Enzo’s Playground

This is actually from a trip earlier this year – but I thought that I would share some of the fun stuff that I did before I started Up and Adam.

During February of this year – a business trip took me to the United Arab Emirates for about a month. I spent the majority of that month living and working in Abu Dhabi. This was my first trip to the Middle East region, and it was eye opening.

The UAE, and Abu Dhabi itself, is a rich country. I have never seem more supercars (Ferrari’s, Lambo’s, etc) in one place as I saw in the UAE. In a future post I’ll go into a little more detail about my trip to Dubai and a day that I spent exploring the largest mosque in the UAE – both were amazing.

But for this post – let’s talk about something a little more fun. Cars and Rollercoasters.

During our stay we were put up at the beautiful Crowne Plaza Abu Dhabi – which is on Yas Island. Yas is a large developed island that sits on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi and plays host to Yaz Marina Circuit, Ikea, The Yas Links, and of course Ferrari World Abu Dhabi.

If you haven’t heard of Ferrari World – it’s pretty damn cool. A large giant covered, air-conditioned theme park dedicated to that Italian sports car legend – Ferrari. Oh – and yes – I said covered AND air-conditioned. Let that flow over you for a minute. Air conditioned.

When I was a kid I can remember a few family car trips from our home in Southeast Iowa to Six Flags in St. Louis. All of these trips, every last one of them, stick out in my mind as a ton of fun. The other thing that sticks out in my mind is walking down black asphalt paths in flip-flops, shorts, and tank tops while the Midwest sun slowly melted your face off and the humidity sapped every last ounce of energy from your body. For me – amusement parks have always equaled hot, sticky, sometimes miserable experiences.

That was before I walked through the stainless steel tunnel on my way into Ferrari World. Even though the temperature outside was in the 90s – inside it was pleasantly cool. Blissful.

On top of that Ferrari World has one must-ride coaster – The Formula Rossa. This coaster is the faster coaster in the world. Unlike a traditional coaster – where you are pulled to the top of a large hill to start, on Formula Rossa you are instead shot out of a cannon.

Literally. The coaster uses a hydraulic catapult to launch you out of the boarding gate – the launch is supposedly similar to being launched off an aircraft carrier. The top speed is somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 miles per hour – all in the first 5 seconds. All I know is it is damned fast – it is the only coaster that has left me weak in the knees when I walked away. I rode it twice – and both times left me a little shaky. You can see the coaster in action in the video below:

In addition to the coaster – Ferrari World also offers full motion racing simulators! These were a lot of fun – I drove both the F1 racing simulator and the F350 simulator. Both of them were impossible for me to drive around the track – Yas Marina Circuit – without crashing into walls and generally making myself sure that if I ever owned a multi-hundred thousand dollar sports car – I would leave it in the garage.

Overall – the experience at Ferrari World was a ton of fun. It was really cool to ride the world’s fastest coaster, explore the inside of the world’s largest indoor theme park, It is just a part of the of the (modern) UAE experience that can’t be missed.