A day on the Palm Jumeirah

This is a 30 ft waterslide from the top of a ziggurat, off which I threw myself today following nearly an hour's queuing. 

An hour of nervous anticipation, followed by 2 seconds of weightlessness, 3 seconds of fear that my contact lenses would be washed out, followed by sweet relief  and joining another queue for the 'Shark Attack' flume. 

This second flume takes you through a shark tank and you get to 'swim with the fishes'. Sounds pretty cool ... only problem being that the sharks are tiny, there's loads of reflections, and it doesn't last very long.

Aquaventure, the collective brand name for all these micro-experiences, probably only gets 4/10 in my book - a real shame, as the potential's all there.

Inside Atlantis is a massive fish tank, home to 'Sammy the Whale Shark'. There's a Facebook petition to have him released back into the wild, and you can sympathise with that, but I tell you - this fish tank is quite a spectacle.

And this is the Atlantis hotel itself. Thousands of bedrooms, including two underwater suites.

Wow.

Atlantis is situated at the end of the Palm Jumeirah, the first manmade Palm island in the world - and the first of three in Dubai. This is the little one, and will only be home to around 400,000 people. This is the view towards Atlantis as you drive up the central trunk of the Palm, next to the monorail which is just being finished off. Pretty futuristic stuff...