The Dubai Mall Area: Fountains, Aquariums, and More

We enjoyed a lot of things on our trip to Dubai, but our favorite area and the place we spent the most time was around the Dubai Mall. It was truly fantastic. To put it in an North American perspective, imagine the Mall of America (only bigger). Take that mall and put it in front of the musical fountains at the Bellagio in Las Vegas (only bigger). Finally, take both of those and put them in front of the Empire State building (only twice as tall). That's the Dubai Mall area. It is the world's largest shopping mall with the world's largest dancing fountain in front of it, and it is connected to the world's tallest building, the Burj Kafila. It has over 1,200 shops, 120 restaurants and cafes, a 22 screen movie theater, an ice rink, the largest suspended aquarium in the world, the world's largest candy store, a bookstore that was over 60,000 square feet, etc. Everything there is the biggest and best.

Besides the size of everything, we were really impressed with how nice it all was. It was the cleanest mall we had ever been in. We saw a guy walking around the mall with a paint scraper scraping off any little spec of dirt he might see. In the parking garage, there were people going around with carts washing all the parked cars (free of charge). The parking garage itself was quite impressive. There was an electronic board at the entrance that listed how many spots were available on each level (541 on level 7; 10 on level 2, etc). There was a light hanging from the ceiling over every parking space. If the spot was full, the light would red; if it was empty it was green. That way, we only had to look for green lights when looking down a row or parked cars.

The aquarium was also really impressive. It was visible from 3 different levels of the mall and had all kinds of fish inside, including sharks and sting rays. We ate our Thanksgiving dinner at one of the restaurants that had a direct view of it (Italian at the Macaroni Grill, not a traditional turkey dinner). It was visible to anyone walking through the mall, but you could also pay to take a glass bottom boat ride on the top of it or walk through a glass tunnel at the bottom. You could even go scuba diving in it and feed the fish. We just enjoyed it for free.

The fountain was our favorite part. They would run it every half hour in the evenings with different songs and patterns. It was impressively huge and absolutely beautiful. We spent several of our evenings there just sitting outside (in the perfect 75 degree, non-humid weather) with coffee's or ice cream watching the fountain. Sitting in front of the huge, unreal looking Burj Kafila and watching the fountain with people from every corner of the earth was an experience we will always remember (there's a video of the fountain at the bottom of this post).

From a restaurant balcony with the Dubai Fountain and the Burj Kafila

The Dubai Fountain

"The Waterfall" A fountain in the Dubai Mall

Jenn's favorite fast food place. Can you see the excitement in her eyes?

The best doughnut place. How come Dubai has one but Whatcom county doesn't?!

The Gold Souk section with 220 jewerly stores

The Aquarium inside the Dubai Mall.
For a hefty price you could scuba dive in it and feed the fish (including sharks and sting rays)

The World's Largest Candy Store

The next set of pictures is from a different huge mall in Dubai: The Mall of the Emirates. This mall is best known for Ski Dubai, an indoor ski slope. We didn't spend much time here, but we wanted to check out Ski Dubai. It looked pretty cool, especially coming in from the desert climate, but we decided that since we can sled and ski at home we wouldn't spend the time or money to go inside.