dubaidave

It Is a Gerstlauer. And, trust me, it looks amazing. More to come ....

I have just been on a hard hat tour of the site and can tell you that the coaster is built and the cars are on the track. A large portion of the ride will be in darkness with lasers and smoke. It is a large ride. I will have photos tomorrow.

((Scroll down to post 7 for construction pics.)) Sega Republic is an indoor entertainment centre being developed at Dubai Mall, the largest mall in the world. They will have a spinning coaster and a drop tower amongst lots of other attractions. This is based on Sega Joypolis in Tokyo. I am told the coaster is on site. I will hopefully get a backstage tour of the site on Sunday so can update then. In the meantime here are the photos I have so far. Nothing really to see here. It is a row of retail outlets. More to come soon. Oh Look, That door is open! The lighting make it very difficult to get photos of the artists impressions.

This might help you decide on the lake issue. After After Before Before

^ Yeah just seen that. It actually looks a bit nicer now. The lake has been drained and the dodgems put back on their wheels.

No Dickens Cider that day I was thinking the same thing about London Dungeon. We went there the next day but the boat ride was down so missed that one.

Part 2 You then emerge, blinking, into the daylight And then it was over They really love this projection on glass technique Mr Dickens himself The Animatronics were quite good The britannia theatre was the last attraction The 4D theatre is hardly worth a mention This is one of the projection rooms The Haunted House Here was the condensed version of Oliver Twist

Here, as promised are the photos, if you skipped my overly long review above, all you need to know is that Dickens World is Rubbish. Please note, due to the very low light levels I have artificially enhanced a lot of the pics so the colors might be a bit funny. If you do not sit in the front you cant see much at all Ahead are characters from the novel You are about to enter the graveyard Bonus point for real fire. Mind you don't hit that water wheel. You are then sent backwards down a small drop This bloke pops up and says something This is the area that rotates the boat. and an emergency exit At the top you emerge onto the rooftops of old London Can you spot the cunningly disguised lift hill? We head off into the, surprisingly clear waters of London sewers This is true if you are in the back of the boat Lets head into the boat ride Here are a few shots of the very well themed courtyard You then move into the main courtyard This is the view you see as you walk over the entry bridge At 10 o clock this boat popped out Thankfully we didn't have to Que around the block today

