Gazza
Giga Poster
So after my jaunt in the UK I hit one last destination, Dubai...partly because I wanted to break up the long haul flight (And flying Emirates made this easy to sort out), partly because Wild Wadi is a park that has been on my 'hit list' for a while.
Flying in....The fact they can build 6 lane motorways across expanses of desert speaks volumes about the wealth of the place.
How awesome, the plane exhaust made it look like a tilt shift photo with no effort on my part.
Lets face it, the airport looks like a discarded condom.
My flight got in early, and a quick taxi trip meant I was dumped here at about 8:00am.....2 hours before the park opened
To add insult to injury they had a family morning, so they were being let into the park, and i was sitting out the front with my backpack being my only company.
So I passed the time by admiring the Burj Al Arab, and going for a walk to a nearby convenience store to get some water (Did I mention it was 35 C at this point in the morning, and quite humid. I polished off a 2L bottle during the wait.
Finally, opening time rolled around. Tickets were 195 AED (Thats $60 AUD, or 33 GBP...ouch!)
But it was worth it because the place was awesome, really well themed and a lot of fun.
So basically, the park has a ton of "Master Blaster" slides like at Cariba Creek.
So you first do a short bit of queuing, (with the last bit of the queue actually done floating in your ring in the water)
And you ride various slides up to the top of the park.
And they are all interconnected. When one slide finishes you float along a section of 'lazy river' to the beginning of the next slide.
Did I mention the theming was superb. Not a thing out of place.
Its a great arrangement. Though as you can see from this pic, E-Stops sometimes happen and that holds up the flow of guests through every slide before it.
At a few points there were branches where you could choose between different routes through the network of slides.
So basically, the arrangement of the park is that you ride slides to the top part of the park (Ingeniously built above the car park) then ride ones along the top, till you eventually reach normal 'downhill' slides like this one which get you back to ground level.
The downhill slides all feed into the main lazy river (Called 'Juhas Journey') which you could sit in, and it would eventually bring you round to the start points of the master blasters, so the whole day you can theoretically spend mostly in the water.
There were two main entrances to the network of master blasters. My favourite was 'Flood River Flyer' because it was epic, and would do the trip in one continuous upward run that lasted around a minute. (The other route, previously pictured has a few intermediate pools you'd stop off in on the way)
There was also an action river type attraction, which is just an oval shaped lazy river with some small waves. I didn't bother with this one for some reason.
This is more of Flood River Flyer
And even more of it, it really did go for ages.
They also had a family version of the Master Blasters, with big circular rafts like the ones they evacuate planes with. The one on the right is the uphill one that goes to the top, and the left hand one is just a plain old downhill slide.
It was a bit pants actually, and I only rode it a couple of times (And the 2nd go was just to get a POV)
The slides seemed to go through a fair few E-stops...too many people over the weight limit I guess.
This is the elevated pool area that connects the two slides. LOL at the kid, I hoped he would fall out on the first turn, but he didn't.
One of the slides you do have to get out of the water for is the 'Jumeriah Sceirah', a huge speed slide. I'm a big fan of these, and this did not disappoint, so I returned to it quite a few times during the day.
It was bloody fast!
See the 2nd and 3rd dips? Airtime heaven.
For the kids there was 'Juhas Dhow', a big water play structure.
They also had a flowrider, which I sucked at. I didn't wipe out spectacularly or anything like that, more I just managed to stay in the flow for about 5 seconds, before inexplicably drifting sideways and being washed out the side.
Bonus helix.
Random sign shot.
I really did like the effort put into the landscaping.
And one final shot to round off the park.
By about 4pm I'd had my fill of the place, so I checked into my accomodation, which was across the road from the mall of the Emriates...I wandered over to the mall, and there are big windows to look at Ski Dubai. Personally, I think it is a waste of money, they only built it so they could say "Oooh, we've put snow in the desert, aren't we outlandish!"
more....
I got some tea....A McArabia, a flatbread with these awesomely good chicken patties, onions, lettuce, tomato and garlic mayo. I attempted to get one without garlic mayo, and i wound up with one with just chicken in it....After i took this photo I took it back to the counter and got them to put in the other ingredients they needlessly took out.
