IMG Worlds of Adventure

5 August 2018

It had been almost two years since my last fun park trip, as I had been prioritising saving for a house. When it became apparent that the banks would not loan me enough money for even the smallest of townhouses in my city, I thought ‘screw it,’ and decided to invest in another hit of adrenaline instead.

Collaborating with my favourite fun park buddy once again, Terror and I settled on Germany due to the lure of Europa Park. Terror was a bit more restricted with her availability, and so I flew off a week earlier to explore the new parks in Dubai before our forces combined in Europe.

Things got off to an interesting start with Emirates, when the entertainment system in my coveted cattle class aisle seat did not work. I really didn’t think I could cope without a movie binge, and so I negotiated a seat change which meant I lost my aisle privileges. When I explained to my new neighbours what was happening, the crabby woman in the aisle seat was unimpressed. She refused to get up to let me in, as she was eating, and told me “it is not a good time, you will just have to wait.” So there I was, standing in the aisle like an idiot for a good 15 minutes, watching this woman consume her snacks. She then moved her bags off the middle seat with some huffing, no doubt ticked off that I had stolen her luxurious additional space. Needless to say, the next 12 hours or so were bloody awkward. I always thought that those of us confined to economy class were united by our suffering, but this woman reminded me that there are always people around who can make an unfortunate situation worse.

There was no time to dwell on Lady Misery Bags, as I needed to plan carefully to fit everything in during my 2 day stop over in Dubai!

I always love that smack of suffocating hot air you get when stepping off a plane in the Middle East! Being summer, it also meant that the parks open later in the day to make the most of the cooler night air. So with a sleep in under my belt, I set off to be first in line for IMG Worlds of adventure at 11am, billed as the world’s largest indoor theme park. As yet, there seems to be no easy public transport options to get to IMG (as well as Motiongate), so I cabbed it in to a pretty cool looking building.

Opened in 2016, the majority of this park is indoors with glorious air-conditioning that is no doubt included in the price of the ticket to offset the power bills. I guess $91 is fairly standard these days however. I was immediately hit with sensory overload in terms of the lights and sounds from IMG, not to mention the dancing Powerpuff mascots who were trying to distract the handful of patrons in attendance from a fairly slow opening. I have found that parks in the Middle East are super quiet early in the day, and as always, seeing the empty queue lines warms my heart to no end.

I bypassed the Cartoon Network and Boulevard themed areas, heading straight to the Lost Valley Dinosaur Adventure section at the back. The first ride of the day was a cracker, on the fast launch coaster The Velociraptor. This one starts indoors as you pull up alongside a giant screen. It was a bit hard to see what was going on due to the hot desert light obscuring the film, but once the T-Rex lets out a roar, you rocket off into the Middle Eastern desert. The ride operators let me have 3-4 turns without going through the queue rails again, which was much appreciated since it was one of the longest winding queue systems I have ever seen (busy days would SUCK here!) Their boss then had a word with them, and I was forced to do some extra cardio and walk around for the next few turns. Hey it was good while it lasted!

Next up was Predator, another coaster with a vertical rise before an inverted drop. Most of the ear piercing screaming that reverberated around the building seemed to be coming from here. The small carriages reminded me of a wild mouse style coaster, and I am sorry to say that the ride was just as bumpy and did not feel as cool as it looked. Although there were no lines, I only had two turns because my head and neck were battered around quite a bit.

I took a little break and went and played in the Adventure Fortress for a while, because I am a child, and slides are fun.

The Dino Carousel was one of the coolest things to see at IMG – almost looked post-apocalyptic with its eerie shadows and red lights going round and round. This made me think that some kind of thrill ride carousel would be pretty great. Forbidden Territory was a fairly standard dark ride experience where you sit in a jeep adventuring through film, animatronics and special effects over a flat track on the floor. Not really my thing, but I think tweens would enjoy the experience. Some of the younger kiddies had their heads buried in mum and dad’s laps.

I left the dinosaurs for superheroes, as I ventured into the Marvel Zone. The Spider-Man Doc Ock’s Revenge Coaster was the surprise of the day, as I tend to do a little happy dance when I see coasters with spinning trains. The set up of this ride was brilliant, as you wove in and out of buildings close to the roof of the park with some decent speed. The theming was a lot of fun, which you got to enjoy quite a bit as this ride seemed to load really slowly.

 

Next door, I thoroughly enjoyed the Thor Thunder Spin. I have been on a stack of these top spin (rotating platform) rides before, but this was probably the most intense one yet. The force at which you were hurled forwards and backwards left me laughing like an idiot, surrounded by strangers who must have thought I was this mad western woman.

I spent a bit of time exploring the 3D and 4D rides next. These tend to make me pretty dizzy, but I feel compelled to go on them just in case I am missing out on something. The ones at IMG were really quite good. The Avengers Battle of Ultron had a nice little capsule experience, but I was super impressed with Hulk Epsilon base 3D. Sitting in a huge round room on top of a moving platform, this was a really different way to experience a 3D film, with massive seating capacity. I do wonder how much vomit gets cleaned up at the end of each day though. I would recommend visiting these ones early before visitors’ lunches reappear.

Unlike my previous trip to the Middle East, this one did not fall within Ramadan. As such, more of the shops and food outlets were open during the day. This was not really a good thing for my waist line, as I could stuff my face at any time of the day. After lunch, I made my way back around to the Haunted Hotel walk through. I imagine that you could do some great Halloween scare house events here, but during the off season it was pretty bland.

The Cartoon Network area was oddly creepy thanks to the dim lighting, but I can see that this area is perfect for the little ones who aren’t quite up for the big rides yet. The Adventure Time theming for the Ride of Ooo with Finn and Jake was very cute, but the suspended kiddy coaster was more a case of me ticking a list than enjoying the ride.

With all the rides now done, I went back for a few more turns on The Velociraptor and Doc Ock’s Revenge. IMG covers a huge amount of space, so my feet were pretty tired by the end. As I departed mid afternoon (just as the crowds were starting to come in), I couldn’t help but feel for the staff and the amount of vacuuming that they would do each day, particularly in the Boulevard area. Who thought carpet was a good idea at an indoor theme park???

For my first serious indoor theme park experience, I was pretty impressed with the engineering and design skill. There isn’t quite enough to do for a whole day (assuming there are minimal queues), but this was a quality half day adventure. A second IMG park is due to open across the road in 2020 (World of Legends), so I guess that fixes the problem of what to do for the rest of the day in future!