Qatari Smash & Grab - Pt.2: Doha Quest

[NemesisRider]

Intro: 19 hours in Doha

This little layover was done enroute home from my recent jaunt through South Korea. You can read about my experiences out there in the dedicated thread.

I will confess that the Gulf states’ iconic cities have never really appealed to me as holiday destinations. When I think of Dubai, I picture luxury malls, grindset influencers flexing their fast cars and gleaming skyscrapers built by underpaid migrant workers. In spite of my aversions, these states’ massive investments in tourism – one of the more successful avenues in their attempts to economically diversify from the dying oil and gas industry – have led to some undeniably interesting theme parks popping up. The Gulf airlines have been a key element in this, subsiding stopovers to incentivise transiting passengers to spend more time and money locally.



Any aviation geeks in my audience may be aware that there are no direct flights from Manchester to Seoul, or anywhere in South Korea for that matter. Seeing as my job at the time barred me from travelling via China - AKA, the cheapest option - travelling with Qatar Airways and transiting via Doha looked to be the best shout. Simply put, it would be rude not to stop in to grab a few creds.



My 19-hour stopover in Doha had one main goal: grab as many creds as reasonably possible. My timings were admittedly awkward. Visiting in May meant that the weather would be blisteringly hot, and that Lusail Winter Wonderland (which offered an enticing +4) would be shut. On top of this, my inbound flight was due at 5:30am, well before any theme parks would be open. Fortunately, with my flight booking I was able to secure a central Doha hotel for under £25, giving me somewhere to chill before the parks opened.



Part 1: Culture

Following a hasty planning session in Incheon Airport and an uneventful flight, I landed in Qatar excited and a little sleep deprived.



Doha has a modern, decently extensive and dirt-cheap metro system, offering unlimited day tickets for 6 QTR (under £1.50). I would highly recommend this – it served me incredibly well, getting me to and from the airport and around the city comfortably. One quirk of the Doha Metro compared to all others I’ve seen worldwide is its classified carriages, consisting of standard class, “family” class (for lone females and those with children), and “Gold Club” (an extra plush first class). My hotel was 5 minutes’ walk from the cavernous Msheireb station, the meeting point for all 3 of Doha’s current metro lines - this proved very convenient.



Emerging from the air-conditioned metro to the outside world was like stepping into a hairdryer. Temperatures on the day of my visit peaked around 42°C and never dropped below 31°C during the night, well above what I’m used to on holiday. Whilst most of my itinerary was mercifully indoors, venturing outside quickly became uncomfortable. I was very glad that nowhere I planned to visit was more than a 15-minute walk from a Metro station.



After some time chilling in my hotel room, I hopped on the Metro to visit the strikingly designed Qatar National Museum. The alien architecture and the blazing heat made me feel less like I was visiting another country, and more like I was on another planet. Around half of the galleries were shut for refurbishment, so the ticket price had been accordingly halved.



The main gallery I saw gives an overview of the history of Qatar, which was nice since I had done minimal research about the country. There was also a temporary Latin art exhibition which I didn’t quite get – art galleries are less my thing. Whilst it was worth doing, I've seen plenty of better national museums.



One stop previous on the Metro was my second stop, Souq Wafiq. This market has some very cool buildings and plenty of shops to peruse, including a falcon souq which I somehow completely missed.



Though the scorching heat limited the range of my explorations here, I got some tasty local Qatari food and saw a giant thumb.



Part 2: Gondolania

Returning to the Metro, I travelled to the end of the Gold line to reach the first cred of the day at Gondolania.



Gondolania is the indoor theme park component of the Villagio mall, a Vegas-esque parody of Venice complete with faux canals and an endless array of luxury shops. Interestingly, it turned out that “professional photography” (AKA: DSLR cameras like mine) was banned in the complex, so snapping photos briefly became a game of chicken between me and the seemingly endless security staff roaming the place.



Gondolania is towards the back of the shopping centre, offering a theoretical +2 which is in practice a +1 since the tiny caterpillar coaster will not allow adults without children. To ride anything, you have to go to the main desk and load up a Gondolania “Fun Card” with at least 50 QTR, which just about covered a ride on the cred and their mini-Ferris wheel. I felt this pricing rather steep but c’est la vie with pay per ride.



I did not like Gondolania. The overall impression is cheap, with clinical lighting and an array of temporary looking kids rides. It wanted to look like a whimsical version of Venice, but it ended up looking like a mess.