Before reading this review, here are a few points to remember. I don’t usually do long text reviews of attractions, but I though this one deserved it. If you want to see the photos, you can jump straight to the next post and ignore all this waffle. I had read several reviews of Dickens World, most were rather unfavorable, but hey, I was in the area and they had a boat ride and haunted house so I thought I would check it out. I had heard that they got very busy; there are stories about queuing round the block for 3 hours just to get in and queuing inside for 2 hours to get on the boat ride. This in mind we arrived at, what was basically a large warehouse next to a factory outlet, shortly after 9.30. There was no one there. AT 10 o’clock the large clock face on the outside of the buildi8ng opened up and a boat popped out and a long spiel was rendered to me and my parents, and a couple of other people walking past the car park. Around 10 15 they opened the doors and we trotted in. We were the first, and for a while, only people in. You take a narrow and unthemed staircase up to the first floor, the whole of the ground floor is taken up with different shops. You then emerge into a very dark room. Before your eyes have chance to adjust you are accosted by a lady in Dickensian costume, wanting to take your photo. If you allow this the resulting flash does nothing to help your eyes adjust to your surroundings. You stumble, partially blinded onto a surprisingly well theme bridge. After pausing for a while you look into the main courtyard of Dickens world. Now, before I go much further I must say the courtyard is extremely well themed. The facades of the buildings and the main square look very authentic, a lot of time and effort has obviously been spent to recreate Dickensian London. As you make you way into the courtyard there are a few costumed characters strolling around. The sense of emersion in the courtyard is only broken by the modern coffee shop placed there. After taking in you surrounding for a while, and it is stunning, you need to look for some rides. I will try and review each attraction as we experienced them. The first job is to identify where the attractions are, not and easy job, there are signs that say boat ride, etc, but they don’t really seem to point anywhere. Great Expectations Boat Ride ( Beware Spoilers) Naturally this was the first place we visited, I had read of 2 hour lines for this ride and indeed as we entered we passed signs saying 2 hours wait form this point. The walk in is very well themed, somewhat reminiscent of Pirates of the Caribbean. We walked straight to the boat, result, to be greeted be 2 costumed characters, who seemed shocked to see us. They though the ride was not open yet, anyway, we jumped into a boat and, after a short delay for the empty boats in front to clear, we were off. The recreation of London sewers that I had read of was not all that bad, the water was clear, rather than the advertised brown, but the theming was rather good. A small boy is seen peeing in the corner and you enter the Folly Ditch Sewer. This is a nicely themed lift hill with some nice water sound effects in the background. At the top you arrive at the much touted flight above the London Rooftops. This is where it starts to go a bit pear shaped. For some reason the ride is taken at an incredibly slow pace both in the water and on this conveyor. The conveyor takes you past some rooftops which are badly let down by a painted backdrop behind. There are some shenanigans with a line of washing that lifts out of your way as you, very slowly, move under it. After this voyage you push though some ghost train style rubber doors and come to a halt. There is lots of flashes and an animatronics figure stands up and say something I cant remember. There are more flashes as the boat is turned 90 degrees and then you are sent down a backwards drop. Its not a bad drop, not Valhalla good, but OK. You reach the bottom and go through some docks with assorted vermin and then you come to a water wheel, remember you are still going backwards. There is some talk about not hitting the water wheel and you boat is turned a full 180 degrees and carries on its very slow course. You carry on through the dock with some nicely themed shop fronts. And into a grave yard, again the grave yard is nicely themed but uneventful. You then pile into the back of stacked up boats whilst being introduced to characters from great expectations. These are in the form of static mannequins that are lit up in turn. Unfortunately, due to the backlog of boats in front of you you miss the last few. Finally you are let off by a cheeky cockney chappy and let back into the main square again. So, is it any good? Would I wait 2 hours to ride it? No is the simple answer, but to be fair to an attraction that has obviously spent a fortune on this ride, I will clarify. First off, Due to the design of the boats, unless you sit in the front, you can hardly see anything. The backs of the seats are so high they totally obstruct your vision. Secondly, the ride is so damn slow. It takes around 8 minutes to complete the ride, excluding the backlog of boats. If there was lots to see this would be fine, but there is not much to see. I rode it 3 times and by the 3rd time was begging for it to end. I would guess that the reason it is so slow is that you would need to fel you got value for time if you