Cairo · New Cairo
KidZania Cairo
A children's city inside a mall: they hold down a job, they get paid — and the parents wait.
KidZania takes up a level of Cairo Festival City Mall, on the Ring Road in New Cairo. It is a miniature city built to a child's scale: streets, a fire station, a hospital, a radio studio, a bank, and trades that are genuinely performed — firefighter, doctor, pilot, reporter. The child is paid in the park's own currency and spends it on the spot; that circuit is the whole idea of the place, and what separates it from a play area. It is aimed at four- to fourteen-year-olds, and under four a child cannot take a job. Parents come along but take no part: you find them sitting around the edges, watching from a distance. It is a long outing — three to four hours if the ticket is to earn its price — and all of it happens indoors and air-conditioned, which on a July afternoon in Cairo is no small thing.
The extra bit
Come at opening time, on a weekday. Jobs run in sessions and by turns: what decides whether the ticket was worth it is the number of activities actually done, and that number collapses as soon as the city fills up. Have the child pick two or three trades before you go in, or the first hour goes on wandering. And ask at the ticket desk what the ticket covers, and whether the accompanying adult pays too.
Know before you go
This is not a cheap outing, and the money earned inside is spent inside: it does not come home. On Thursdays, Fridays, at Eid and during the school holidays the city is full and the most wanted trades keep you waiting. Under four a child cannot work: coming with a toddler means carrying him for three hours between other people's legs. The adult has nothing to do meanwhile — bring something to read, or agree a time to meet and go into the mall. And the posted hours are the mall's, and change in Ramadan: check before you cross the Ring Road.