F1 Coaster, the park’s signature attraction, is at least unique. This SBF Visa family coaster previously ran spinning trains, but since 2016 has run conventional ones which seem to be made of 100% plastic. Whilst most of it is a low velocity snoozefest of dull corners, there are two genuinely good moments. The first stems from a weird pump in the track towards the bottom of the first helix, which provides a little pop of excitement at some speed. The second is the ride’s main drop below the bridge at the park entrance, which rode unexpectedly aggressively on the back row. At least F1 Coaster seems to give two consecutive laps, which made it feel a tad better value for money.



That's enough Gondolania for one lifetime. Where next?

Part 3: Jungle Zone

Coast 2 Coaster had indicated there was another +1 up for grabs at an adjacent FEC, so after 10 unpleasant minutes of trudging through unshaded car park I arrived at the notably less upmarket Hyatt Plaza Shopping Mall.



Here one can find the Jungle Zone, which is more of an overgrown arcade than an indoor theme park. Compared to Gondolania, the atmosphere was more casual and the prices were lower – I only had to load 30 QTR onto my Jungle Zone card to get on the cred.



On the subject of the cred, Jungle Race is an SBF Visa spinner (yawn) with two hamster wheel cars (less yawn). As my first SBF Hamster Wheel, I was expecting great things and-



Yeah, who am I kidding. It’s an SBF Visa coaster. The restraints are horribly bulky on the hamster wheel car. Whilst the hill which initiates the spinning is fun, the cars had a horrible tendency to leave me stuck upside down for most of the second half of the circuit, putting all my body weight on my shoulders and sending all the blood to my head. I was honestly rooting for it to be over ASAP by the end of the second lap.

I didn’t bother with the standard spinning car. I already had the cred and didn’t feel inclined to pay another £5 to trundle around in a circle.



The only other notable looking thing at Jungle Zone was a small frisbee-style ride, Spin Swing. I passed on this for nausea avoidance reasons.



With a clean sweep of target FECs creds, I headed back to the hotel to restock on water and get ready for the day’s main event.

Next time: less desert, more deserted, at Doha Quest

 

[NemesisRider]

Part 4: Doha Quest

Doha Quest is a modern, high-budget indoor theme park found in the Doha Oasis. This development includes the park itself, the Printemps Department store (we are in the Gulf, after all), luxury housing, and other amenities. It's located under 15 minutes’ walk from the Msheireb metro station, though nobody local seems to walk here - blazing heat and several very sketchy roads doubtless suppress foot traffic.



The first thing one notices about Quest is the premium entry price of 235 QTR (nearly £50) for an adult booked online in advance. This is not cheap, and whilst a tourist like myself will ultimately cough up, it disenfranchises most of the local population. There's also the problem of population size - Doha is still a relatively small city by global standards and isn't yet a major leisure hub like Dubai or Abu Dhabi. The result is that the park has developed a reputation for unnervingly low crowd levels, particularly as there are no options for free entry without ride access. Despite it being a Saturday evening during my visit, every ride was basically walk-on, though at least there were enough guests around to stop it feeling eerily empty.



The second area where Quest seems to suffer is in its clientele. If you’ll allow me a moment to rant: one of the worst parts of my visit was the number of poorly supervised, almost certainly affluent Qatari kids. Within maybe 4 hours of visiting the park, I saw several instances of kids being rude to staff members (mostly in Arabic, which the expat staff members rarely speak), queue jumping and generally misbehaving. At one point, security had to be called to EpiQ Coaster to stop one kid kicking off after being told to stop queue-jumping. The staff were overall engaged and friendly, offering much better service than you get in most parks, and it boiled my blood to see them being treated like s*** by the locals.



Anyway... coming in from street level, after a quick bag and ticket check, guests emerge into the main hall of Quest. First impressions are very good - the park has a very striking modern aesthetic in which the lighting team really earned their paycheque. In terms of layout, Quest's modest floor space is split into 3 main areas which represent the past, present and future. There's also a kiddie area which is off to the side of the main floor, and feels quite a step down in quality compared to the rest of the park.



