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Ice Land waterpark


Polo RAK Amusement mamaging director Balwant Singh Chawla


Antarctica comes to Arabia


Penguins are a rare sight in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), but fibreglass replicas are everywhere at the Middle East’s newest waterpark. Park World is given an exclusive tour of Ice Land, the first facility to welcome paying guests at the new WOW RAK resort in Ras Al Khaimah


the state-owned RAK Properties/RAK investment. Like Ferrari World in Abu Dhabi and various projects before it in Dubai, it is designed to put Ras Al Khaimah (RAK) on the map, hence the Emirate’s name featuring in the title. “We had a very clear mandate from RAK investment to spend whatever was necessary to bring the park up to standard,” declares Balwant Singh Chawla, Polo RAK Amusement’s managing director and a founder of the Indian Association of Amusement Parks and Industries (IAAPI). “There was a budget to start with, but now we will not know the


T


he new 125-acre (50-hectare) resort is a project of Polo RAK Amusement, a partnership between India’s Polo Amusement group and


full cost until we are finished.” Bordering Oman, about an hour’s drive west from Dubai, RAK is the most northerly of all the Emirates, with a mountain range on the horizon giving it a more distinctive backdrop than other parts of the UAE. Nevertheless, it is hot, dry and surrounded by dessert. That’s why the “snow” capped “mountains” at Ice


Land waterpark , which opens in August, really stand out. Visitors enter the new facility by passing through Penguin Falls, a 160-metre-long, 14-metre high waterfall and the largest manmade structure of its kind in the world. Were the snow real, the water would surely melt it. Yet this is anything but real, and that’s exactly why the theme, which owes more than a nod to Disney’s Blizzard Beach, was chosen.


RIGHT: The exterior to Ice Land and the world’s largest manmade waterfall


30 JULY 2010

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