It will be an interesting month or so From Aug 23 that's for sure.
Unfortunately Bahrain was supposed to be allowing more than one gate, from the UAE into their airspace, from August 23 but as these thing go around here, it didn't happen. Early to mid 2013 for that one, inshallah.
The STARS will be a mixed blessing too. They will save a lot of RT hopefully and all going to plan, the final downwind leg should usually be trimmed to have acft turning base at 10-15NM final. Unfortunately I can't see CDA's yet because there will still be the requirement to be 13 000ft or below still on the Star. We will still often need you as low as possible to get departures away and intergrate the two stars into the downwind vertically seperated. If you want to level off or descend at less than the nominal rate, you must request it first. The big problem is still going to be flow control and unfortunately there are just too many aircraft arriving at certain times of the day and with no real penalties for aircraft arriving late or early of their supposed "slots", there will still be plenty of holding. The ACC is due to start training for their Arrivals Manager system soon, to be in use early next year (again inshallah). This should make quite a difference to providing early, accurate EAT's and limiting extra track miles in the TMA. Something I think is long overdue.
As ATC's we have been instructed to let everyone fly the published SID's and STAR's as much as possible come cutover. There will likely be a lot more hold downs on departure I imagine, so please don't expect the verticle limits to be cancelled either. Although we have all had training in our SIM, it will be a very steep learning curve for the first few weeks in the real world. While a lot of operators should be able to follow the new procedures from day one, unfortunately we also expect there will be a fair bit of confusion and probable level busts too. As jack schidt said, keep a good eye on TCAS and the other one out the window!
NB these are my personal comments, not an official word from ATC!