Water Park in Desert Country

Monday, October 27^th, 2014

Post by Kim

 

This weekend, Adam and I put on our tourist hats yet again.  Due to a clerical error that was made at the Grand Millennium Hotel in our first week at the UAE, Adam got a free ticket to Yas Waterworld – Abu Dhabi city’s premier water park.  The ticket was going to expire at the end of this month, so Adam and I decided to make use of this freebie and let out our inner child.

I wasn’t quite sure what I would see in terms of female swimwear in the park, especially if there were more traditional Muslim women there.  It turns out that there a wide range of swimwear – from string bikinis to sleeved swimwear with head coverings.  Here’s an example of the more conservative suits women might wear.

I personally opted for a one-piece swimming suite, because I didn’t want to take the risk of a string pulling off my bikini in one the rides!  Anyway, here we are, at various sections of the park.

 

It’s been a long time since we’ve been to a water park, and we were impressed by this one.  It features some adrenaline-rushing rides.  Our personal favorite ride was the Dawwama ride, in which 6 people sit in a raft.  The raft rapidly moves down a tube, and then gets ejected into a 20-metre red and blue funnel; you can see this funnel in one of the pictures above.  Adam and I ended up going backwards in the entire ride, and we were quite disoriented.  Oscillating back and forth in the forth in funnel was particularly fun!

Another ride of note was the Liwaloop, which was like a pneumatic tube.  Imagine yourself being in a tube at around 80 degree incline, then dropping when the base suddenly slips out from under you!  The ride went so fast that there wasn’t much time to process much what was going on.

If you’d like to have a better sense of what the rides look like, you can watch a video of the rides on the Yas Waterworld website: <http://yaswaterworld.com/en/attraction/water-park/rides/adrenaline-rush>.

Another feature of note at the water park was a family-oriented show about pearl diving.  Here’s a little interesting historical fact: prior to the oil boom, the UAE was renowned for its pearl industry.  In this show, some characters went looking for pearls, and there was a mesmerizing underwater-synchronized swimming segment.

To summarize, Adam and I had yet another great day.  Adam enjoyed Yas Waterworld because he likes extreme rides; I liked it because, unlike in most amusement parks, I didn’t suffer from motion sickness :P  The weather was great for going to the park too; whether we were dry or just came out of the water, we were always comfortable temperature-wise.  It’s been cooling off in the UAE... down to around 35 degrees Celsius!  This may seem hot to you folks in North America, but it's really not that bad.  I guess we're getting more and more accustomed to this country.