I took another taxi (They are dirt cheap, about 0.30 AUD or 15p a Km) to the Dubai Mall, which is one of the largest in the world (Behind one in China I think) They have the aquarium with the worlds largest viewing window. you can stand and watch the fish for free through it, or you could pay to walk through the tunnel...And people actually paid to walk through the tunnel.
A waterfall too.
And ice skating.
The mall also had a localised version of Waitrose (There was a section with a sign that read "Pork Shop (For Non Muslims)".
But joy of joys, they had Big M's for sale, tens of thousands of kilometers from home, (and cheaper than at home :lol: )
So I made a few purchases for the show (I believe those were ketchup flavoured pringles)
I finished the evening by watching the 'fountains of Dubai', which were utterly amazing.
They sounded like fireworks when they shot off.
Those are some pretty tall buildings....
I'll just keep turning my head...hang on, what's that huge thing on the right?
Woah.....
It's the Burj Dubai, currently the worlds tallest building at 818m, which is just over half a mile. Disappointing, I was hoping they would make it 1001m high so it cracked the 1km mark, but i guess they wanted to impress those backwards countries still using imperial measurements
And that's all the photos.
Dubai certainly is a unique place, though it's a bit of a construction site, so I'll have to wait a few years to stop by when more of these theme parks get built (If they end up going ahead!)
I wouldn't call it a particularly liveable city...Very car oriented (the simple 200m walk from my hotel to the mall was a pain, with no footpaths, or crossing points over busy roads) And I'm not really sure how long they can keep sustaining the place at the rate they are going....A lot of stuff seemed big for the sake of it (No joke, in the Dubai mall, shop fronts were 4 stories high, 2 stories for the shop itself, and 2 above it for a huge sign above each shop....Surley you don't need 2 stories of servicing, for a shop....oh look I'm digressing into architectural stuff)
The heat was pretty punshing (Even by my standards) In the middle of the day it was well into the 40s, but humid at the same time.
Regardless, it was still worth the stop, I can say I have seen the place now.
Flying in....The fact they can build 6 lane motorways across expanses of desert speaks volumes about the wealth of the place.
How awesome, the plane exhaust made it look like a tilt shift photo with no effort on my part.
Lets face it, the airport looks like a discarded condom.
My flight got in early, and a quick taxi trip meant I was dumped here at about 8:00am.....2 hours before the park opened
To add insult to injury they had a family morning, so they were being let into the park, and i was sitting out the front with my backpack being my only company.So I passed the time by admiring the Burj Al Arab, and going for a walk to a nearby convenience store to get some water (Did I mention it was 35 C at this point in the morning, and quite humid. I polished off a 2L bottle during the wait.
Finally, opening time rolled around. Tickets were 195 AED (Thats $60 AUD, or 33 GBP...ouch!)
But it was worth it because the place was awesome, really well themed and a lot of fun.
So basically, the park has a ton of "Master Blaster" slides like at Cariba Creek.
So you first do a short bit of queuing, (with the last bit of the queue actually done floating in your ring in the water)
And you ride various slides up to the top of the park.
And they are all interconnected. When one slide finishes you float along a section of 'lazy river' to the beginning of the next slide.
Did I mention the theming was superb. Not a thing out of place.
Its a great arrangement. Though as you can see from this pic, E-Stops sometimes happen and that holds up the flow of guests through every slide before it.
At a few points there were branches where you could choose between different routes through the network of slides.
So basically, the arrangement of the park is that you ride slides to the top part of the park (Ingeniously built above the car park) then ride ones along the top, till you eventually reach normal 'downhill' slides like this one which get you back to ground level.
The downhill slides all feed into the main lazy river (Called 'Juhas Journey') which you could sit in, and it would eventually bring you round to the start points of the master blasters, so the whole day you can theoretically spend mostly in the water.
