
In a change of plans, the region’s first Angry Birds theme park and several other entertainment options will open in Qatar next year at Doha Festival City (DFC), not Mall of Qatar as previously announced.
Speaking at a press conference about the status of the QR6.5 billion ($1.8 billion) DFC, officials said that when the mall opens next fall, it will also be home to a space-themed role play zone, an e-sports gaming arena, F1 and flight simulators and a snow park.
The 433,000 sq meter mall, which so far hosts IKEA, is expected to be one of Qatar’s biggest commercial centers, with 244,000 sq meters of gross leasable area, according to the CEO of BASREC, the mall’s owner and developer.

Previously, rival Mall of Qatar had said it would open an Angry Birds theme park, Juniverse and Virtuocity.
Explaining the switch, an official said the group responsible for bringing the entertainment options to Qatar felt it would fare better at DFC.
Luay Darwish, managing director of ADabisc Future Qatar, said on behalf of the company’s partner Talal Bin Mohammed Trading:
“We had enthusiastic discussions with Mall of Qatar and we tried very hard to make it work there, but due to a lot of technicalities we both agreed that the project will not be as successful if it happens at Mall of Qatar.”
The change in plans raises the question of what will fill the gap at Mall of Qatar, a $824 million mall on Dukhan Road that was originally scheduled to later open this year.
No one at the mall was immediately available for comment.
Entertainment zones
Qatar’s Angry Birds theme park will be the only one in the region and the world’s flagship park at 12,000 sq meters in size. It will have indoor and outdoor attractions with 35 rides and characters that interact with visitors.

Meanwhile, a space-themed role-play “edutainment” zone called Juniverse is being set up for children aged 5 to 15 years old. The concept is based on a fictitious city floating 400km above Doha and is set in the year 2030. Situated on a space-ship, it will allow children to pretend to do the kinds of jobs that they might be undertaking when they graduate from university.
They will also be able to go on space travels, leaving the spaceship and visiting other planets or traveling to other periods in time, ADabisc’s Business Development Director Dominic Mulroy said.
The zone will be staffed by teachers and will link to school curriculums. It will be a “sealed zone,” enabling parents to safely leave their children for several hours, Mulroy added.

Aimed at teenagers and young adults, Virtuocity will build on social media and gaming to create a competitive, interactive digital theme park.
The zone will include the world’s first 200-seater e-sport gaming arena where participants can compete with each other and with gamers regionally and internationally.
It will also have motor sports simulators, with up to 15 custom-built F1 cars on motion platforms and which are networked, so participants can race in “real-life” surroundings against one another.
Aviator will be life-like flight simulator which includes 220 degree views and has cockpits fro F-16 and F-35 fighter jets. Also networked, “pilots” will be able to go on simulated air races and military exercises, Mulroy said.
Meanwhile Enigma will provide “escape the room” challenges, where competitors have to solve mysteries and puzzles to get out of a simulated locked room.

In addition, there will be a 4,500 square meter indoor snow park that is inspired by a folktale when a cold snap froze an Arab town, according to mall officials. Activities will include snow slides, sledding and culturally-appropriate snow play activities. While there will be some basic skiing for children, it will not have a full-sized ski run.
These newly-announced activities will be in addition to other “action” activities including a water zone with river rafting, climbing wall and reverse bungee.
There will also be an as yet unnamed five-star hotel and convention center, the latter with capacity for 1,400 people, which will be linked to the mall, car parking for 8,000 vehicles and a 19-screen 4D VOX cinema which will allow viewers to experience sensations such as rain, fog, wind, bubbles, scents and vibrations – depending on what’s happening on-screen in addition to visuals.
The hotel and conference complex are not expected to open until mid-late 2017, BASREC CEO Kareem Shamma added.
On schedule
According to Shamma, 90 percent of the mall’s 550 outlets will be ready to open their doors to the public in Fall 2016.
Shamma said that at least 80 percent of the mall’s tenants had been confirmed, and the management was currently signing deals with eating establishments.

