DUBAI: COOL FOR KIDS
The emirate is a fun theme park with plenty of diversion for parents and kids, says Adrian Michaels
THINGS are looking up again in Dubai. The emirate’s incredible boom came to a sticky end amid a burst property bubble in 2008. Bankers were said to be abandoning their Ferraris at the airport; there was unfinished construction everywhere.
But now matters have moved on. The inbound flights are full. There were almost 500 children (plus their parents) staying in our hotel. And though much of Dubai outside the hotel seemed to be a construction site, some was new, and far from abandoned.
None of these facts would seem an overly attractive reason for visiting Dubai. The United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is one, are hardly cheap. But Dubai’s reputation for hassle-free, family tourism has never diminished.
As for the scenery, it is an issue if you leave the hotel and are looking for Italian lakeside panoramas or troops of monkeys muscling through the Congo forest. But to paraphrase Basil Fawlty: this is a hotel in Dubai; you can see the pool, the beach and the hotel going up next door.
We were there because it had been four years since the family unit — mom, dad, two girls — had been on a holiday that was not self-everything. We just wanted a few days of someone else shopping, cooking and cleaning.
We stayed at JA Resorts Palm Tree Court Hotel, which is on the beach and actually has several swimming pools. Temperatures in February were a perfect mid-20 degrees every day — and two of the many restaurants were varied buffets of discovery, so there was no queuing when a child suddenly out of fuel needed intravenous chips.
Big resort hotels these days hit all the spots. Ours had a children’s club where they could be dropped off. There were babysitters for the evening and other activities such as tennis, horse riding and golf. Thousands of deckchairs ranged across the huge grounds and vast sandy beach.
Palm Tree Court sat in the same compound as the Jebel Ali Beach Hotel, meaning that guests were able to use the restaurants and facilities of both interchangeably. But it took us half the week to work out that the food next door was better. After that, we ate there almost exclusively.
We went all-inclusive too, which tended to take the edge off the third cocktail of the morning.
The hotel had swim-up bars in its pools, where drinkers sit half-naked, half-submerged in chlorine. I had always thought I wanted to swim up to a bar, so I made sure I did so on the first day. I willingly passed up this Pandora’s Box of licentiousness for the rest of the week.
For tourists, Dubai is a fun theme park with plenty of diversion. The place is still almost 90% foreign national in spite of the exodus from the crash, I was told.
Gulf Ventures took us on a “desert safari” where the hospitable driver was from Yemen and the evening meal’s entertainment was provided by an arresting belly dancer who might, for all we could tell, have come from Lincolnshire.
This was an interesting excursion: the skyscrapers do not feel as though they are on the edge of a desert, so that makes the dune landscape all the more startling when you reach it within minutes. The rubble becomes scrub and the scrub is soon sand hills in melting pastel shades. As you head inland, they become a sunburnt red.
We went to visit some camels, who may have been from Dubai but stoically resisted interrogation, and we also went “dune bashing”. This is like skiing down sand dunes, but in a 4x4 with someone else driving, and it is nauseating. The desert safari overall, Skegness belly dancer included and in spite of traversing some beautiful desert, was about as
Lawrence of Arabia as Streatham High Road. But then Dubai itself is closer to Westfield London shopping centre than a Peter O’Toole epic.
Another vast mall masquerading as a hotel is the Atlantis, an incredible construction at the end of a man-made island called — to reflect its shape — the Palm. You may have seen pictures of the place, but what they can’t convey is the scale of the island. The Palm’s trunk is a six-lane dual carriageway and its branches are substantial A-roads housing vast blocks of apartments.
The hotel at the end — the Atlantis — is a Vegas-style development where, unlike Vegas, they have melded the hectic mall part and the quieter hotel part. First we hit the Atlantis aquarium — sharks, jellyfish and a 1.8m blue Napoleon fish that wore an expression of unhurried indifference at total odds to his surroundings. Think the Queen at a Who concert.
Then on to Aquaventure, a water park in the grounds, where one slide — Leap of Faith — was an almost vertical drop down the side of an ersatz Mayan pyramid. It’s all over in seconds, but my wife’s screams as she plummeted could be heard echoing around the park for some time.
The best bit of Aquaventure was the well-staffed area for smaller children, a large pool playground with water falling from every direction and lots of small slides with no queues.
Later in the week we headed up the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building. The observation platform on the 124th floor is only two-thirds of the way up, but gives unmatched views of the world’s largest construction site.
The story of Dubai is of uneven progress. A small fishing settlement and trading post later became a thriving port. In the early 20th century it was making a good living out of that and from diving for pearls — until the Japanese cultured pearl put an end to this in the ’20s. Then, 50 years ago, oil wealth arrived in the region and Dubai exploded by erecting a three-pedestalled temple of maritime trade, financial services and tourism.
One can still tour what counts as the older parts of town — concrete blocks housing souks with traders hawking aromatic and colourful herbs, or immense golden jewellery creations for the Indian wedding market. But so much was constructed later as the city spread in the last boom, and so much was left unoccupied when the reckoning came. Even if the good times really are back, why are they already building still more properties, islands and racetracks? The population is estimated at about two million, while the emirate seems to be preparing for 10 million, and soon. Perhaps they’re right.
Downstairs from the Burj Khalifa is another massive mall. And there in its miles of indoor boulevards lurks a nightmarish glimpse of a future far, far worse than 10 million overpaid bankers by the sea.
KidZania is an indoor play area built to resemble a small town. Again there are echoes of Las Vegas in the fake narrow streets and permanent twilight lighting. On the fake streets are fake businesses from every walk of life. Guided by adults, the child visitors can become firefighters, garage mechanics, milkmaids, beauticians, DJs, biscuit manufacturers and on and on. They can play at many professions over hours, wandering dementedly from job to job like Munchkin management consultants.
The darkened streets of KidZania are lit by fluorescence and neon from the shop fronts, by the flashing lights of child-sized fire engines. There is a paracetamol-inducing din of sirens and horns, of public announcements, and of hysterical children running around in a chamber where the exits are hard to find. It’s like Blade Runner meets Bugsy Malone, a postapocalyptic world run by small people. Sheikh of the Flies. Naturally, the children had a great time and the adults retreated to the coffee area.
After KidZania, Dubai suddenly seemed like a sun-drenched calming Eden peeled from the pages of Botticelli’s sketch pad. We retreated to the hotel for a swim up to the bar. — © The Sunday Telegraph
It’s closer to a London shopping centre than an O’Toole epic