UAE 06/18 – Dubai

With all the big stuff successfully ticked off, there was time for a brief stint of mopping up creds. Sat navs here are pretty terrible as nowhere has a uniquely identifiable address and it has to rely on names only. It didn’t know any of the smaller parks existed, so to find some WiFi and work out another plan of attack, let’s go to somewhere it has heard of:

Day 4 – Burj Khalifa

Didn’t know how or where to fit this in amongst all the rest of it, so just winged it and turned up first thing hoping to book a time slot as you usually have to with these big tourist buildings. Luckily it was quiet enough to go straight in however.

So up we go.

Decided to just do the cheaper deck as again, got to save something for next time haven’t I. Wasn’t particularly blown away by the height of the tallest building in the world here, maybe it isn’t helped by the surroundings and a lack of a sense of scale.

The nearby area was significantly more sparse than I had imagined. Have some views.

All in all, just your standard observation deck stuff. Next.

Got lost in the mall on the way back to the car and with a stroke of good fortune walked straight past something that stirred a reaction in my head.

VR Park Dubai

Fairly sure I saw that name the previous night when scrolling through Coaster Count. Sure enough, they’ve got a bonus cred.

I had done all my planning for the trip through coast2coaster and for some reason it wasn’t on there, so would have quite easily missed it all together. But here we are.
A slightly more significant ride than your average bonus +1 as well, being a Gerstlauer spinner. Shame it has compulsory Virtual Reality headsets, though the name of the place would imply that that’s kind of the point.
The ride itself was alright, I think. VR wasn’t good, emulating being flown around the city in a drone, with poor graphics and a very poor matchup between the camera rotation and the on-ride spinning.
Didn’t try anything else in the park, needed to get back on track and, you know, VR.

Armed with some names of landmarks near to the parks I wanted (mostly supermarkets and hotels), tried the sat nav again. It knows a small shop on the other side of the road to this massive mall (which it doesn’t know) that houses the park (which it doesn’t know) and there was some dust by a bridge nearby on which people seemed to be parking. That’ll do then.

Adventureland

This place looked the most intriguing (and significant) of the lesser parks around the area. Stopped off for some food in the mall first and sat watching the powered coasters buzzing around the entrance facade which faces into the food court area. I like that.

Went to the ticket window to purchase a prepaid card, asking for just the 3 coasters. The response was: “I don’t know how much things cost, you’ll have to go and look first.” Sounds fun.

Had a wander, did a quick bit of maths and went back. Was able to provided a very precise number, but it all got complicated with bonus deals and stuff. Never mind that, just want the creds.

I knew the place had the 2 powered coasters, but had no idea they were stacked on top of each other so creatively. This crazy station building houses both, the red one being up top and the yellow one below. They share the same entrance and are labelled the ‘slow train’ and ‘fast train.’ Chose to start with the slow, though the staff guy kept insisting the fast would suit better. Don’t worry, there’s time for both.

Forest Train is indeed slow for the most part, mincing around some inside theming and across the lower half of the outside of the park, but it picks up some good speed on the way back into the station and takes the final corners fast enough to cause damage (and uncontrollably continue for a second lap).

Kukulcan is a bit faster, higher up and more intense for a ride of its nature and has many amusing low clearance moments.

The Zamperla motocoaster was last. Usually expect to hate these things, but it wasn’t too bad at all. The lift hill is another entertaining example of their use of space in here, with the rarely seen 90 degree corner halfway up it, like an RCT throwback.


That was fun. Time for any more?
It was a hotel address that got me to the general vicinity of the next place, but car parking wasn’t quite so obvious. Eventually stumbled on a patch of tarmac with a hut in the corner that cost a couple of quid for an hour. That’ll do.
On walking to the mall (which it doesn’t know), there’s a massive car park (which it doesn’t know) right outside. Ugh. At least it was the same price.

There’s another cred across the road from this mall, but the place was fenced off and deserted. Spite.

Sparky’s Al Ghurair

Rocked up to this place with very little time left in the day. Straight to the desk. “How much for the cred?” Some complicated explanation about prepaid cards again. “Sounds good, just take the cash.”
In the midst of this, a very friendly local woman decided to give her ride card away to save me some deposit money.
I didn’t have the exact change and the ticket woman didn’t have the correct change to compensate. I said don’t worry about it, keep the extra, but she was either very insistent on being helpful or didn’t want to get in trouble with the accountant. She began calling over multiple members of staff as well as other guests to root through all their wallets and pockets for some extra change.
This was getting out of control. “Seriously, don’t worry about it.” Ran off to the Rol(l)er Coaster.

This spinner was fun. More weirdly shaped lifts to fit it into the building and some inconsistent spinning action along the way. Made for an interesting and relatively unique experience.

As I went to leave past the ticket desk, she had the correct change lined up for me on the counter. How lovely.

Time for work.