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Six Flags Qiddiya| Saudi Arabia | Theme Park

Hyde

Hyde

Matt SR
Staff member
Moderator
Social Media Team
Pokemaniac said:
The downtime and disappointing the guests is one thing, but the sheer effort required to keep Falcon's Flight operational will be a huge tax on the park in any case. It's a very maintenance-heavy coaster, requiring constant attention to all the things that can go wrong. Its upkeep will be very, very expensive even in the best-case scenario, and potentially much more so if things don't work out as planned. It's going to be a hog on the budget in any case.

With that in mind, I can't help but see a comparison to Lightwater Valley, of all places. They too built a ride that was a bit too big for the park, and the costs associated with its operation was probably a major contributor to the park's relatively modest investments even as the other parks in the UK sized up around the turn of the millennium. The Ultimate was a bigger bite than they could chew in the long run. Granted, though, they got 25 years or so out of The Ultimate, but when those 25 years were up and the coaster had to go, the park hadn't grown very much in the meantime.

The potential trouble for Six Flags Qiddiya is that they are committing to a lot of upkeep costs from the get go, in an area without much established tourism or local traditions for going to amusement parks. Even the other coasters they are building will require a hefty footfall for the investment and upkeep to break even, but Falcon's Flight adds another huge pile of risk on top of all that. The park really needs to be a massive success from, perhaps not day one, but certainly some of the first days, if they want to afford keeping their rides open. And that assumes they work perfectly. If not, well ... I think Falcon's Flight will be a very rare cred indeed.
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I mean, they don't call Lightwater Valley the Saudi Arabia of Yorkshire for nothing. ;)

Apt comparison!
 
Furiustobaco

Furiustobaco

Mega Poster
I have seen some posts recently regarding Saudi Arabia's Economy beginning to come down from the oil highs and seeing a slight recession.
I think this could affect Falcon's Flight as obviously this roller coaster is basically dependent on oil funding. I also feel like for the first decade or so, they are going to spend more money on running this thing than anything they make from their guests. I doubt this coaster is going to make any financial sense and yeah i think this may be a Ring Racer scenario.
 
Hyde

Hyde

Matt SR
Staff member
Moderator
Social Media Team
Furiustobaco said:
I have seen some posts recently regarding Saudi Arabia's Economy beginning to come down from the oil highs and seeing a slight recession.
I think this could affect Falcon's Flight as obviously this roller coaster is basically dependent on oil funding. I also feel like for the first decade or so, they are going to spend more money on running this thing than anything they make from their guests. I doubt this coaster is going to make any financial sense and yeah i think this may be a Ring Racer scenario.
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Don’t underestimate OPEC nation sovereign wealth funds; Saudi Arabia has enough cash reserves for multiple economic recessions.

To save folks a deep dive of energy policy, price of oil also doesn’t affect much of Saudi’s economic output, in part because they control so much of the market and can afford significantly low oil prices.
 
CedarPoint6

CedarPoint6

Hyper Poster
Furiustobaco said:
I have seen some posts recently regarding Saudi Arabia's Economy beginning to come down from the oil highs and seeing a slight recession.
I think this could affect Falcon's Flight as obviously this roller coaster is basically dependent on oil funding. I also feel like for the first decade or so, they are going to spend more money on running this thing than anything they make from their guests. I doubt this coaster is going to make any financial sense and yeah i think this may be a Ring Racer scenario.
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The themed entertainment and resort industry is still cranking at the moment. Lots of projects in construction and even more in design at the moment. I'm sure we'll see a slowdown in a few years, but I don't think it's happening yet.
 
T

Trax

Hyper Poster
Aaaand it’s trimmed. Still, the amount of trims is not even close to what Formula Rossa has, but they will make it slightly less insane.
 

