At The Top

On Friday Morning, we engaged in another new activity for us, and took Goble and Renee to the top of Burj Khalifa. We have been wanting to go to "The Top" since the Burj opened in January, but unfortunately for our other guests, elevator malfunctions closed down the observation deck for about 2 months. It finally reopened in early April (about 2 days after Brett, Scott, and Jess left, to their dismay), but then we decided to wait to go with visitors.

The whole experience of "At The Top" was really well done and had the feeling of being a big deal (which, I guess going to the top of the World's Tallest Building is). We had pre-purchased our tickets because it has been selling out daily every since reopening a couple months ago, and we figured it would be particularly difficult to get tickets for a weekend morning. We had a 10am appointment and after being ushered into line in the hyper-modern lobby with a scaled model and exhibits comparing the size of the Burj to the other tallest buildings in the world (which, by the way, it totally dwarfs all of them when compared side-by-side!) had to go through a metal detector. Then, once we got through, we had about a 5 minute walk through halls of displays explaining the process and procedures for building the Burj. It was actually really interesting because they had models of some of the different designs that were competing before the final design was chosen and also showed all the different weather tests the building had to pass before being approved for construction.

And just before getting to the elevators to go up, they had this observation point that allowed you to see just how high we were going. The observation deck is on the 124th floor of the 160(ish) floor building.

And once we finally got to the top in the super-fast elevator (which, kind of disappointingly did not show which floor we were on as we went up), the views were just spectacular. So very cool to see Dubai and our neighborhood from above!

The Dubai Mall, Fountain, and Address Hotel from above look so much different! Who knew the roof of the Dubai Mall is so interesting to look at!

Old Towne Island and the Dubai Fountain from above.