. Shark Coaster, Unknown, Toy Town Dammam
11. Big Train, Unknown, Dolphin Village Dammam
--. Roller Coaster, Zamperla Powered, Adventure World
12. Cobra, Pax looping shuttle, Cobra Entertainment City
13. Roller Coaster, EOS Rides spinner, Toy Town Al Mubarraz
14. Mine Gold Coaster, SBF Visa double coaster, Tooty Town Al-Hofuf, Fawares Mall
15. Coaster, Unknown spinning coaster, Mega Land, Al Shatea Mall
16. Junior Twister, EOS Rides spinner, Saffori Land, Al Othaim Mall Riyadh)
17. Animal Race, SBF Visa indoor spinning (ha) coaster, Fun Oasis, Granada Mall Riyadh
18. Roller Coaster, IE Park Rolly, RM Roma Land, Al Badeah Mall Riyadh
19. Roller Coaster, Unknown, Al Watan Park