Around The Globe in Four Hours

Well, you read it right, I can understand your amazement, I would have also reacted the same way if I would not have experienced it at Global Village. The Global Village is located away from the hustle-bustle of the city. However, before I take you through our experiences at the global village, allow me to start from the beginning.

Previous night while resting by the pool, we replanned our next day’s itinerary by adding Burj Khalifa to the list. This time we were confident that we would be able to witness the beautiful view of the city from an astonishing height of 555 meters, as we were able to grab the tickets for the observation deck from a local travel agent located a couple of blocks away from our hotel. The good thing about buying the tickets from the travel agency was that we got Flexi tickets, i.e., it gave us the freedom to visit Burj as per our convenience.

124^th Floor Burj

We hopped onto the metro to reach Dubai Mall avoiding the city traffic during the early office hours. Instead of starting our day by scaling Burj, we began with exploring the marine life as Dubai Mall house one of the largest aquarium and underwater zoo. By reading the word aquarium, you might have formed an image of a big transparent tank with a lot of fishes and other marine life forms in it. However, Dubai Mall Aquarium is more than that, as you can do cage snorkeling, Shark encounter, Scuba dive, and many more activities. After our close encounter with the different types of marine life forms, we made our way towards Burj Khalifa’s check-in elevator.

While going for the elevator, we encountered a long queue, and it took us around 15-20 minutes to finally board the elevator. If you would like, you can avoid this queue by purchasing the express elevator tickets at the cost of a few extra dirhams. But trust me waiting in the line was not that boring or tiring because the designers hired for this job have done an excellent job in exploiting the concepts of service management to create the touch points like installing a big screen which continuously disseminates the information about the building and the news featuring the structure. The service experience did not end in the lobby itself as the elevator started its ascend; it turned into a planetarium, filling us with more information and with some mesmerizing animation. It took us around four to five minutes to reach to 124^th floor of the Burj, as we gained the height we felt a slight pressure on our eardrums which conformed to the view we witnessed as we stepped out of the elevator. Initially, some photographers caught us and clicked our pictures, which they edited to look like as if we were shooting for Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol and doing some insane stunts😊. After having fun with trick photography, we went to the deck, which offered a splendid view of the city, which we not only captured in our cameras but in our mind as well. I can frame it this way, that we were literally able to catch the bird’s eye view of progressing DUBAI. After spending an hour and a half clicking pictures, playing simulation games, and walking on the interactive floor. We decided to descend while going for the elevators we again experienced a similar kind of servicescape filled with souvenirs. Finally, after reaching the ground floor, we encountered the final touchpoint, which was dedicated to the people who made this megastructure a reality.

After scaling the phenomenal height and capturing the panoramic view of the city, we head to Starbucks to get ourselves a coffee before heading to our next destination, i.e., Global Village. We boarded a bus from DUBAI Mall to Global Village, which took us directly to our destination with just a couple of stops in between. We reached Global Village around 6.30 pm; after deboarding the bus, we bought the tickets for 15 dirhams per person, which is quite a nominal amount in comparison to the experience this place provides. The best thing was that we did not find any kind of queue at the ticket counter. Thus, it was a pretty smooth and flawless experience for us. As soon as we entered through the big gates, we found a scaled model of Eiffel tower, London’s Big Ben, and many other monumental structures, bringing everything in the arm's length. Globe village has a theme of a grand fair where fun and excitement never stops. Performances were going around at different places combining the rich culture of more than 90 nations through various dance forms, music, and the locally produced goods. If you want to see the world, then the global village is a perfect place to get a glimpse of it.

After spending four to five hours at the Global village, we boarded the bus to Union Station, which was just 700m away from our hotel. Finally, we landed at the gates of our hotel around 11.30. Though we were slightly tired, but I must say it was an incredible experience.