had waited 2 hours to ride. Overall the themeing of the ride is stunning, let down by a couple of badly painted backdrops and a very very slow passage. The Haunted Mansion The map, amusingly calls this attraction the haunted man. I had read several reviews of this as well, it opened after the initial opening due to the, Dickens World quote, ground breaking special effects used inside. You are welcomed by the, now customary, costumed character, I am sure she was someone form one of the books, but I had no idea. You are led into a very nicely themed entrance hall with peeling wall paper and a once grand staircase ahead of you. You are told to wait here, and we do, This is the biggest group we have seen here all day, maybe 10 people. We wait a while ad the costumed lady comes in and say we can go up the stairs. At the top of the stairs is a sparse corridor and we walk along, until, we see a glass room. We are told to wait here and our guide disappears. After a short time an animated man appears projected on the screen. Once this short projection is finished we wait and then assume we should walk on. After 2 more rooms like this, the one with scrooge is quite convincing as the projected figure sits on a real be in the room. The final room has a chair in at and the same costumed character appears sat on it and wishes us a good and says something about the terror following us home, then we are back in the square again. Ok, this is an interesting one, because it was not opened when the press previews were done and because of phrases like, ground breaking special effects, and live actor interaction, everyone in our group was expecting more. In Short the haunted house is rubbish, a complete waste of time. Yes the lobby is very well themed but, the fact that you are left alone to move form scene to scene on your own, means that any atmosphere is lost. The rooms themselves are quite well done but are far too long. You can also hear the next scene playing and the boat ride thundering down the drop behind you. The final room where the real life actor appears and talk to you could have been fantastic but it wasn’t. Most of our party had no idea who she was or that she was a live actor and what she said made no sense at all, something about the evil following us home. To call this attraction Haunted is a slur on even the cheapest haunted walk through. Dothboys Hall This was a school house, and when we walked in there was a costumed teacher asking questions about dickens books. On the desks were touch screens with a strange snake and ladders game with questions about Dickens book. Several of the screens didn’t work and we spent all of 2 minutes in there. Peggottys Boathouse This was touted as a start of the art 4D extravaganza. Again, the theming of the attraction was excellent. You were sat on church style benches and the show began. It was the story of Charles Dickens in Animated for. The 4D effect consisted of a drizzle of water and a fan blowing on you. This was a totally wasted attraction. They could have done so much with the subject matter and the 4D experience; instead they chose a quite badly animated film with hardly any effects. Apart from a children’s play area and a pub, the only other attraction was Britannia Theatre This is another attraction that did not open originally as there were problems with the state of the art animatronic effects. Indeed we had to wait nearly half an hour to get in, due to problems with the effects. In fact when we did get seated, strangely on temporary chairs and table, not theater style seating as you would expect, they had to call help just to get the doors closed. The show itself was actually quite good. It was a mixture of animatronic effects and projections. The talking grave stones were quite good, as was the huge book that changed from drawings of the character to live action projections. Over all this was a show that would not have seemed out of place at, perhaps, the Magic Kingdom 10 years ago. My only real criticism was, again, it was slightly long. Something that deserves special mention is the show in the courtyard. Lots of buildup was given for this and, it turned out, to be a version of Oliver Twist, using the same costumed characters that wander around. For a very strange reason this was done by them miming to a pre recorded voice over track, very strange in that people kept missing their ques and at times it seemed like a badly dubbed movie. They were also short of actors, in fact when one of the characters was arrested, and the voice over said 2 policemen escorted him off, he actually handcuffed himself and dragged himself away. So we are now at the end. Overall Dickens World is a place of total contrasts. The theming is magnificent, for an attraction that cost $123 million it does look amazing. However there is very little content once you are there. The boat ride is OK, the Haunted House is appalling and the Theatre show is quite good. Maybe if there were lots of people there and you had to do a lot of queuing it could take a while, but we were done by 12.30 I read somewhere that the staff are on rotation daily, so one day they could be on the cash desk and the next be playing a part in one of the plays. This seems a very strange concept but could account for the poor performances in the Oliver Twist play and the general lack of interest by most of the street actors. Anyway, here are the photos.

