Having brought his wife and three children to the opening day of the Atlantis Hotel, the US$1.5bn (Dh5.5bn) resort on Palm Jumeirah, Mr O’Rourke had just taken his first Leap of Faith and was still feeling the effects.
The waterslide, with its sheer, 27.5 metre drop – the equivalent of stepping out of a fifth-floor window – was the resort’s most anticipated attraction, and it did not disappoint.
“The first thing I noticed was that the water was really cold. Then it was just this sheer vertical drop. All you can see is a mist ahead. You just lose all sense of gravity.”
After the vertical plunge, the tallest, fastest free-fall waterslide in the Middle East sends you speeding through a transparent tunnel inside a lagoon filled with sharks.
“There is so much water spray I didn’t really notice the sharks but you are still going really fast. Then there’s another sheer drop from the tunnel and splash into the water below and then it’s all over. It’s a real rush.”
Once finished, Mr O’Rourke was all for climbing back up and doing it all over again.
His wife Laura was not as enthusiastic. “You are not going to get me going on that,” she said. “It looks excellent but it would be a bit too much for me.”
Yesterday’s opening of the 1,539-bedroom hotel appeared to go remarkably smoothly. The project, a joint venture between Kerzner International, based in The Bahamas, and Istithmar, a subsidiary of Dubai World, includes a water park, dolphinarium, shops, conference halls and 17 restaurants.
As Mr O’Rourke’s heart rate began to slow down, he and his and family, who live on the Palm Jumeirah, went off to explore the rest of the resort.
“The first thing my son said when we walked into the lobby and saw the fish tank was: ‘Look Daddy, it’s Nemo’”, referring to one of the clownfish that figures prominently in the 2003 animated film Finding Nemo by Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Pictures.
In fact Rafferty, aged two, will have seen a few “Nemos” as the Ambassador Lagoon is full of clownfish. They share the 11 million-litre tank with marine life from the Arabian Gulf, including golden trevallys, cobias and crescent angelfish.
Peering into the massive aquarium is like standing 10 metres under water. The lost city of Atlantis has been concocted on the tank floor and thousands of fish swim in and out of its sunken streets. In all, the resort is home to 65,000 fish and sea creatures.
Nevertheless, it has faced a flurry of criticism from conservationists who said the hotel should not have imported 28 captured bottlenose dolphins from the Solomon Islands.
One of the hotel’s star attractions, a whale shark found in distress in shallow waters off Jebel Ali, is to be released back into the wild after it has recovered.
Yesterday, as 700 guests checked into their rooms, it was hard to believe that only three weeks ago black smoke was billowing over the beach as a fire in the hotel lobby caused US$35 million worth of damage. Builders were forced to work around the clock to replace a 43-metre dome in the lobby, but guests seemed unaware of the drama.
Paul and Lindsay Cutting had flown in from London that morning and were staying four nights. “So far, I have to say it is very good,” said Mrs Cutting. “We saw it advertised and thought it would be a great opportunity to stay here on its opening.”
The couple had just been enjoying breakfast at the hotel. “Everything was so fresh and the staff and the service were excellent. So far, it meets the five-star expectations,” she added.
Giorgio Locatelli, the two-star Michelin chef, was preparing the first dish of the day – spaghetti with pepper, garlic oil and chili – in his restaurant, Ronda Locatelli. “I’ve been involved in this for the past two and half years and it’s great that we are now open,” he said.
The resort’s official opening will take place on Nov 20, when 2,000 guests will hear the Australian pop star Kylie Minogue make her debut in the Middle East at a gala beach party.
story published in The National
It’s 4pm in Dubai, the sun’s cooking at a blistering 42ºC (107ºF) and I’m up to my arms in a bucket of krill – a small, pink and very smelly crayfish. ‘Make a ball and throw it in front of her,’ comes the instruction.
So I gather a mush of the prawn-like creatures, form a slimy lump and lob it into the pool. The ball separates in mid-air, showering me in a spray of stench.
The whale shark in the aquarium below doesn’t care and neither do I – I’ve just become one in less than 1,000 people around the world to get to feed one of these amazing creatures.
With a grace that belies her huge size, she twists her mottled back, doubles back on herself, opens wide and sucks a load into her open jaws.
‘We thought of calling her Hoover,’ says Steve Kaiser, the man giving me the feeding lesson. ‘But I think we’ve settled on Sheika. Pending approval by the PR department, that is.’
Marine science
Steve is the unreconstructed Hawaiian ‘ichthyologist-cum- marine biologist stroke engineer and architect’ – or vice-president of marine science and engineering, to give him his proper title – at Atlantis, the mega resort which opened on Dubai’s man-made Palm Island this week. And if it’s a big title, it’s a big job for, while Atlantis is huge, Steve is the man charged with looking after its showpiece attraction at the heart of the main hotel, The Ambassador Lagoon.
Holding 11million litres of water, it’s the third largest aquarium in the world and is home to 65,000 fish. Steve also takes care of its sister attraction, Lost Chambers, 21 more tanks that – in the eyes of visiting children at least – are supposedly the last relics of the legendary submarine city and house everything from translucent jellyfish to 2m-long wels catfish.
‘See that bad boy?’ asks Steve, pointing to a particularly ugly goliath grouper as we walk through. ‘He was in the main tank but he went through five sharks, ten stingrays and three barracuda so we gave him a tank on his own.
Then, when I was showing some investors round, he just turned and emptied his bowels in front of them.’
It’s easy to be cynical about Atlantis. It’s big, bold, brash and has that level of servile service Brits seem to loathe and Americans adore. Rooms such as the $25,000 (£13,400)-a-night Bridge Suite suggest guests with more money than sense and even less taste, while environmentally it seems to open itself up for the punch.
It’s built on an island made from sand dredged from the bottom of the sea and proudly states more than 100,000 light bulbs are used in the resort – and believe me, most of them are on at night. But the work of Steve and his team seems to go almost unrecognised in an effort to balance the scales.
Sheika, for instance, was rescued just down the coast in the Arabian Gulf. Found by a fisherman in water that was too shallow, too hot and too saline, if she’d not come to Atlantis she would almost certainly have died. There are so many like her in the resort’s aquariums – there’s even a fishy hospital backstage where newcomers are acclimatised and sick fish cured.
Feeling the buzz
Steve’s passion is mirrored in everyone from the guys employed to sweep sand off the drive to world- renowned chefs such as Giorgio Locatelli and Santi Santamaria, who operate two of Atlantis’s 17 restaurants.
It’s an enthusiasm that can’t help but rub off on you. I’d expected to hate Atlantis but it is much less vulgarly bling than I’d expected – save for the Disney-esque exterior, that suite and a particularly horrible 30m-high blown statue in the lobby, that is – and over the course of a few days, I’ve found myself gradually being won over.
There’s tons to do: the Aquaventure water park has stupendous slides, there’s a great spa, children’s clubs keep the brats out of the way and the food is excellent.
Back at the Ambassador Lagoon Steve is explaining his aquarium philosophy. ‘All I want is for people to come in and say: “Wow, look at all the neat fish.”‘ Thanks to him and Sheika, I at least have had my ‘wow’ moment.