Aquaventure

This Friday was an absolute blast! We spent the day with our friends Clare, Diana, and Mahmoud at the Aquaventure Water Park at the Atlantis Hotel on the Palm Jumeirah. We had originally planned to go to the park on Thursday night because they do special nights where the park is open and djs play music and it's more of an adult thing, but since it's getting colder here (yup, you heard it from me, the temp drops to probably about 70-75 at night now, so a little cold to be going down water slides, especially if there is a breeze), we missed the last night session. We were disappointed, but Diana suggested we all just go the next day anyway...

We were really excited because Jared and I LOVE water parks. We had been wanting to go to Aquaventure since we got here because it's new in the last year and we hadn't been before. The other big water park in Dubai is located next to the Burj Al Arab and Jumeirah Beach Hotel and is called Wild Wadi. We went when I visited Jared in March '08 and absolutely loved it, and so we wanted to go to Aquaventure to get a basis of comparison (you know research on which is better for when people to come visit us... hint hint). I think we love water parks so much because it really allows us to feel like kids again (and Jared especially is in heaven), and you just run around from ride to ride having fun and not thinking about anything other than what ride you're going to do next.

We got there first thing when they opened at 10am, and reserved chairs in front of the giant wave pool. There aren't a huge number of rides, but they are all pretty awesome, and center around the huge temple looking structure above called "The Ziggurat." The big slide you can see coming down the front in the middle is one of those scary, straight down, have to cross your ankles and your arms across your chest like a mummy ones. We did that first, and while it was pretty scary, it's also kind of awesome because unlike every other slide like that I've ever been on, you end in a big pool instead of just coming to a stop while on the slide... you also go through a shark tank on this one, but can't see it because you are screaming and your eyes are closed to keep from getting water in them. The rest of the slides on the Ziggurat are all tube slides, and very fun and cool in various ways: one you go through an aquarium with sharks while on your tube, others are slides where you get pushed uphill with surges of water and then get water dumped on your head before going into a completely dark tunnel and occasionally getting water squirted in your face. They also have a ton of different versions of 'lazy rivers' there, but one has rapids and waves that pass through every 20 seconds or so, so you feel like you are white water rafting in a way... For that one we linked all our tubes up to create a giant raft. A really awesome time!

Us Lounging and Jared enjoying his fresh coconut milk.

We played for a few hours before getting hungry and deciding we wanted lunch. We were expecting just burgers and chicken fingers and things of that nature since it was a water park, but were really surprised to see that not only did they have those kind of normal water/amusement park foods, but also had shawarma, a salad bar, and a stir fry station where you could get stir fry cooked to order (think Saga "Show Time" or Fire & Ice). Unfortunately, we didn't notice the stir fry area until we had already ordered, but Diana, Clare, and Mahmoud all got shawarma.

Afterward we wanted to get a little snack and were excited because they had fresh fruit stands where you could get fresh coconut milk, and also fresh pineapples and watermelon cut just for you.

Jared was pretty psyched about his coconut and decided that drinking his coconut milk was not enough, but that he also needed to eat the coconut meat inside. Lacking utensils he tried to kill the coconut with a plastic fork. Ultimately, he was successful, only to realize that the coconut inside was not ripe yet, so not good for eating... Quite disappointing after working so hard...

After finishing our lunch and snacks we headed back for a few more hours of slides and also discovered the kiddie area, which is traditionally Jared's favorite part of any water park because he LOVES the dump bucket. You know, the giant bucket that dumps 500 gallons of water on your head? When we went to Wild Wadi, Jared probably spent 2 hours playing in the kiddie area alone for this feature, so naturally Jared and Mahmoud had to play in it at Aquaventure as well. Such a fun and relaxing day... and then after we decided we didn't want our fun to end, so planned an impromptu barbecue for the evening.