At the heart of the futuristic Gravity area is star of the show at Quest. EpiQ Coaster is the world’s tallest indoor roller coaster and a fantastic oddity. It takes the main layout of Deep Space - a Premier launch coaster found at Imagicaa in India - then replaces the conventional forwards launch with a backwards launch into a 187ft vertical spike. The true height of the element is hidden from visitors as it threads through a hole in the roof, surrounded by glowing LED hexagons which gradually change colour.



Unfortunately, EpiQ Coaster runs the classic Premier Sky Rocket trains, which I despise. Whilst all of the seats on these trains are quite cramped, the back seats seemed even more squished and were hence basically unrideable for me. The main culprit here is the shin guards, which dug into my legs terribly on any negative-G moments.



Upon leaving the station, EpiQ Coaster navigates some uneventful turns before rolling to the end of the launch track. I had correctly assumed there was some kind of preshow that had broken or been turned off since opening; without it, this first section feels like a missed opportunity to build proper tension pre-launch. Luckily, when the launch finally initialises, it’s a good one. There’s a strong initial kick, then the acceleration continues until the train is near vertical on the spike. At this point you are left in Isaac Newton’s hands, rising up the spike into a greater floater airtime moment before plummeting back to Earth. On the second pass, the LSMs bled off a little speed, but the brief glide over straight track didn’t impact the pacing too badly in my opinion.



Riders now enter the original Deep Space section of the layout. I enjoyed the whippy entrance and the first high-G turn, but the subsequent hangtime filled roll wasn’t the most comfortable due to the poor restraints. The train then rises up into a peculiarly shaped hill, with little airtime on the apex but quite an aggressive jolt halfway down – fun but a little poorly designed. A slightly pedestrian banked turn leads into the final inversion, a satisfyingly snappy corkscrew. From here, a decent helix, followed by an airtimeless airtime hill and a final twist send riders slamming into the brakes.



With the desolate crowd level, I ended up racking up 10 rides on EpiQ Coaster, mostly on the front row as I found it to be by far the most comfortable. The reverse launch and spike are absolutely cracking, and the layout tacked on is overall solid, despite a couple of oddly paced or dead spots. Though the awful trains do drag it down in my rankings, I found EpiQ Coaster to be great fun, highly rerideable and my unambiguous favourite ride in Qatar. Bonus points for the Spider Man 2 reference in the queue.



Next door to EpiQ was the much less exciting Spike’s Astro Tower, a family drop tower with some screens at the top. The drop was boring and the audio at the top was broken, ruining the whole effect. Next!



Retrieving my next cred required a very brief foray into the kids area, Questville. As aforementioned, this area feels like a glorified FEC and is not a place one will want to spend time. The only draw here for the seasoned enthusiast is the SBF Visa Spinner, Space Twister, a disgustingly tacky attraction which looks about as good as it rides. +1 at least.



Quest’s second headlining thrill ride is Magma Blast, an S&S Combo Tower and the world’s tallest indoor drop tower. The exterior architecture is fun, using Quest’s minimal and geometric style to allude to a volcano instead of opting a photorealistic version. I was however disappointed to see the screens that surround the loading area of the ride were dysfunctional during my two rides, displaying a static wall graphic instead of the cool underground lava cave sequence I had seen on online POVs. Despite this, the ride cycle is more substantial than I've come to expect from this model, with a very satisfying kick on both the initial launch and final drop. It’s fascinating how hot the top of the tower is compared to the base – thank God for AC.



Adjacent to Magma Blast is the entrance to Oryxville, a fantasised version of Qatar in the past centred on the national animal. Cred number 3, Oryx Express, is a Vekoma junior coaster and the anchor attraction of the land. The hardware here is solid - the coaster is glass-smooth and perfect for younger riders. However, more memorable is the detailed rockwork present through the layout and queue, which elevates it much beyond something like K3 at Plopsaland. With the barely-existent crowd level, they were running two laps per cycle, and I ended up being the only person on the train for both of my rides.



In one of the funnier moments of the trip, I got absolutely read to filth by the woman operating the batching position.
“Are you alone?” Yes.
“Where’s your friends?” Bit harsh mate, but if you must know they’re back in England.



Anyways, next door is my favourite dark ride in the park, the Legend of the Golden Oryx. On this 4D cinema/motion-simulator type attraction you join on a journey to find the mysterious winged Golden Oryx which can grant you the power to fly or something. The animation feels incredibly high quality, there’s some fun use of scents throughout, and some of the character designs are utterly charming. Kudos to the designers for eliciting some warmth from my stone-cold thoosie heart.