There will be approximately 100 restaurants, cafes and food court outlets. Key stores will include a full-size Monoprix and upscale UK-based department store Harvey Nichols, which confirmed at the end of last year that it will open a few months later, at the beginning of 2017.
Among the stores already confirmed at DFC are Qatar’s first Pottery Barn, as well as branches of Debenhams, H&M, Mothercare, Pinkberry and Shake Shack.
In addition to attracting local customers, the mall also aims to become a destination, drawing in more tourists from the neighboring GCC region and beyond.
Construction of the mall began in 2012, and its first tenant – IKEA – opened a year later in March 2013. Doha will be the third complex in the Festival City brand, which is owned by UAE-based Al Futtaim. There are existing Festival City malls already open in Dubai and Cairo, and one is under construction in Oman.
Thoughts?
The APP is outdated already.
If you’re going to use acronyms silly PLM won’t understand what you’re TTS.
App is a widely accepted abbreviation of application. Just like saying tv instead of television and WiFi instead of wireless fidelity.
Then it should be written as app not APP. When it’s all in caps it denotes an acronym rather than just a shortening.
The Angry birds movie is coming out soon.
As i mentioned to someone else in the comments, this ensures we will remain up to date.
What is this the whole staff of the PR firm
‘Culturally appropriate snow-play activities’, I’ve heard some great public relations BS in my time, but that’s a gem.
Its not BS. I work in the IP company behind those ideas, i can assure you we are working very hard to bring these activities to life!
So if you take out skiing, sledding and snow slides because they’re mentioned separately then what consititutes a ‘culturally appropriate snow-play activity’ in a country that has never seen snow? Or more interestingly what constitues a culturally inappropriate snow-play activity? igloo building? telemark? toboggan? luge? ski jumping? snow balls? Or the dreaded snowman building? Ah, it’s snowmen isn’t it, not allowed.
Answering you with information more than whats in the article would be against company policy 😉 For confidentiality purposes, all i can say is wait for the last quarter of 2016 to find out! I promise you will not be disappointed- cheer up! 🙂
Wow that’s some piece of bs
Why so rude? Some people here are too negative.
And some only make promises before they start ‘mulling’.
so you left out the entire article and picked up one phrase to pick at? You seem really frustrated! What has my country done to you?
Hi Salim, why presume I’m knocking Qatar? I’m not. I am a strong proponent for this country and I work hard to try to make it a better place for both citizens and residents. I simply didn’t understand why the PR agency felt to compelled to use a rather clumsy phrase to specifically make a point of highlighting that the play activities would be culturally appropriate. I would never in a million years have presumed that they would be anything else than appropriate and so the phrase stood out to me.
Santa and snowmen are culturally inappropriate, not sure about Rudolf
Rudolf is out, the red nose means he is on heat and some of the men might get excited…
Snowman should be okay. ‘Snowwoman’ could be culturally inappropriate.
I wonder!snow
Would definitely love a Primark!
Something for younger adults would be great too..
Primarni – in Qatar – that would be a sight
In a year and a half I doubt the Angry Birds will still be relevant.
Agreed. In a year and a half those birds would have calmed down.
It’s like having a power rangers themed park. Quite a risk to spend money on a whole park themed from one character. Although given that there is not much in terms of kids entertainment here, I don’t think kids will refuse to go if they dont know angry birds.
Maybe if they go there there will be ‘angry kids’ instead.
Seriously Dohanews crew you’ve become lazy. Relaying only on press releases and seeing to run ad pieces … No investigative journalism ? Even what you call investigative is something you took of fb…
Here are three interesting stories in local arabic papers which I’m suprised you didn’t pick up.. The drunken Doha based indian on QA who got handed a hefty fine and a jail sentence for getting drunk out of his head and sexually and physically harassing the crew cabin.. The arabic manager who was sentenced to jail for transferring a customers money into his personal account through using a very elabratice scheme… Or the indian worker on trial who was suppose to instal the safety gauge in the A&M lab has explosion which led to the death of a person earlier this year…
Mall walkers and new malls opening… You guys already at your Friday buffet?
We actually are looking into some of those court cases, but would prefer to do due diligence before publishing anything about them.
due diligence = there is no way we can criticize qatar or any qatari of the above cases let’s dig deeper 😉
DN is still mulling :)))
I want to return to Doha. Anyone know of jobs in construction and Architectural Engineering? Message me at chuckletect at gmal dot com
Just scan the usual ME sites. There are lots of jobs at the moment.
Very severe blow for the Mull of Kintyre. (MoQ). They thought long and hard about their USP. But with the number of Malls coming online it always was going to be dog eats dog. Do the Qatari sponsors have a personal financial stake in these projects, or do they just rake in the fees and sit together for coffee having a laugh at how developers can be so short-sighted.
I hope with a culturally acceptable Hard-Rock cafe.
I’m surprised no one said – Winter is coming!!!
Great to see new innovative and entertaining concepts coming here!
From my understanding, the angry birds are angry because the green pigs have stolen their eggs. It is also my understanding that Qatar, as a Muslim country, would prefer to omit references/images of pigs. So how can you have angry birds without the pigs? What will make them angry?