CedarPoint6
Hyper Poster
Today I visited the Mr. Beast park in Riyadh. Before we get started, let’s clear up a few things I’ve seen online:
- This is a popup carnival, featuring Sela portable rides and games
- It’s setup in the parking lot next to BLVD World
- It’s a temporary event and will close this month a less than 2 month run
I can’t say I’m much of a fan of Mr. Beast but good for him for getting a park, I guess? It’s part of the Riyadh Season event, which runs through winter with different events and popups. I didn’t expect much out of this park and I will (sort of begrudgingly) say that it actually wasn’t so bad. Entry is 25 SAR for access alone that just lets you walk around. Rides can be purchased individually or with a wristband along with the various games. The rides catalogue is from Sela who got them from the UK and Germany, often from Mellors. There are 3 coasters to choose from:
Energizer
This Sartori invert is a clone of the infamous invert at Tivoli Friheden. It tours in Saudi typically and was at the Riyadh Wonder Garden fair last year. The ride itself actually isn’t totally awful. There’s a couple not great bumps in the cobra roll and the helix, but otherwise I’d call it decently fun and re-rideable. Ops are… a process. All loose articles in the bin including secured glasses. Loading doesn’t start till the other train has parked and fully unloaded. Every restraint is stapled with the full body weight. Thankfully it wasn’t busy so there were no real queues. The ride does have a 3rd train which seems entirely useless, but a weird tilt-up transfer track that’s fairly unique. A decent option for the headliner coaster though I’d much rather have Teststrecke which is also touring Saudi but not set up this winter.
Coco Beach
This one’s been all over Germany as “Die! Wilde Maus” but now lives down here. It’s the only S&MC Speedy Gonzalez, the precursor to the Zamperla Speedy Coaster and is good fun. It’s faster than it looks and you get 3 laps for the trouble. This was a new one for me.
Nordmann- Viking Coaster
Another ex-German ride, this is one of the rarer SBF spinners with the diagonal lift and drop in the sort of wacky worm-ish relationship. The turn into the drop provides a surprisingly amount of laterals and an unbalanced car can really get spinning. Sadly you only get 2 laps on this one—a 3rd feels like it wouldn’t have hurt things. This was also new to me.
There’s a respectable collection of flat rides of various types including the old Mondial Top Scan from Fantasy Island in Skegness, a Technical Park Heavy Rotation which had an absolutely incredible amount of positive forces, and a number of others like a Zamperla Endeavor, a big drop tower, a booster, and some others. There was also a spinning centrifuge flat ride with “Turbine” on the sign that I didn’t recognize. It had a ring of seats facing inwards, spun quickly, and tilted up maybe 15 degrees. Once the cycle got going, compressed air bounced the seats in sequence around the ride every lap. It was strange and fairly fun, but I couldn’t find any manufacturer markings. If anyone has any idea, please let me know.
All this is pretty much a normal carnival in a parking lot to this point. The Mr. Beast differentiator was the Beast Arena, which was full of game show style 1v1 or team based skill games. Things like ride a zip line and drop a bean bag on a target. Or shoot a basketball with compressed air to land it in some various sized cylinders for points or complete a maze before the other team. There’s probably 15 different sets of these games and players win various points for how well they do vs others. These points accumulate and the top scorer at the end of the day wins 7,000SAR (about $1800) with lower prizes for 2nd and 3rd. At the end of the fair’s run in December, the top overall scorer gets 1 million SAR. There’s a big glass safe in the middle of the park that has a bunch of big stacks of cash in it. Definitely hitting on the theatrics… on a budget anyway. While it wasn’t busy on my visit, there were still a bunch of people playing the games, so clearly it’s fairly popular.
Is it an incredible, unique experience? No. But are the rides pretty good and is the game component a fun thing for a group of friends? Sure. It’s a once and done for me, but I didn’t find it as disappointing as I maybe expected it to be. I’m glad I went… and a sneaky +2 to the count and 10 rare points for the effort!
