Wednesday, March 01, 2006

THE COOLEST THING TO DO IN DUBAI

Someone sent this to me in an email and I admit I was amazed. At first I thought it was an urban legend, but it checks out.

The U.A.E. has a ski resort in Dubai that has recently opened and offers ski packages! We are talking about a country where the temperature goes up to 120 degrees! In the Middle East!

This engineering aspects alone are fascinating. Some features about the resort:
- It is 22,500 meters squared covered with real snow all year round -(equivalent to 3 football fields)
- The temperature is maintained at a comfortable -1 to -2 degrees
- It is 85 meters high (approximately 25 stories) and 80 meters wide
- There are 5 different ski runs of varying difficulty and length; the longest run is 400 meters
- A full capacity of 1500 guests
- Snickers Freestyle zone
- Permanent: 1/4 pipe snowboard area
- 3,000 meters square Snow Park with a snow cavern
- Quad chairlift, tow lift and flying carpets
- Mountain resort theme

According to one site, the resort even provides winter clothing for guests included in the ticket price!
Here are some photos:

This is a photo taken during the construction of the resort.

This is the outside after construction was complete. You can see the palm trees and desert; while inside is completely refrigerated.




Now, who would have imagined such a place in the United Arab Emirates? The official web site can be found here and is pretty interesting.

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