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MLDesigns

MLDesigns

Hyper Poster
That's... an unfortunate amount of trim fins on the entry side of the arch. Does appear that they're going to pull a Formula Rossa; as in, launch it to get the speed record, then trim some speed off. The good thing is that A) it can only trim off so much speed, it still has to clear a +530ft hill, and B) I haven't seen any evidence of trims on the drop side of the arch (or anywhere else until the final brake run), which is great. Would be incredible to get a truly unaltered speed run to the end.

That said, this bonus speed hill after the uphill cliff launch looks excellent. The scale is hard to comprehend, but that should hit with some good force considering it's set immediately after a 90+mph launch!
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I

IGwaziSolos

Roller Poster
One thing that I do really wonder is how often they will switch out the 'windscreens' on each train. Could only imagine that more intense smudges/stains/sand damage blurring would make it pretty unenjoyable to be sat behind.
 
B

BenJacobs

Roller Poster
MLDesigns said:
That's... an unfortunate amount of trim fins on the entry side of the arch. Does appear that they're going to pull a Formula Rossa; as in, launch it to get the speed record, then trim some speed off. The good thing is that A) it can only trim off so much speed, it still has to clear a +530ft hill, and B) I haven't seen any evidence of trims on the drop side of the arch (or anywhere else until the final brake run), which is great. Would be incredible to get a truly unaltered speed run to the end.

That said, this bonus speed hill after the uphill cliff launch looks excellent. The scale is hard to comprehend, but that should hit with some good force considering it's set immediately after a 90+mph launch!
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Indeed. If it weren’t trimmed (and assuming no friction), to go from 155mph to 45mph at the top, it would have to be 730ft tall. So then an even greater investment on that and the rest of the layout, and even worse for the heat of the wheels.

What forces were there going over the hill on your nolimits design? As it’s probably most likely for it to go over at an exact zero-g, so maybe you could add trims until it does that, so you can see what the rest of the layout is like.
 
Hyde

Hyde

Matt SR
Staff member
Moderator
Social Media Team
In defense of the trim, if it is indeed anything alike Formula Rossa’s ride experience, you will be having too much “Where is your God now?” transitive thought flowing through your meager mind to comprehend the most-likely-not-really-noticeable trim bite.
 
CaliAngel

CaliAngel

Roller Poster
Hmmm...that pic with the trims is really throwing me off...the design of the supports in everything they've shown us had a fairly minimalistic design...and that looks significantly different from what I thought I've seen before...also, I thought both the entrance and exit out of that hill were fairly close to the ground, and in that photo it looks like it bottoms out fairly high.

Maybe it's just the angle?
 
Pokemaniac

Pokemaniac

Mountain monkey
Staff member
Administrator
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Hyde said:
Don’t underestimate OPEC nation sovereign wealth funds; Saudi Arabia has enough cash reserves for multiple economic recessions.
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There's a "Yes, but" in there. They have a lot of wealth, but most of it is tied up in investments. Stocks, real estate, a football team or two ... that's all stuff they'd have to sell if they need the money for anything. The actual "liquid" part of their funds is rather more modest. And crucially, those liquid reserves are coveted by a lot of projects that need investments to be fully realised. Many projects are funded with a model where the Public Investment Fund (PIF) puts in a fraction of the money, and the rest is raised by private investors. In theory, there's no problem for the PIF to foot the whole bill in any of the projects they are involved in (unless it's one of the projects that literally build entire cities from scratch, not even the entire PIF would suffice for that), but there are a lot of projects competing for PIF investments, and no way to afford them all.

So theoretically, one could say that the PIF has enough cash to build this park and keep it operational for decades, but that's only if the park receives an outstandingly large portion of the cash from the fund, and other projects are put on hold. And there are so many projects in the same situation.

In the end, Saudi Arabia's GDP per capita is only as large as Estonia's. They've put up a lot of money for fancy displays of wealth, but usually there's a lot trimmed between the fancy powerpoint presentations and what ends up being built. Because that wealth is very far from infinite, and flashy megaprojects is rarely a good way to spend it.
 
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