Dubai - The Mall
last update: 09 May 2020
Our New Year trip for 2020 ran from late January 2020 to mid-March 2020 and involved 8 nights in Dubai and 43 nights in Phuket. We spent 3 nights in Dubai outward bounds, and 5 nights in Dubai on our return flight.
One of the major attractions of Dubai, at least for the shopaholic, are the endless shopping options. And that means not just one ultra-modern mega-mall, but several:-
The Dubai Mall - located near Burj Khalifa it claims to be the biggest mall in the world
Wafi Mall - built in 2001 it is known for its Egyptian theme
Ibn Battuta Mall - the worlds largest themed mall, and based on the Arabian explorer Ibn Battuta
Deira City Centre - one of the oldest malls
Mall of the Emirates - has an indoor ski slope, and a drop-off service to your hotel
Dubai Marina Mall - a smaller mall on the Marina waterfront (has a Waitrose)
Golden Mile Galleria - inspired by the traditional European market
Dragon Mart - opened in 2016 it's the world's largest Chinese retail and trading hub outside China
BurJuman - in the business and heritage districts.
But we are only going to visit The Dubai Mall, which Wikipedia says is actually only the world's second largest mall by land area and only the 26th largest by floor area. Still with 1,200 shops that should be enough, and no I did not count them.
Here we can see the general plan of the site, but The Dubai Mall provides its own interactive map, and of course they have their own app.
There are a variety of maps on the web, but the one below is good enough to give you an idea about the general layout. The real problem is that you can easily get lost, and the signs in the mall are a bit hit and miss. There are 4 floors, Lower Ground LG, ground G, and 1 and 2.
We had a complimentary hotel shuttle that took guests to different sites around Dubai, include The Dubai Mall. The problem was that for a 2 hour period in the late afternoon the shuttle did not service the mall. The reason was that the intense traffic makes it impossible to retain a fixed schedule, so they simply dropped The Dubai Mall.
The shuttle dropped us on the far side of the 'Grand Parking'. You needed then to walk through the parking to the entrance to the mall. We visited The Dubai Mall twice, once to visit the Burj Khalifa and the second time to see The Dubai Fountain.
Rest assured that I have no intention to present the mall in detail. There are a number of possible entrances, and here below we have the 'grand' entrance. The reality is that almost everyone arrives by car or public transport, so entrances like the one below often look a bit deserted.
We have just one picture of the interior, and finally we see the 'back' of the mall with The Dubai Fountain.
There is now way a little webpage can capture the size and complexity of The Dubai Mall, but some video's do a pretty good job. Have a look at the following Dubai Mall World's Largest Shopping Mall 2019, or for an even more detailed visit take a look at The Dubai Mall Shops and Shoppers (part 1, part 2).
We have separate webpages for the Burj Khalifa and for The Dubai Fountain.