Ahhh, how wonderful it is to relax by the sea, basking in the gentle sun and thinking of nothing. Day one, day two, day three… and then you feel like enough is enough, time to get up off the beach and go on an adventure. It’s decided, we’re going to the Aquaventure water park. Its undoubted advantage is its location, not only is it on a palm island, but it’s also on the grounds of the luxurious Atlantis hotel. We took the metro, which is very comfortable in Dubai, and got to Internet City station.
Then we took a taxi to Palm Island. Fortunately, in Dubai, you can catch a car anywhere, as this type of transport is very common there.
The journey didn’t take long, about 10 minutes, and we paid around 27 dirhams. And there it was, the majestic Atlantis.
A luxurious five-star hotel with about 1,600 rooms. The creation of architects and designers is certainly impressive. I heard somewhere that the owner of this hotel is the richest Maharaja in India. Indeed, there are hints of something Indian in the architecture of the building.
Somewhere here, the TV presenters Orla and Reshki hid their bottle with 100 dollars in it… I wonder if they found it, but we didn’t bother to check)))))
We hurried inside the building, where the entrance to the water park is located. In addition to the water park, there are also aquariums with lots of fish on the Atlantis grounds.
There is a separate entrance fee. We didn’t go in, as it’s basically the same as the one in Dubai Mall, and it’s free.
There are a huge number of fish of different sizes. But nothing spectacular.
We took a quick peek at the hotel grounds for its guests. Mmmmm, impressive. Someday I’ll be rich))))) and I’ll stay there too.
The hotel and the fish are all wonderful, but that’s not why we came here. We go to the ticket office, which is right there. The queue is quite impressive. Food and drinks are confiscated, just like at the airport. At the time of our holiday in 2015, the ticket cost 270 dirhams per person (for adults, children have a different rate), plus you have to buy a box for clothes, a towel (you can bring your own if you want), and you are also offered a choice of a set lunch at one of the local fast food restaurants. We bought everything, went to the changing room, spent five minutes figuring out the system, thankfully there was a trained person there, apparently we weren’t the only ones. We had a bracelet with a barcode for the entrance ticket on one hand and the same on the other for the locker, we looked like the Terminator. Finally, in our swimsuits, we rushed to explore the surroundings. Everything was very beautiful, surrounded by greenery, with the sound of water everywhere. Paths, palm trees… lovely…
The water park is huge, so there is a map. We looked at it, stood there with smart faces, didn’t really understand anything, and went to the loudest shouts of the holidaymakers.
There it is, the legendary Neptune Tower. I’ll say right away that it’s not for everyone; there’s a worker at the entrance who doesn’t let anyone shorter than 1.2 metres in (I think to limit visits by children). Hmm, and not every adult would dare to ride it either. But we’re not the timid type, we didn’t fly all the way from snowy for nothing. We started climbing up, and honestly, the higher we went, the less I wanted to try Neptune’s ride… There’s no turning back, it’s impossible to look down, your head starts spinning. It was almost nine floors of free fall, and at the end, there was a tunnel like an aquarium with predatory sharks. They put you on your fifth hemisphere and off you go… The flight lasts just a few seconds, I remember almost nothing, only my heart sinking to my heels. What sharks! I could only open my eyes when I was thrown forcefully into the pool. Of course, you have to tie your swimsuit tightly, otherwise you’ll be looking for it for a long time and hiding your eyes in embarrassment. Did I like it… well, yes, I climbed out of the water proudly to the applause of a dozen more timid people, but would I do it again… NO!!!
After such an extreme experience, the other attractions seemed like child’s play to me. But to be fair, there are a huge number of water slides in the water park. And many of them are really nerve-wracking!
There’s also a slide, I don’t remember the name, where you first stand in a long queue, hold a double doughnut on top of you (only two people can go on this type of slide), then you sit down and go up, high up, on this ladder-like lift, and at the end of the ride your head starts to tilt back, and again I felt something was wrong…I tied my swimsuit tighter, my palms were slightly sweaty, and then we were at the top, and off we went, the ascent ended and you rush down at an angle of 70 degrees, a dark labyrinth, and it seems like it’s about to end, but no, you fall again, practically in free fall, and rush on, I almost tore my hands off the handrails, and my ears were slightly blocked from my neighbour’s screams. All this lasted 1.5-2 minutes (at that moment it seemed like hours had passed), finally there was light, we found ourselves on one of the inner towers, where the workers pulled us out, and still not having recovered from the thrilling ride, sitting on ‘our spaceship’, a water park employee asked us something, we didn’t understand anything and just nodded, and then the hell continued. He decided that we wanted to continue the high-speed journey, and off we went. I woke up in a lazy river and hopefully asked the next lifeguard, ‘Finish!’ ‘Yes, finish!’ he replied and smiled sympathetically with all 33 teeth. Somehow, on shaky legs, we got out of the water. We decided to recover and have a bite to eat. We went to a huge fast food restaurant and got a shawarma, a Coke, and a hamburger (40 dirhams, which we bought at the ticket office). After eating some tasty but unhealthy food, we went to warm up on the beach, which was accessible to visitors of the water park.
The sea, sand, sun loungers, a green area with palm trees… Some people imagined themselves as Tarzan and flew from palm tree to palm tree, for an extra fee, I think. After resting for an hour and calming our nerves a little, we went to explore further. We sat in separate water tubes and slowly floated down the lazy river. It was great, the water was nice, we were getting a tan, and it was complete relaxation.
We went to another tower, Perseidon, I think, where there is a group thrill ride. Six people sit in a large round raft and fly, it’s breathtaking!!!
It’s good that the water park has many relaxation areas where you can just lie down and enjoy the sun. We stayed in Atlantis until closing time at 6 p.m. and left satisfied, happy and full of impressions. It was a great day. On the way out of the hotel, we were offered a VIP taxi, which was more expensive than usual, of course, but we didn’t want to be stingy)) and we got to the metro station like sheikhs!
