Photo : Ashashyou — CC BY-SA 4.0 — Licence Wikimedia Commons
Cairo · New Cairo — Al Rehab
Family Park
Eighty feddans of lawns and rides at km 26 of the Suez road: the weekend outing of New Cairo families.
Family Park covers eighty feddans beside the Cairo–Suez road, at gate 2 of Al Rehab, where New Cairo stops and the desert starts again. It is an Egyptian leisure park, more spread out than intense: rides, a little train that circles the grounds, an artificial waterway called the Magic River, a safari area and a small zoo, a 3D cinema, a theatre, scale models of Egyptian monuments — and above all wide lawns where Cairene families lay out a picnic for the day. Several restaurants are on site, so there is no need to go back out for lunch. People come on Fridays and Saturdays, at Eid and during the school holidays.
The extra bit
Bring the picnic and pick your patch of lawn as you arrive: it is the grass, not the rides, that makes the day work, and the shaded spots go early on a Friday. At the ticket window, ask what the ticket covers and which attractions are running that day before paying for the whole family.
Know before you go
The park is open-air and it is large: from April to October the middle of the day is hard walking, and you need water, a hat and closed shoes. The small zoo and the safari area are a sideline of a leisure park, not a wildlife park — nobody comes for them. Entry and rides are not necessarily the same purchase, and nothing tells you in advance what is out of service: that is the question for the ticket window. Finally, km 26 of the Suez road is far from everything and there is no metro: come by car or taxi, and work out how you will get back — you do not flag down a ride at the side of that road.