I usually skip spinny flat rides as they make me feel nauseous, but as I was running ahead of schedule I decided I might as well. Despite being a staple across the world, Aero Flip was the first Zamperla Air Race I’d ever bothered to ride – it didn’t make me feel too queasy, but I wasn’t exactly head over heels for the experience.



The Kuka Arm Robocoaster was more interesting. It offers 5 intensity settings, with 5 being the most intense and 1 the least. My first ride on the 2nd setting was mostly boring and uncomfortable, but a repeat on the 5th setting had a bit more interest without being too sickly. I suspect the ride can barely process 60 guests an hour, but this didn’t prove an issue.



I stumbled into the queue of Laser Oasis not exactly sure what I was queuing for. After an unexpected 30-minute queue (“what are they playing at with that throughput?”) and being made to sign a waiver (“bit overkill for a ride, no?”) I was proved hilariously wrong. It turned out to be a mini-Laser Quest experience, which was admittedly great fun. Whilst my team put in negative amounts of work, I managed to come 4th amongst the 18 or so guests.



I’d worked up a bit of an appetite by this point, so stopped by the Space Cantina for some dinner. Whilst it only offered a typical burgers and chips type fare, the food was tasty and prices were decent for a theme park.



Returning to the City of Imagination – the central chunk of Quest – I climbed the central tower thing to claim my final credit of the trip, Fly With Flap. This Extreme Engineering Cloud Coaster barely qualifies as a credit in my books, but RCDB say it’s a coaster so I will simply defer to their judgment. Whilst there’s a great sense of freedom, the ride is very short and very quickly bleeds off any momentum it is able to generate.



Downstairs in the central tower thing we find Flap once again, this time on the Wings of Destiny flying theatre. I enjoyed this fun romp through space and time with the eccentric inventor Firnas and his idiotic bird Flap, though the 3D glasses I had were slightly broken and misfocused. Personally, I found this flying theatre distinctly above average, though it's nowhere near the same level as something like Voletarium. (I also forgot to take any photos of the exterior - woops.)

Though I had now explored the bulk of the park, there were still several stock flat rides which I forfeited in favour of more rerides on EpiQ Coaster. These included a Zamperla Nebulaz, a Chance Unicoaster, and a Zamperla Frisbee. The most recent addition seems to be an upcharge indoor skydiving centre, iFly – if you really wanted to, you could certainly stretch a visit out to a full day here.



After a little over 4 hours in the park, I finally perused the gift shop and threw in the towel around 9pm.



Doha Quest is unquestionably worth a visit if you’re in town: despite the extortionate entry fee, their headlining coaster is great fun, and they have a number of strong supporting rides worth experiencing. The visual design is also exceptional; this is one of the most aesthetically striking theme parks I’ve had the pleasure of visiting. It's quite not Lotte World Adventure levels of indoor excellence, but it's certainly very good.

However, much like Doha itself, behind the shiny exterior of Quest something feels off. I like short queues as much as the next guy, but if the crowds I saw are normal, this place will doubtless be haemorrhaging money. The situation clearly isn't too bad, as the park has continued to spend capital and open new attractions since their opening (somewhat unexpectedly for an indoor park with limited space ), However, I reckon that cashflow problems would explain why still gleaming park already has a host of unresolved maintenance issues, from the broken screens at Magma Blast to the dysfunctional prelaunch on EpiQ.

My two cents are that Qatar simply does not have the local demand to keep such a premium product afloat, and Doha does not yet have enough foreign tourists to shore up this hole. To become a sustainable business, my instinct is that Quest would benefit from reducing entry costs and adopting a pay-per-ride system alongside the all-inclusive ticket. This would likely improve footfall substantially, at the cost of making the place less exclusive. Equally, this is Qatar, so whether or not anything is profitable probably won't matter for another decade or so.



Part 5: Conclusion

And that was a wrap on Doha. I popped back to my hotel, showered, then returned to Hamad International for the final hop back to Manchester. This had been a highly efficient cred run, netting over a third of the country's operating coasters whilst still finding time for a bit of culture. Though I enjoyed my time in Doha, I maintain that it's probably only worth a stop-in enroute to somewhere else more interesting, or as part of a wider trip in the Middle East. Despite the scorching heat, I'd happily come back to grab the few remaining creds in future - we'll see how things go.

Next time: another completely illogical European itinerary