All pictures:
amusementacademy.smugmug.com
- This is a popup carnival, featuring Sela portable rides and games
- It’s setup in the parking lot next to BLVD World
- It’s a temporary event and will close this month a less than 2 month run
I can’t say I’m much of a fan of Mr. Beast but good for him for getting a park, I guess? It’s part of the Riyadh Season event, which runs through winter with different events and popups. I didn’t expect much out of this park and I will (sort of begrudgingly) say that it actually wasn’t so bad. Entry is 25 SAR for access alone that just lets you walk around. Rides can be purchased individually or with a wristband along with the various games. The rides catalogue is from Sela who got them from the UK and Germany, often from Mellors. There are 3 coasters to choose from:
Energizer
This Sartori invert is a clone of the infamous invert at Tivoli Friheden. It tours in Saudi typically and was at the Riyadh Wonder Garden fair last year. The ride itself actually isn’t totally awful. There’s a couple not great bumps in the cobra roll and the helix, but otherwise I’d call it decently fun and re-rideable. Ops are… a process. All loose articles in the bin including secured glasses. Loading doesn’t start till the other train has parked and fully unloaded. Every restraint is stapled with the full body weight. Thankfully it wasn’t busy so there were no real queues. The ride does have a 3rd train which seems entirely useless, but a weird tilt-up transfer track that’s fairly unique. A decent option for the headliner coaster though I’d much rather have Teststrecke which is also touring Saudi but not set up this winter.
Coco Beach
This one’s been all over Germany as “Die! Wilde Maus” but now lives down here. It’s the only S&MC Speedy Gonzalez, the precursor to the Zamperla Speedy Coaster and is good fun. It’s faster than it looks and you get 3 laps for the trouble. This was a new one for me.
Nordmann- Viking Coaster
Another ex-German ride, this is one of the rarer SBF spinners with the diagonal lift and drop in the sort of wacky worm-ish relationship. The turn into the drop provides a surprisingly amount of laterals and an unbalanced car can really get spinning. Sadly you only get 2 laps on this one—a 3rd feels like it wouldn’t have hurt things. This was also new to me.
There’s a respectable collection of flat rides of various types including the old Mondial Top Scan from Fantasy Island in Skegness, a Technical Park Heavy Rotation which had an absolutely incredible amount of positive forces, and a number of others like a Zamperla Endeavor, a big drop tower, a booster, and some others. There was also a spinning centrifuge flat ride with “Turbine” on the sign that I didn’t recognize. It had a ring of seats facing inwards, spun quickly, and tilted up maybe 15 degrees. Once the cycle got going, compressed air bounced the seats in sequence around the ride every lap. It was strange and fairly fun, but I couldn’t find any manufacturer markings. If anyone has any idea, please let me know.
All this is pretty much a normal carnival in a parking lot to this point. The Mr. Beast differentiator was the Beast Arena, which was full of game show style 1v1 or team based skill games. Things like ride a zip line and drop a bean bag on a target. Or shoot a basketball with compressed air to land it in some various sized cylinders for points or complete a maze before the other team. There’s probably 15 different sets of these games and players win various points for how well they do vs others. These points accumulate and the top scorer at the end of the day wins 7,000SAR (about $1800) with lower prizes for 2nd and 3rd. At the end of the fair’s run in December, the top overall scorer gets 1 million SAR. There’s a big glass safe in the middle of the park that has a bunch of big stacks of cash in it. Definitely hitting on the theatrics… on a budget anyway. While it wasn’t busy on my visit, there were still a bunch of people playing the games, so clearly it’s fairly popular.
Is it an incredible, unique experience? No. But are the rides pretty good and is the game component a fun thing for a group of friends? Sure. It’s a once and done for me, but I didn’t find it as disappointing as I maybe expected it to be. I’m glad I went… and a sneaky +2 to the count and 10 rare points for the effort!
All pictures:
Beast Land 2025 (Riyadh) - Brian Andrelczyk
The Mr. Beast "theme park", a popup carnival running in November and December 2025
amusementacademy.smugmug.com
I used to love the one at La Ronde, didn't realize the third(?) one was still around.
