Qiddiya, Saturday, 11 October 2025.
Last Friday, Six Flags Qiddiya’s operator update confirmed a late‑2025 opening for the flagship park in Saudi Arabia, anchored by Falcon’s Flight — billed as the world’s tallest and fastest roller coaster (over 600 m peak height claims and speeds up to 250 km/h). For retail and leisure professionals, the announcement signals more than a headline attraction: it accelerates Vision 2030’s experiential-tourism strategy, reshapes capacity and crowd management assumptions for a new regional destination, and introduces complex procurement, engineering and safety challenges tied to a ride claiming global records. Key commercial implications include licensing and operating expertise transfer, phased capital expenditure, contractor and manufacturer choices, and downstream opportunities for F&B, retail concessions and hotel demand. Stakeholders should prioritise technical specs, regulatory certification progress and infrastructure readiness in upcoming briefings — those answers will determine whether the late‑2025 window is met and how the park will influence Gulf market competition and investment flows.