Aquarabia Qiddiya City: From Design to Delivery of Four World-Records

Aquarabia Qiddiya City was conceived as a flagship project within Saudi Arabia’s growing entertainment portfolio, defined by large-scale attractions, technical complexity, and high guest impact. The water theme park brings together multiple record-setting rides and advanced slide systems within a single, highly themed environment, each engineered to deliver both spectacle and reliable throughput. Instead of relying on one signature attraction, the design strategy distributes innovation across several zones, where breakthrough ride types, bold structures, and integrated theming work together. The result is a destination built to attract regional and international visitors while demonstrating how engineering depth and creative design can scale together.

WhiteWater played a central role in bringing the park to life, delivering the majority of the 22 rides, including four of the five record-breaking attractions. Working across the water theme park’s 250,000 square meters, the team supported concept development, engineering, manufacturing, and installation to help translate ambitious creative goals into operationally sound, high-capacity attractions built for long-term performance. Together, these rides do more than set records: they establish Aquarabia Qiddiya City as a benchmark project for next-generation water park design and execution.

Junoon Drop: World’s Tallest Family Water Coaster

At the center of the lineup is Junoon Drop, a Family Blaster + Constrictor + Boomerango Fusion standing at over 42 meters tall, making it the tallest family water coaster in the world. It is engineered by WhiteWater as a fully bespoke, high-capacity, high-thrill group experience. The team developed a custom raft—the only 7-person raft in the world with tailored, bolstered seats for each rider—to increase group size and strengthen the shared ride experience. That requirement drove an unusually high level of early-stage coordination across engineering, theming, and installation teams. Rather than designing for a single headline drop, the goal was to create a sustained coaster journey with continuous energy and repeatable appeal. This ride also features the Family Mega Drop, designed to be the tallest drop of any raft slide in the world today reaching speeds of up to 50 km/hr, adding a defining high-impact moment within the longer coaster layout.

Junoon Drop combines repeated uphill blasts, downhill runs, weightless moments, and directional changes for one memorable ride experience. To maintain safe throughput on such a long layout, the flume was carefully zoned so multiple rafts can operate simultaneously without risk of contact. The launch sequence features a flat blast inspired by the neighboring F1 circuit, accelerating riders quickly into the first turn before the course weaves through mountain rockwork high above the park. The project required tight coordination around clearance envelopes, tunnel wind effects, and egress platforms, and it finishes with a conveyor lift exit that supports efficient, year-round operation.

Slithereel: Longest SlideWheel in the World

Slithereel, located in the Viper Canyon zone, sets the record as the world’s longest SlideWheel and delivers a ride experience that is just as much of an optical illusion as it is a water slide. Instead of simply descending through turns and drops, riders enter a rotating wheel element where the entire slide segment moves around them, shifting orientation and changing their sense of direction. The result is part thrill ride and part visual puzzle, where riders are never quite sure how the next movement will unfold. Extending the SlideWheel concept to fit Aquarabia Qiddiya City’s ambition required WhiteWater to carefully model rotation timing, rider forces, and water flow behaviour so that the experience stays dynamic while remaining smooth and repeatable across a wide range of rider weights.

To support the longer ride duration and additional rotation cycles, WhiteWater engineered an enlarged rotating structure, reinforced support system, and tightly controlled motion envelope designed for continuous operation and rider comfort. The approach balances visual impact with throughput, ensuring the attraction performs reliably under peak demand. Slithereel also includes a lift-out conveyor exit system, matching the VIP-style finish used on the park’s family water coaster, which allows for cleaner unload, faster reset, and improved dispatch efficiency. The combination of motion, scale, and operational detailing makes the ride both a visual landmark and a high-value capacity asset for the park.

Jamal Rush: Tallest Body Slide Drop in the World

Aquarabia Qiddiya City’s record tallest body slide drop, located in Camel Rock, delivers an intense, back-to-back thrill sequence by combining two of the industry’s biggest heart pumping features: an AquaLoop followed by a Flatline Loop. Riders begin with a near-vertical capsule launch at over 27 meters high that drops into the AquaLoop, generating strong acceleration and inversion forces, then transition directly into a Flatline Loop element that sustains speed while reshaping rider orientation. The pairing creates a layered experience that stacks high-G entry, inversion, and extended looping forces into one continuous ride path rather than a single headline moment.

Executing this combination at record scale required detailed engineering around launch forces, rider body position, transition geometry, and braking profiles. WhiteWater’s team carefully tuned the entry capsule, loop radii, and exit runout to balance peak intensity with controlled deceleration and repeatable operations. Because the slide is embedded within the mountain structure, additional coordination was required for egress routes, inspection points, and maintenance hatch placement. Access, safety systems, and structural supports were integrated into the rockwork, so the attraction maintains full operational accessibility while preserving the themed environment and visual continuity of the zone.

Jamal Joom: Longest & Tallest Mat Racer

Also in the Camel Rock zone, Jamal Joom sets the record as the world’s longest and tallest mat racer, redefining what competitive slide racing can look like at scale. Designed as a six-lane Mat Blaster, the attraction launches from a height of 22 meters and combines traditional headfirst racing with powered uphill sections, extending ride time and adding momentum where racers would normally slow down. Each lane follows a different route through the mountain structure, giving every run a unique experience and encouraging guests to ride multiple times to compare paths and outcomes. A built-in timing system lets guests race their friends or challenge their own best time, adding a measurable competitive layer that increases repeat ridership.

Delivering that variation required advanced slide path and engineering. The full structure is concealed within the mountain, with lanes branching and weaving like spokes before converging again near the finish. WhiteWater engineered the propulsion zones, timing gaps, and recombination geometry, so riders remain safely separated while still feeling the pressure of side-by-side competition. Coordinating multiple lane profiles to rejoin smoothly was one of the primary technical challenges. The result is a high throughput, visually hidden, technically dense racing attraction that combines capacity, replay value, and record scale in a single installation.

Raising the Bar for Next-Generation Water Parks

What makes Aquarabia Qiddiya City stand out is not just that it breaks records, but that it does so across multiple ride categories at once: coasters, body slides, and mat rides have all been pushed beyond previous limits within a single, integrated park design. The result is a destination that demonstrates how modern water parks are evolving from collections of rides into engineered showcases of innovation, scale, and guest experience.