Atlantis: Dubai’s underwater hotel

A boutique hotel it ain’t

The 1,539-room, $1.8 billion megaplex is situated on the The Palm, an artficial sand island shaped like a palm tree.

Poseidon suite
The underwater hotel‘s Lost Chambers suites provide views from both the bedroom and the bathroom windows into a lagoon filled with 65,000 marine animals. So you can relax on your bed and watch giant manta rays float slowly by.

Poseidon suite bathroom
…or admire sharks while relaxing in the bath.

Grand lobby
Plato’s legend has Atlantis being submerged as a divine punishment for greed and decadence. We think it might have been for truly appalling taste…

The ‘Lost’ Chambers
Apparently the Lost Chambers at Atlantis give ‘underwater insights into how the citizens of Atlantis may have lived and worked’. If they had actually existed, that is.

Ossiano restaurant
At Ossiano restaurant, you can look up from the fish on your plate to see its bereaved relatives staring mournfully through the windows at you.

The Leap of Faith waterslide
Atlantis’ waterpark is known as Aquaventure, and features high-tech waterslides built to look like ancient monuments. The highest of them, the Leap of Faith, is over 27 metres high.

Shark-infested lagoon (er, tank)
After being catapaulted down the Leap of Faith, Aquaventurers bob in inner tubes through a ‘shark-infested lagoon’. Fortunately the sharks are safely on the other side of a pane of glass.

Dolphin Bay
The resort’s Dolphin Bay allows ‘shallow-water interaction’ with some ever-obliging cetaeceans, flown in from the Solomon Islands for the purpose.

Ambassador Lagoon
The hotel’s Ambassador Lagoon is filled with 65,000 marine animals, looked after by nearly 200 marine experts.