Saudi Arabia is now home to the first Six Flags theme park built from the ground up in more than 50 years, with Six Flags Qiddiya City being divided into six separate lands, each with its own attractions, architecture and identity.
Rising across the escarpments of Qiddiya outside Riyadh, Six Flags Qiddiya City has become one of the centrepieces of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 tourism and entertainment strategy. Yet behind the planned record-breaking rides and six themed lands sits a far more difficult challenge: translating one of the world’s most recognisable entertainment brands into a destination built for Saudi Arabia.
For AtkinsRéalis, which was responsible for the park’s creative and technical delivery, the project required a level of integration rarely seen in theme park development.
The company had to coordinate architecture, ride systems, infrastructure, retail, food and beverage, public realm, landscape and engineering across a site defined by steep escarpment terrain. Unlike many large theme parks, Six Flags Qiddiya City could not be designed on a flat site and then themed later. Instead, the terrain became the starting point.
“The original creative direction defined how the park interacts with the escarpment landscape and we carried that through fully integrated design across all disciplines,” Bahar Jaferzadeh, Regional Creative Design Lead at AtkinsRéalis Middle East, told Arabian Business.
The park is the first Six Flags development built from scratch since 1971 and the first in Saudi Arabia. It was developed as part of Qiddiya City, the wider entertainment and sports destination being built southwest of Riyadh.
