Hello to all travellers. I’ll start with the pleasant moments and tell you how we ended up at this wonderful water park for the whole day at half the price offered by tour guides.
In the Emirates, all excursions are very overpriced. But this is everywhere, not just there. So, to avoid overpaying for all this, I recommend following our advice.
Since you cannot leave links to websites here, you first need to go to the official website of the Atlantis The Palm hotel.
At the top of the page, under the hotel name, you will see a menu: rooms, restaurants, entertainment, water park.
Go to the water park menu and you will see ‘select a ticket to the water park’. We bought a day ticket and spent time there from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.
We bought the tickets a month before our arrival, as soon as we bought the tour to Sharjah. We stayed at the excellent 4* Tulip Inn Sharjah Hotel.
The ticket to the water park cost us 2,500 roubles per person. There are discounts for children.
The ticket included a changing room with individual lockers, towels and vouchers for two meals a day in the water park restaurants for each person.
If you buy tickets from a travel agency, the cost was astronomical at the time, I can’t even remember now, but definitely twice as much.
Prices have changed now. I checked the website and saw that a ticket for one person now costs around 6,000, as the dirham exchange rate has changed since then, and prices are generally different now compared to 2014.
The water park offers several different types of recreation. You can spend time not only in the water park itself, riding the slides and floating down the lazy river, but also with dolphins and sea lions. All of these programmes can also be found on their website, where you can read what each one includes.
I really wanted to swim with dolphins, but even at that time it was very expensive, about 12,000 roubles for two people, so I quickly dismissed the idea.
I printed out the paid tickets at home and on the appointed day we drove there ourselves. We took a taxi for this purpose, and it was quite cheap, even though we were travelling from Sharjah.
At the hotel entrance, we showed our tickets and were given keys to lockers and meal vouchers. The men’s and women’s changing rooms are next to each other, so after changing, we met up there.
We started our day with a tour of the water park. First, we just walked around, looking at what was where, and only then did we go to enjoy ourselves.
The water park is simply gorgeous. It is huge, clean and well maintained. There is an endless amount of greenery.
There are palm trees and blooming gardens all around. Everything is very carefully and responsibly maintained — trimmed, watered, and cleaned of anything unnecessary or dry.
Employees drive around the entire water park to keep it clean and tidy.
There are countless alleys. We didn’t even have time to see all the corners in a whole day. But you can drive around it in mini cars.
There are signs in English throughout the water park telling you how and where to go, so it’s impossible to get lost.
The hotel has its own beach with sun loungers and parasols. But we preferred to sit under the trees. There is at least some coolness in their shade, and it is much easier to breathe there.
I would not recommend anyone to visit the UAE in summer, because we were there in spring and the heat was terrible – sometimes reaching 50 degrees and above.
We decided to start our active holiday with a lazy river. But it’s not lazy at all. The speed changes constantly, and there is a current that sometimes accelerates rapidly and sometimes flows smoothly.
Sometimes you come across something like waterfalls, where you can easily get an adrenaline rush. My children and I screamed with delight and fear.
Water park staff are stationed along the entire river to watch over visitors and help clear any blockages.
The entertainers are very cheerful people — they even find time to play with the children while they float down the river.
Since my daughter was only a few years old at the time, we didn’t go on the slides with her — she wouldn’t have been allowed. The children’s playground wasn’t particularly interesting for her — it’s more suitable for preschoolers.
We were most impressed by the river, so we went back there again in the evening.
My son, of course, went on the highest slide and the lower one — I was even a little scared for him. But when he came back, he said it was really cool. And the speed going down the slide was quite high. Of course, he had to wait in line, but it didn’t take him more than 10 minutes.
I remember being glad that I didn’t go on the slide — I’m afraid of slides in general.
Then we went to a restaurant for lunch. The vouchers we were given were for two different restaurants. One voucher was for a McDonald’s-type restaurant, where we went in the morning, and the other was for a regular restaurant with a full lunch.
I don’t know about anyone else, but we certainly weren’t hungry then. The only extra things we bought were soda on the beach when we were sunbathing and ice cream.
There is a monorail bridge right on the beach, which you can use to get to and from the water park and the city.
We used it to leave in the evening.
From our beach, we could see the famous Parus Hotel on the opposite shore.
I’ll say one thing about the beach: I didn’t like it. Compared to the beaches of the Persian Gulf, where we basically spent every day, this beach wasn’t very good.
The water on the beach is stagnant, there is a lot of silt and it is very shallow.
Therefore, we only went into the water a couple of times, and not to swim, but just to cool off a little.
Right by the shore, there are rows of sun loungers without umbrellas for those who like to sunbathe, but it was hot enough for us.
For me, such a scorching sun was not a very comfortable option in principle.
Closer to evening, at the insistence of the children, we went back to splash around in the river. And this time we were not very lucky – my brand new camera slipped out of my hands and drowned.
Although I pulled it out of the water immediately, it was beyond repair. Fortunately, the memory card was not damaged, so I was at least able to save the photos from our holiday.
In the evening, when we went home, we had to take photos on our phones, but of course the quality was nowhere near as good as with a camera.
Earlier in the day, we went upstairs to see how the monorail worked and decided what time we would leave. There is a train arrival and departure schedule for visitors to the water park.
We went up there about twenty minutes before departure and bought tickets. We left in the evening, tired but happy. So, after spending almost the entire day at the water park, we realised that it wasn’t even enough for us.
We really want to go back there again, and I hope that sooner or later we will be able to do so.
Another important detail: if you buy tickets on their website, you will receive promotional offers for the next five years, which include very good discounts for the water park and the hotel itself. So keep that in mind.
I recommend this water park for a holiday with children. If you are adults who love extreme sports, there is plenty to do besides relaxing.