There were two main entrances to the network of master blasters. My favourite was 'Flood River Flyer' because it was epic, and would do the trip in one continuous upward run that lasted around a minute. (The other route, previously pictured has a few intermediate pools you'd stop off in on the way)
There was also an action river type attraction, which is just an oval shaped lazy river with some small waves. I didn't bother with this one for some reason.
This is more of Flood River Flyer
And even more of it, it really did go for ages.
They also had a family version of the Master Blasters, with big circular rafts like the ones they evacuate planes with. The one on the right is the uphill one that goes to the top, and the left hand one is just a plain old downhill slide.
It was a bit pants actually, and I only rode it a couple of times (And the 2nd go was just to get a POV)
The slides seemed to go through a fair few E-stops...too many people over the weight limit I guess.
This is the elevated pool area that connects the two slides. LOL at the kid, I hoped he would fall out on the first turn, but he didn't.
One of the slides you do have to get out of the water for is the 'Jumeriah Sceirah', a huge speed slide. I'm a big fan of these, and this did not disappoint, so I returned to it quite a few times during the day.
It was bloody fast!
See the 2nd and 3rd dips? Airtime heaven.
For the kids there was 'Juhas Dhow', a big water play structure.
They also had a flowrider, which I sucked at. I didn't wipe out spectacularly or anything like that, more I just managed to stay in the flow for about 5 seconds, before inexplicably drifting sideways and being washed out the side.
Bonus helix.
Random sign shot.
I really did like the effort put into the landscaping.
And one final shot to round off the park.
By about 4pm I'd had my fill of the place, so I checked into my accomodation, which was across the road from the mall of the Emriates...I wandered over to the mall, and there are big windows to look at Ski Dubai. Personally, I think it is a waste of money, they only built it so they could say "Oooh, we've put snow in the desert, aren't we outlandish!"
more....
I got some tea....A McArabia, a flatbread with these awesomely good chicken patties, onions, lettuce, tomato and garlic mayo. I attempted to get one without garlic mayo, and i wound up with one with just chicken in it....After i took this photo I took it back to the counter and got them to put in the other ingredients they needlessly took out.
I took another taxi (They are dirt cheap, about 0.30 AUD or 15p a Km) to the Dubai Mall, which is one of the largest in the world (Behind one in China I think) They have the aquarium with the worlds largest viewing window. you can stand and watch the fish for free through it, or you could pay to walk through the tunnel...And people actually paid to walk through the tunnel.
A waterfall too.
And ice skating.
The mall also had a localised version of Waitrose (There was a section with a sign that read "Pork Shop (For Non Muslims)".
But joy of joys, they had Big M's for sale, tens of thousands of kilometers from home, (and cheaper than at home :lol: )
So I made a few purchases for the show (I believe those were ketchup flavoured pringles)
I finished the evening by watching the 'fountains of Dubai', which were utterly amazing.
They sounded like fireworks when they shot off.
Those are some pretty tall buildings....
I'll just keep turning my head...hang on, what's that huge thing on the right?
Woah.....
It's the Burj Dubai, currently the worlds tallest building at 818m, which is just over half a mile. Disappointing, I was hoping they would make it 1001m high so it cracked the 1km mark, but i guess they wanted to impress those backwards countries still using imperial measurements
And that's all the photos.
Dubai certainly is a unique place, though it's a bit of a construction site, so I'll have to wait a few years to stop by when more of these theme parks get built (If they end up going ahead!)
I wouldn't call it a particularly liveable city...Very car oriented (the simple 200m walk from my hotel to the mall was a pain, with no footpaths, or crossing points over busy roads) And I'm not really sure how long they can keep sustaining the place at the rate they are going....A lot of stuff seemed big for the sake of it (No joke, in the Dubai mall, shop fronts were 4 stories high, 2 stories for the shop itself, and 2 above it for a huge sign above each shop....Surley you don't need 2 stories of servicing, for a shop....oh look I'm digressing into architectural stuff)
The heat was pretty punshing (Even by my standards) In the middle of the day it was well into the 40s, but humid at the same time.
Regardless, it was still worth the stop, I can say I have seen the place now.
