Six Flags Qiddiya Opens, Pokemon Land Ride Coming to Universal, and More

Six Flags Qiddiya Opens

In what will be the biggest news of this newsletter, I went to the grand opening of Six Flags Qiddiya as well as the opening day. It took me a 20 hour travel day to get there. I flew from Orlando to Atlanta, from there to Abu Dhabi, and finally to Riyadh. It was quite the journey but well worth it!

Six Flags Qiddiya is absolutely amazing. Let me go over part of my experience and I’ll add some links to POV’s I took as well. If you just want to watch every POV, click the video below to watch!

Falcon’s Flight

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room, Falcon’s Flight. This is the longest, tallest, and fastest rollercoaster in the world. It is now my second favorite rollercoaster in the world(right behind velocicoaster if your curious). It contains 3 launches. Has a top speed of 155.3 mph, is 13940 feet long and has two drops that are over 500 feet tall.

This rollercoaster is absolutely incredible. It’s intense but not gray out intense if that makes sense. I think it’s pretty well paced throughout the layout. It actually has LSM’s that launch you down the main drop so you can reach that speed of 155 mph which is crazy. The sound it makes is so distinctive it will probably be recognized throughout the coaster community for all time.

This ride had consistently the longest wait in the park of over an hour. It’s one of those rides that you just have to do if you’re at the park and because of that everyone wanted to get on it.

It also suffers from some problems that meant it was down quite often. This is to be expected when your breaking 3 world records. However, it did mean that when it is running, everyone goes to it to get it out of the way.

Iron Rattler

This is my third favorite rollercoaster in the world. It’s incredible. I will say that I havn’t been on Siren’s Curse yet at Cedar Point so I can’t compare it to that. I will say that while Falcon’s Flight gives you lots of speed and fast swooping moments(like a Falcon), this feels more like a traditional rollercoaster with all the elements it has.

The Tilt track on this was amazing to experience. I had never done a tilt track coaster before and I loved it. This ride provides a lot of good airtime moments and hang time. The first drop takes you underneath the pathway allowing for a ton of insane camera shots.

This ride usually had a 5 minute wait for it. I was able to do this in the front, middle, and back. Each row was incredible and provided different experiences.

Other notes I have on the park:

This park was absolutely gorgeous. It was like EPIC Universe but with a ton more attractions. While the emphasis wasn’t on theming like EPIC had, they had a ton of very thrilling experiences you could choose from.

You don’t have to speak Arabic to have a good time. Most of the staff know English.

They have a ton of western food. I literally ate barbeque twice while I was there and it was delicious!

You might need two days at the park with how it is currently. This is assuming you want to get re-rides on some coasters and see the whole park. It also takes into account some down time in Falcon’s Flight.

Getting to Saudi Arabia is very hard and if you’re from the United States(which 99% of you are), try to get a nonstop flight to either Riyadh or Abu Dhabi/Dubai.

If you want to watch the opening ceremony, I added a pretty good time stamp here in this 360 video I shot.

I’ll be talking more about Six Flags Qiddiya in future newsletters, so stay tuned for more reviews! Also, I have yet to edit a ton of my videos from the park(including the opening day vlog) so that’s another reason why I’ll cover it more in future newsletters.

Universal Japan Announces A Pokemon Ride

On the 22nd of January, Universal announced that they were working with The Pokemon Company to bring more world-class and immersive Pokemon experiences to their park in Japan. No details were announced as to what this new experience would be or when it would debut. More details will come at a later date.

Many are speculating that this Pokemon attraction will replace their Spiderman dark ride attraction. Whether utilizing the same type of ride vehicle/layout or just replacing the whole building. Land in Universal Japan is very very hard to come by and unless they do a major expansion into a neighboring lot, they would have to tear down or renovate an existing attraction.

My thoughts: Universal Japan needs to go all in on Pokemon like they did Nintendo World. Put the budget in place to massively expand the park and build a crazy immersive land with world class attractions inside of it. Universal Japan is one of, if not the most visited theme park in the world and that’s mostly due to their Nintendo World. If they also had a Pokemon World, my gosh, the park would be printing money.

Theme Park Stock Watch

From the last 5 days of stock changing as of Monday Night

From The Editor

I was on such a hot streak in sending out newsletters, and then i just got bombarded with things to do (including going to Saudi Arabia for Six Flags Qiddiya). I know it’s been a month since my last newsletter, but I hope to get back in the groove and pump out more newsletters from here on out(or until i break that promise next).

A Pokemon Land Opens in Japan on Feb 5th.

Unlike in previous news where I cover that Universal is planning on building a Pokemon land, this land is actually opening this week. It is the first permanent Pokemon theme park (although its technically just a themed land?).

It’s opening in an existing theme park called Yomiuriland which is near Tokyo. From what I can tell, it might be considered it’s own theme park but operated by Yomiuriland as you can buy tickets just for the Pokepark. Tickets by the way are completely sold out for the first two months of operation. Odds are that they will be extremely hard to get for the first year or two.

I think even though this Pokemon addition feels small, it’s a license to print money. The pokemon Cafes located in Japan are almost always full, so this will undoubtedly also be always full. I do wish more was done with this IP(but I guess Universal might be handling that). More rides would be great, a larger park too, and maybe even a parade.

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