Day 7 of our trip remains as one of the biggest memories just like most of the other attractions in Dubai. It's surprising to see how far humans go for the sake of creating records be it a small record or a big one. Today we visited one of those places which holds a world record, a place, to describe which words turn short and a place which most of the people miss out on. This place is the Ski Dubai, the first indoor ski resort in the Middle East which is in the Mall of Emirates. This famous place is sure to bring goosebumps to you not just because it's set up at a freezing -4 degrees but also because it has every possible "wow" factor in it as it is supposed to have the world's largest indoor snow park, an amazing 3000 square meters covered with snow.
Our day started at 7.30am when we got up to a nice breakfast and then left to the Mall of Emirates in metro. It's around 45 minutes from Deira. Mall of Emirates is again a beauty in itself. We roamed around the mall for sometime and then went to the much awaited snow experience. There was a mad crowd near the ticket counter and there were hundreds of school students waiting to get in. There are many options to buy the tickets. You can just enter the snow park without limited rides or you can opt for unlimited package of rides along with a penguin encounter and a snow bullet ride. We didn't want to miss anything so we opted for the unlimited package and snow bullet which costed us around 450 AED. The other pricing details can be found on their website. We were then given our jackets, pants, socks and boots. We have to carry our own gloves and beanies or else we can buy from them. They even had special outfits for people who wear their traditional clothing. The entrance tickets are very attractive. You have to deposit extra money for the tickets to get a snow park card and when you are returning back, you have to insert your card in a token machine to get your money. This was a new experience. Also with the tickets we get a hot chocolate voucher. Whenever we feel like having hot chocolate we have to come out of the snow park and submit our tickets at the designated coffee spot. After we got geared up for the experience, we went inside only to realise it was just freezing badly inside. As soon as we entered, we saw a giant dragon made out of ice. It was so beautiful. We still had few minutes left for the penguin encounter and so we were taking a few pictures till then.
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| Snow park cards |
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| Google image of the jacket which people wore on their traditional dresses |
Our penguin encounter was at 12 pm and we had to be near the gate at 11.50 am for the initial briefing. The whole experience is for 40 minutes. They showed us a small video about the penguins and their effort to save the species. Then we were made to cleanse our hands with sanitisers because they fear penguins may get infected. Phones, cameras and food are not allowed. When we entered inside, we were in for a few surprising things and facts. We met two gentoo penguins, Speedy and Lollipop. Speedy was the little guy who is supposed to be one of their fastest swimmers and Lollipop is an extremely sweet girl who is one of their star-penguins and also she is known to be a very calm and understanding girl :) The male penguins have an yellow tag on their left wing and female penguins have a red tag on their right wing. They entered with great style and poise.
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| Speedy |
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| Lollipop |
The trainer then introduced all of us to those two and they kept walking towards each of us. She made them play with a ball and also made them climb the ice seats and jump from the seats. We were told that Ski Dubai is the first place to train penguins. They are taken care with extreme love and affection. Few facts blew our mind when we were told that penguins live for 15-20 years but if humans shower love and take very good care of them then they can live up to 30-35 years. She even told us how a male penguin proposes a female penguin. It goes like this, if a male penguin likes a female then it will get a stone and put it in front of the girl and if she likes him, she has to take that stone and together they start building their nest and then mating happens and the family grows. The main reason to give the stone is to ask the girl if she likes to build a nest with him using that stone which will actually be the first stone to their nest. If the girl doesn't like that male penguin then she walks away. This sounded way too cute for all of us and everyone were smiling. She even told us that Lollipop has a special friend and speedy sometimes tries to flirt with Lollipop when her special friend is not around. We all started laughing because they are just like humans. Like this we came to know many facts about the types of penguins in the world and also the different penguins in Ski Dubai.
Now it was time for the Peng encounter. All of us were made to go in couples or family and we have to sit on the rock. Speedy and Lollipop would run towards us, climb the rock and stand next to us for a family photo :) The way these little ones run towards us is simply amazing. The second one was an up and close encounter where you can touch, hug and kiss them. We had a chance to do all these with Speedy. It seems Lollipop doesn't like all these and she gets cranky.. ha ha ha :) So we were given instructions about how to handle them. They will be made to stand on a little stone and we have to hug them from behind and rub their body gently and kiss them on their head. We couldn't wait to do this and when we hugged him, we didn't want to leave him at all. He was like a small baby and we felt like parents :) Their skin is indeed very soft. So that was our lovely encounter with Speedy and Lollipop and then it was time to enter the snow park as we had our snow bullet slot at 1pm.
We entered the snow park and experienced a chairlift ride before getting down at the snow bullet station. Snow Bullet experience was awesome. The feeling of gliding through a rail up above the ground level and looking down at the snow park was something very new and nice. After the snow bullet, we went to play with the giant snow ball. After some funny giant ball rides, it was now time for some hot lunch. We had food at St. Moritz restaurant just outside the park. We had spring rolls and spinach n cheese ravioli which is indeed the best one we have ever had.
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| Selfie from the chairlift ride |
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| All set for the snow bullet |
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| Giant Ball |
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| Lunch at St. Moritz |
After a scrumptious lunch, we headed back to the park to experience the remaining rides. We went for a Bobsled run which left us laughing so much because it was a cool ride and then we did a toboggan ride followed by chair lift again. The first time we took the chair lift, we had to stop at the first station for the snow bullet counter. So this time we did a complete ride to witness the famous 360 degree view of Ski Dubai. It's just amazing and makes you wonder if it's a real snow park. We played for a while in the snow park and experienced few more rides. The last experience we had was of the Penguin march. All the penguins march and play and audience loved them for being so sweet. The park has a huge skiing area, the access to which is only for skiers.
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| 360 degree view from the chair lift |
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| Penguin March begins |
After all the fun, it was hard to say goodbye but we had no choice as we had to meet few friends and go out. We came out of Ski Dubai, had hot chocolate, went for a quick walk inside the mall and finally met one of my close friends and family member, Pavan. We went to his house to meet his wife Pallavi who is again a friend of mine and their two year old son Preetham. After spending some time at their house and sipping on some desi filter coffee, we all left to the Dubai Marina which is an artificial canal city built along a stretch of Persian Gulf shoreline(source:Wikipedia). The walk was refreshing and we got to see many different buildings which included the Rotating Tower, which is a proposed 80 storey sky scraper with rooms that rotate 360 degrees. The smaller version of musical fountain right opposite to the canal was good as well because we could go near it and play.
We then left to experience JBR walk which is actually Jumeirah Beach Residence walk. JBR is supposed to be a very popular suburb and a posh locality. We saw a few spectacular fine dine Indian
and international restaurants, buildings and cars while we were walking down the line. We went to an Indian
restaurant by name India Palace for dinner and then took a nice walk along the beach and left for a drive along the world famous Burj Al Arab. Burj Al Arab is the third tallest hotel in the world and it has been called the world's only 7 star hotel. Just like the Emirates Palace, Burj Al Arab also requires a booking to be made before entry. We just parked the car and took a few snaps in front of it.
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| Ferraris |
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| Beach side restaurants and hookah bars |
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| Gym equipment near the beach |
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| View of Burj Al Arab |
Our day ended on a high note as we saw and experienced
many wonderful things. We reached our hotel around 1.30 am and had a good night's sleep.
Hope you guys enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thanks for reading. Will post my last article on Dubai trip in a few days. Take care :)
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