"Sources say that the damage to the Grand Lobby was confined to the roof, the 50m Chihuly sculpture remains intact/untouched and a tour of the site revealed no major damage to the rooms or structure." Sounds like they have been very lucky.

There are updates and more photos at http://www.gulfnews.com/nation/General/10241983.html They say that it was just the roof of the lobby and there were no injuries. We were supposed to be going to Aquaventure again tomorrow but they have cancelled it. They are also saying that the Bridge Suite, located directly above the fire and $25,000 per night, has suffered sever smoke damage.

I have just been down to the Palm to see what the damage is. Nothing has collapsed, however the entire lobby has been destroyed. It seems, from the outside, that the fire was contained there. No Doubt the amazing sculpture in the centre has been lost. My other worry would be smoke damage. A lot of corridors lead from the lobby and when I was there last week there seemed to be no way to block the smoke. Here's a better picture. This is the amazing sculpture that must have been destroyed. This is what the lobby used to look like It seems to have been totally destroyed This is the lobby area. As you can see the reports of a collapse where not true. You can not get onto the crescent where the hotel is located.

The main lobby of the Hotel Atlantis on the Palm Dubai went up[ in flames this morning. Initial reports say it was a small fire in the lobby started by welding equipment. The water park has not been damaged. I will post as many details as I can when I have them. Here are some photos I have found on the Internet. I have been told that part of the hotel has collapsed, but nothing official. I will ate,pt to get down there later today to try and get some pics.

^ Hi, Yes that is one of the rapid sections that links the lagoon bits. The first one was quite a surprise because I was not expecting it to be so fast, but once you've been down one you are ready for it. Unfortunately they are mostly hidden so that's the best pic I got.

^^ I think there are 4 Master Blasters and they are very long with lazy river bits inbetween

I totally agree about the Palm. The blocks of flats you saw on the trunk are having more built ion front of them and they doubled the amount of villas on the fronds.

I believe the official opening date in 26th September and See the above post

In the middle of the River is the Ziggurat. Here's some pics One last shot Here you can see the fronds of Palm Island All the slides start with a conveyor belt that you sit on and makes sure you are the correct distance from the person in front of you. The selection of slides coming from the pyramid is amazing Lets take a trip up the Pyramid The other rides that goes through the shark tank is a slower rapids style ride It ends with a trip through the shark tank. This is the Big slide

I was lucky enough to vi9sit Aquaventure on a training day. They were basically training the lifeguards and needed to put people through the park so they can practise stopping them from drowning. The first thing to say about this water-park is that it is HUGE. It is laid out as a series of lagoons all linked by 2.5 KM of lazy river. The sections between the lagoons are quite fast rapids sections. There is also a kids play zone and the centerpiece, Ziggurat a four story pyramid with slide on every level. Two of which go through a large shark tank. Due to the fact you spend a lot of time in the water it is a rather difficult place to photograph. Please also note that not all the rides were fully open as this was a preview day, but rest assured the place already looks amazing. For all you map enthusiasts here's another bit of the fast bit The monorail will come to the heart of the park. This is the entrance plaza The kids area more slow bits This is the entrance to two long conveyor belts that continue your journey on the river. One of the slower parts of the river, and a master blaster on the left Just to prove I was there. I am the one in the TPR T shirt In the middle of the pic you can see where the rapids start This is one of the bays We started at the furthest point from the hotel. We Valet parked at the hotel and had to walk for mile to get to the water park The Hotel is magnificent This is not the entrance Yay, Atlantis One for the tunnel enthusiasts There is a monorail on the Palm, but it is not ready yet, so we have to take the tunnel to the outer crescent. Here is the Atlantis hotel. As with everything in Dubai, they are still building the Palm Driving up the trunk of the palm tree. We first had to make our way to the Palm.

just a quick note from my mobile to say that i have been invited to a preview of the new water park atlantis dubai on wednesday. Expect a photo trip report here after the weekend.

I Ma going in September so get ready for at Photo TPR.

Yay for a Japan trip report. BOO for using Flckr. It is blocked in Dubai so I cant see any of the pics.

I think they try to make their coasters on the cheap by cutting corners. I didn`t ride the space shot at wonder world but the one at Pattaya felt very unsafe and had an almost home made feel. The Coaster that has never run at Pattaya seemed to be built along the same lines as the space shot, almost as if they had just copied the space shot design and applied it to a coaster. The car on the non operating coaster there was the same design as the cars on the coaster that does run. In fact, they had clearly canabalised it to refit some of the other cars on the coaster.

Did you get to go on any rides at Wonder World? It seeemed like the space shot was the only ride open when I was there.

^ Thanks for that. I was not sure about the age of the flume cars. I do think it is slightly bad taste to put another flume ride in. When I went last year I didn't even see the dodgy zoo bit. It was only this year from the observation tower that I saw it and, truth be told, I only went onto the island because it looked like a coaster on there.