ONE FOR THE ALBUM: After the show, kids and parents got a chance to take pictures with their favourite character.

While the life size mascot of the explorer girl was the main attraction,
more than 1,200 children attended various game shows and activities at Ezdan Mall
By Umer Nangiana


Dora, the explorer and a host of engaging game shows attracted hundreds of people to Ezdan Mall, one of the many venues for Eid al-Adha celebrations, during the five days of festivities organised by Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA) and its partners.
More than 1,200 children visited the game shows at the mall and Dora alone attracted more than 500 children to her shows, twice a day. The life size mascot of the Hispanic American girl named Dora, arrived at the Mall on the first day of Eid with her Animalito adventures and has been attracting huge crowds since then. The children would particularly wait for the opportunity to meet Dora and her companion, Boots the monkey, soon after the show.
It was their chance to share with Dora her love of embarking on quests related to an activity that she wants to partake of or a place that she wants to go to, accompanied by her talking purple backpack and anthropomorphic monkey companion named Boots.
Animalito adventures was one of the series of ritualistic events that occur along the way during Dora’s travels, along with obstacles that she and Boots are forced to overcome or puzzles that they have to solve relating to riddles, the Spanish language, or counting. And here the audience got a chance to feature. They assisted Dora in solving the riddles.
“Dora, the explorer is very popular among children. They have seen her on TV and they had a chance to come here and interact with their favourite TV character. It was really an engaging show,” Gisela Rodrigues, Events Coordinator, Ezdan Mall told Community.
“And I have been pleasantly surprised to see many faces among the children in the audience who came on the first day and then kept coming every day to be with Dora and to enjoy the show,” she added.
Rodrigues said Dora was the main show while there were multiple other shows planned around it across the mall. It was activities for both children and adults to enjoy. The particular crowd-pullers have been the circus parade, the flying carpets, Snoopy (Arabs got Talent), Frozen tribute sing-a-long and comedy painters who were all roaming across the mall to entertain the visitors.
“There were shows not just on stage here but many roaming shows were planned across the mall on different floors so that people could enjoy them there as well,” said the events co-ordinator.
She added that the mall received more than 1,200 children every day and around 550 of them for each Dora show. During the week-long festivities, the mall received record number of audience, she added.
“We are really grateful to Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA) for choosing us as partners and we have really enjoyed these days of Eid here at Ezdan Mall,” said Rodrigues.
She said it was the only mall from where Qatar TV had its live transmission. The one-hour transmission would broadcast some game shows held every day of the Eid celebrations. They would engage the audience in the show through quizzes and other activities.
After each Dora show, however, there was a meet-and-greet for the children where they could take pictures with Dora and their favourite TV characters.
After the main show, the children were engaged through programmes such as Mr Dropsy and the Bellboy, Balloonatics, Qatar traditional dance and face painting, many of them roaming across the mall on all of its floors.
Ezdan Mall, Rodrigues said, regularly organised educational and entertainment activities for children. “We have our own database of participants and we have monthly programmes where we invite them for different events that we organise specially for them. We publicise about these events through advertisements in the newspapers and the response to our programmes has been immense,” said the Mall’s events co-ordinator.
She said the mall is active on different social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram where they regularly post the news and details about their activities. From there, they invite people to participate in the activities besides giving the details of the programmes and pictures.