A unique theme park called The Rig will appear in Saudi Arabia. The tourist megaproject will consist of 70 attractions, three hotels with 800 rooms, 11 restaurants, including underwater ones, and will be able to receive more than 10,000 guests daily. The project is aimed at attracting up to one million tourists a year.
The theme park will be located at sea on an oil platform 40 km from the east coast of Saudi Arabia, near the Berri oil field and the Al Juraid Island in the Persian Gulf. The total area of the park will be 300 thousand sq. m., there will also be helipads, marinas, as well as an adventure and extreme sports park.
The park will consist of four platforms - Jackup, Derrick, Riser and Moonpool, each of which will be focused on a certain type of entertainment. According to the project's executive director, Raed Bakhry, those who do not want to scuba dive will be able to watch the rig from the porthole of a submersible. Tourists will also be able to try ziplining - descending along a steel cable over the water surface or test their strength and abilities in an immersive theater, where each viewer becomes an actor himself - he will be located on the Jackup platform, the height of the installation, previously used for drilling wells, is only 106 meters.
The theme park can be reached by helicopter, yacht, cruise ship or a special ferry that will run between the coast and the Rig.
"The Rig involves converting a decommissioned oil rig and building three new platforms," Bakhry said. "This is a large-scale project, which has attracted engineers and specialists from all over the world to work on." According to him, a consortium of several contractors will be involved in the construction of the site on a modular basis. "We use marine structures and heavy lifters to combine smaller parts and assemble larger ones, and then all this will be launched and moved to the final location."
The project is estimated to cost around $5 billion.