Review of the Meryal Waterpark at Qetaifan Qatar

May 12, 2024

To be honest: Qatar isn’t very high on the list of countries I’d like to visit and I won’t be going there anytime soon. So I’ll be reviewing this park by checking out videos, reviews and images online.

The stunning Meryal Waterpark opened earlier this year, but it was supposed to open at the World Cup in 2022. It’s a big park stretching around 10 ha inner park area (excluding the beach). With the beach included it will be somewhere around 16 ha. The estimated Design Day of the park is 7000 guests, but looking at quite some videos and images it never seems to become very crowded. In total the park has almost 60 slides, including the highest waterslides in the world dropping down an impressive 85m! These slides are located on the Icon Tower, which is the highest waterslide tower in the world. In total this tower holds 12 slides. All slides are provided by the Canadian company WhiteWater West.

The theme is kind of genius: if upkeep ever falls behind, they can just say that the sun-bleached sandblasted aesthetic is intentional. The theme is derived from the oil producing industry, featuring oil rigs, piping, rusty barrels and much more and it is very well executed.

The park has an impressive line-up of water rides and slides, however I’ve got problems with some of the rides. WhiteWater seemed to have copied quite some things from competitor ProSlide, starting with the mat racer: this is an exact copy of the racer ProSlide installed at Hersheypark in 2017. Next to that there are also Tailspin and Aquasphere features that are subject to a US court ruling stating that those features infringe ProSlide patents.

And if I am going to be very honest, the park features multiple water coasters, but they are all using the outdated master blaster technology (dating back to the ‘90s). Newer technology such as LIM powered coasters are much faster and smoother and also ProSlide’s RocketBlast-technology proved to be able to push up heavier boats (up to 4 persons, where master blaster can only handle 2 persons per boat) faster, steeper and higher without the need of having to have steep drops first to give the boats already a push.

The Slide Wheel is obviously an engineering marvel, but the ride experience isn’t great (slushing forward and backward in a slow pace) and has nothing to do with a true water ride experience where you go down in a fast pace, sliding through a series of smooth, spectacular or crazy turns.

The Icon Tower is an impressive structure standing 85m tall in the waters of the Persian Gulf. It features 12 slides that include 23 features and the slides are mainly body slides or 2 person tubing. It’s basically a vertical waterpark and people are brought up by 2 pedestrian elevators. I am super curious to see how the atmosphere on the tower is. Is it a nice place to wander around and stand in line? Is two elevators enough? How does the temperature and windchill feel? And so on.

The part of the park on the mainland also offers quite some cool slides, a big kids area, two rivers, a huge heated wave pool and some other attractions (like a roller coaster). Some of the other attractions doesn’t seem to be finished/open yet. The landscaping feels a bit mediocre, but obviously it isn’t fully grown yet.

The master planning of the park (by Atkins) is pretty good. The main circulation is there, the wayfinding seems intuitive, all facilities are in the right spots and the capacity of the park is spread out nicely, preventing certain areaas to become overly crowded. My main points of criticism: the kids zone is a bit far from the entrance: meaning parents with kids and a lot of stuff have to walk far to their destination for the day. And second: one of the key attractions (the double master blaster) is far away in a corner detached from the main circulation and not easily accessible.

All in all the park absolutely stands out because of the Icon Tower, the sheer size, the number of attractions, but mainly because of the great theming and after dark lighting. It features some concepts I am not a big fan of: the Icon Tower -however absolutely insane and record breaking- doesn’t seem to be a very pleasant place to be, it’s detached from the ‘real’ waterpark, where you can hang out, wander, relax and dine. It has only two elevators (what if one is out of order?) and I am not convinced of the rides picked. The rides are impressively long (especially on the Icon Tower), but they lack truly interesting features. Looking at the pov videos of the rides an the Icon Tower it even felt a bit boring. Because most rides are high up in the air they are completly enclosed and are lacking contact and views of the outside world. For a park that wants to be absolutely world leading the choice of attractions is a bit disappointing.