Dubai Mall, United Arab Emirates
Dubai Mall, the world’s largest mall, is part of a complex in downtown Dubai that consists of the Burj Khalifa, Hotels, the world’s largest dancing fountains, a souk, and many restaurants and food courts.
The mall has over 12 million square feet and is the size of 50 football fields. With four floors to explore, there’s a movie theater with 22 screens, an ice skating rink, a huge aquarium, and over 1,200 shops/restaurants. A serious shopper could spend all day here.
Our hotel was just a 20 min walk from the mall. Every time we want to take the metro we needed to cross the mall. You can combine your visit to Dubai Mall with a visit to the Burj Khalifa. Download before you visit the mall the APP “Dubai Mall”. Here you can tips, background information, store locator ect. You can also check concierge desk which had a map of the mall.
Consistent with the rest of modern Dubai, the mall looks like any “high end” shopping destination: nice escalators, meticulously decorated shops, and plenty of restaurants.
Unlike a lot of the malls in to U.S. which tend to group all the eateries in one wing of the mall, the eateries in de Dubai Mall are scattered throughout the mall. For a mall in the middle of an Arab nation, the selection was remarkably international.
As I mentioned before, you can even find a famed ice rink in the mall. There is an aquarium, The Dubai Aquarium. This aquarium has the world’s largest single viewing panel and mall visitors can catch glimpses of the aquatic life from three floors. That said, it was interesting to see this famed tourist destination.
One other thing that is located right outside the Mall are the Dubai Fountains. The fountains were so large, the Bellagio fountains in Las Vegas paled in comparison. The Dubai Fountain came on every 30 minutes starting at 6pm and danced to different music each time. Crowds gathered. People whipped out their cell phones and cameras. The fountains were on beat. Occasionally they shot up water up pretty high! It was quite the spectacle.
If you’re headed to Dubai Mall, my advice it to check out the Burj Khalifa (either the observation deck or go for afternoon drinks and snacks) and stay for the fountain show. The best time to head up to the observation deck will be around sunset. It is quite busy but you will get the benefits of taking pictures during day, sunset, blue hour 😉 and night.
