Welcome to Dubailand, twice the size of Disney World

by Iva Skoch on

I swear every time I read something about the United Arab Emirates development plans, I am amazed. Last week, I read about Masdar, the greenest city in the world, being built in UAE.

Today, I stumbled upon the plans for Dubailand, the world’s biggest amusement park in the making. Currently, the largest amusement park in the world is the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, which is also the largest single-site employer in the US with 58,000 employees. Dubailand will be twice the size.

Check out these stats about Dubailand:

  • It will be built on 3 billion square feet (107 miles sq.)
  • The estimated price tag is $20 billion
  • The site will have 7 themes: Theme parks, culture & art, science & planetariums, sports & sports academies, well-being & health, shopping & retail and resorts & hotels
  • It will have a total of 45 mega projects
  • Dubailand expects a footfall of 40,000 visitors a day and 15 millions visitors a year once fully operational
  • It will have a minimum of 55 hotels within its geographical location

Doesn’t it sometimes seem that the world tends to copy the worst things about America?

Avoid a layover in Dubai at all costs

by Jerry Guo on

A British traveler traveling through Dubai International Airport on a layover has just been sentenced to four years in a United Arab Emirate jail.

You’re probably thinking he did something crazy like punched a flight attendant, as Iva wrote about yesterday. You’ll never believe this: he was arrested for having a microscopic bit of marijuana on the bottom of his shoe.

The marijuana–which is strictly illegal in the UAE–weighed in at 0.003 grams, which is invisible to human eyes. But apparently the custom agents there practice a even harsher form of racial profiling than the American TSA folks.

Here are some more outrageous cases:

  • One man has been jailed for possession of three poppy seeds left over from a bread roll he ate at Heathrow Airport. Painkiller codeine is also banned.
  • A 25-year-old Briton who was found with a similar speck in one pocket as he arrived on holiday has been awaiting sentence since November.
  • A Big Brother TV executive has so far been held without charge for five days after being arrested for possessing the health supplement melatonin.

Masdar, the world’s greenest city

by Iva Skoch on

If you had to take a guess where the greenest city in the world is going to be by 2009–and yes, I am talking green as in “zero carbon”, “zero waste”, “car free “city–where would you guess it would be?

I was completely off. I just didn’t think that a region rich in oil would be the first one to come out with a project of this scope.

The first city in the world based completely on renewable energy will be built in the United Arab Emirates. Electricity for the six-square-kilometer Masdar City will be generated by photovoltaic panels, while cooling will be provided with concentrated solar power. According to ENS newswire, design and operation of Masdar City must deal with the realities of Abu Dhabi’s sub-tropical, arid climate where temperatures range from a low of around 50° F to a high of around 118° F in the summer.

It is not the most beautiful skyline I have ever seen, but beauty might be an overrated concept in the 21st century.

Will fingerprinting replace need for a passport?

by Abha Malpani on

Scandinavian airline SAS has introduced finger-print check-in on a domestic flight from Stockholm to Gotenburg in Sweden. Its purpose at the moment is to make sure that the person who checks-in luggage is the same as the person boarding the flight, a sure advantage for airport /on-flight security.

On a domestic level, this makes sense as check-in procedures are relatively lax when traveling within the country, and even within the EU for that matter; but they plan to eventually make it an international check-in system.

Fingerprinting at airports is not new. The US introduced it a while ago as an added security check for visitors to the country; the UK has a similar system, but not restricted to visitors; and Dubai has had a retina scan system for a while now. This makes it impossible for people to travel with fraudulent documents.

Dubai went beyond finger-printing for security purposes when they introduced the eGate card — a check-in option for Dubai-based frequent travelers who don’t want to stand in line to get their passport stamped. If you have this card, you swipe it to enter/exit the airport, match your finger-print on a screen and you are through.

So the question is: will we eventually be able to travel without any printed form of identification? If you are finger-printing and retina-scanning anyway, other than to have a stamp, what do we need passports for?

Big in Japan: Sega plans to open mega-arcade in Dubai

by Matthew Firestone on

Here’s a quick question for you:

Name the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions the city of Dubai.

a) Billions and billions of dollars worth of untapped oil reserves
b) Something akin to the Las Vegas of the Arabian Gulf
c) A desert oasis of shopping malls and astronomically expensive hotels
d) More ridiculous bling than the front row of a Ludicrous concert
e) An environmentally unsustainable nightmare built by slave labor

If you answered any or all of the above, by all means you are indeed correct!

However, it is only going to be a few more months before Dubai also boasts what will most likely be the world’s largest video arcade.

Seriously.

From Japan to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Sega is about to launch its brand name on the Arab world.

Last week, a representative from the Japanese game company announced that it intends to build a mega-arcade in the Dubai Mall, which will be completed later this year.

Needless to say, Sega also announced that their first mega-arcade in the Middle East will be unlike anything the world has ever seen before.

So, what is the Dubai Mall you ask? Good question!

The Dubai Mall is scheduled to open in late 2008, and when completed, will be the largest mall in the world.

(In a city of gross excess, this shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise!)

According to Wikipedia, the Dubai Mall is rumored to cover an area of 12.1 million square feet, and will actually be comprised of a dozen smaller malls.

Again, as this is Dubai, keep in mind that ‘small’ is a relative concept.

In total, the Dubai mall will offer 9 million square feet of shopping retail space, and approximately 1200 stores.

In addition to housing the world’s most exclusive brand names, the Dubai Mall will also feature the following absurdities:

– The world’s largest gold souk
– The world’s largest aquarium
– The world’s tallest building, the Burj Dubai

We’re not done…

The Dubai Mall will also feature an Olympic-sized ice skating rink and a towering waterfall – keep in mind people that all of this is in the middle of the desert!

And of course, what shopping mall would be complete without a video arcade!

In America, a generation of children grew up playing Sonic the Hedgehog and other titles, though Sega stopped releasing consoles following the relative failure of the Dreamcast in 2001.

However, in 2004 Sega merged with the Sammy Corporation, the world’s largest pachinko machine manufacturer, and has since then focused on arcade theme parks throughout Japan.

Of course, nothing in Japan will stand a chance of comparing with the mega-arcade in the works.

When completed, the new Sega spot will occupy 75,350 square feet spread out over two floors of the shopping mall.

All I can say is that if you’re planning a trip to Dubai in the near future, you had better start saving your quarters!

** Today’s post is dedicated to my wanderlust-ridden sister, who made her brother incredibly jealous of her exploits by partying it up with royalty in Dubai. **