Surprisingly in our almost 6 year relationship, Grant and I have never done a water park together. Our family enjoyed going to our local waterpark (NRH2O) every year so I was excited to go again at one of the “largest water parks in the world,” especially in March. Dubai’s Atlantis Aquaventure water park has a couple of Guinness World Records including:

• Worlds largest number of water slides in a waterpark (50 slides)
• Worlds tallest water slide (Odyssey of Terror)
• Longest family rafting water coaster (Shockwave)
• World’s first dueling water coaster slide (Medusa’s Lair)

We started out at Neptune’s Tower which had the Leap of Faith slide. Any Amazing Race fans will recognize this as the water slide at Atlantis that one of the contestants (Mika) refused to go down. The slide has a steep drop and then goes through a tunnel within the shark lagoon before exiting (yes, real sharks). The slide was fun and I really tried to keep my eyes open to see the sharks, but it was dark in some parts and water splashed all in my eyes so I just had to keep them closed most of the ride. (Sorry we don’t have many pictures/videos from the day, but I put in YouTube clips from others to get an idea of what the slides entail!)

All of their water slide’s definitely had a thrill factor to them, even the tube ones. My favorite one of the day would probably be the Poseidon’s Revenge. Grant likened it the pneumatic tube systems at a bank. We stepped into tube while standing on a platform. They gave us a 3-2-1 countdown before the platform dropped and we were plummeting down to the ground in a drop that starts completely vertical – you feel it on your body when the slide starts to level out from vertical.

Grant’s favorite slide was the Blackout Slide. It’s nicknamed the “scarier sister of the Leap of Faith”. It takes you through a series of winding tunnels before it has a vertical drop that sends you flying towards the end. We definitely got bumped a few times in the booty during all these rides, but it was worth it! Probably the best water park either one of us have been to. We definitely forgot how much the sun and  walking around the water park can drain your energy. Plus with all these tall water slides, there were so many stairs to climb – we told ourselves we got our appropriate exercise in for the day via all the stairs!

By 5 pm we were ready to head back to our room and relax. The water park is at the far end of what they call the Palm Jumeirah so we had to take their monorail to the city tram and then hop over to the metro line in order to get back. The Palm Jumeirah is a totally manmade island that looks just like a palm tree from high up. We didn’t realize we had hit rush hour traffic on the metro, but it got more crowded the closer we got to our stop. We watched as one couple had to push their way out yelling “Excuse me!” at the stop before ours so I knew ours was going to be a push as well. As soon as the metro stopped at our station, I shoved my way forward taking a quick glance over my shoulder to see if Grant was following before stepping out of the doors. It was a wild experience and probably the busiest metro I had ever been on!

We grabbed a quick bite to eat at the mall which was the closest metro stop and then headed off to bed early as we knew the next day would be another long one exploring Abu Dhabi.