Ferrari World Abu Dhabi Part 1

Initially the first day of Abu Dhabi, my friend wanted to bring us for the tour around Abu Dhabi on the Big Bus Tour. Before we started long the day ahead, we need to have some breakfast first. My friend brought us to this place he goes once in a while for breakfast. It was an English pub style establishment called Mugs & Coffee. The cool thing about this place is that if you ordered the house blend, it is free refills. While waiting for breakfast decided to warm up the camera first.

I ordered the breakfast burrito.

Under the wrap it has sausage, cheese and egg. It was a good breakfast to start the day off with. Loads of energy for all the walking we will be doing throughout the day. We went to the Big Bus Tour counter and lucky the lady there was pretty helpful. She told us Ferrari World is closed on a Monday and we should go there today and take the Big Bus Tour tomorrow. So we took the free shuttle to Yas Marina Island and Ferrari world. 45 minutes later I saw this and got really excited.

 

I couldn't wait to get into the park to try out that monster roller coaster. I love roller coaster and such a big roller coaster attracts me like a fly to the UV fly zapper. Unfortunately the place only opens at 12pm and we were sort of early. So since got nothing to do, take some pictures first.

We got our guide and as you walk in, you see this massive funnel right in the middle of Ferrari World.

Within it is the G Force ride that is pretty much like the Solero Shot in Genting Highlands. Unfortunately it was closed for the day and we saw them doing some testing on it. Guess it was down for maintenance or safety checks. We wanted to go for the Formula Rossa which is the biggest roller coaster there but it wasn't opened yet. We were told that it was being tested by the engineers. So our next stop was the Scuderia Challenge. It is a F1 simulator and we had to register ourselves and wait for our timeslot.

We got a lap of the Yas Marine Circuit and it was a heck alot of fun. They used hydraulics to simulate the G forces that a person experiences while driving in a Formual 1 car. The crazy thing was that 30 seconds into the driving, I actually felt a little sick. However it was still really fun and more so when I was first after the first lap. They had bigger simulators that cost 75 Dirhams extra to ride. It is like the one we road but this on a much bigger scale. One of them is of a full size F430. Check the video around 00.18 Check out how much the car pitches forward on hard breaking.

The second simulator is of a Ferrari F1 F60 which is the 2009 F1 car based on the sponsorship decals as well as the smaller rear wing.

Too bad by the time I came back to ride the bigger simulator all the timeslots were booked up. After the Scuderia Challenge we walked back to the Formula Rossa and finally it was open.

I didn't know at that point of time when I sat the roller coaster but Formula Rossa at the moment is the faster roller coaster in the world. It accelerates the rides from 0 to 240km/h in just under 4.9 seconds using a hydraulic launch system that is similar to the ones used on aircraft carrier. It was such a rush that I decided to go for it twice.

Unfortunately the video doesn't show how fast it is, but one really crazy thing about this ride is that normal roller coaster or gravity coasters as they are commonly known, they bring your up a steep slope slowly and drop you down. However Formula Rossa shoots your really fast and in no time you are going down. So one moment you feel the G forces pushing you down to your seat and the next very second the seat you were sitting on is gone and you feel weightlessness. The effect was so crazy that on my second run, on the way down my chain was floating in front of my face and I had to catch hold of it before it flew off.

After all the excitement of Formula Rossa, we decided to take a break and did a few of the other lesser crazy rides. We first went for Cinema Maranello which is basically a 10 min movie about the life of Enzo Ferrari and how crazy racing was back then. With people coming up with their own concoctions of fuel and the sabotage.

Next was Driving with Champions, this was basically a motion master type ride where it talks about a young engineer that is about to join the Ferrari team. He was so full of ideas and he was bringing all his car plans for the first day and his first was "job" was to experience what Ferrari was all about. While they were talking, Fernando Alonso drives up in a Ferrari California I think and takes the engineer for a ride. The cool/stupid thing about this ride is that it is a 4D motion master. The seat shoots water at you and also as we drove by some flowers, you could actually smell the flowers. The smell and all was cool and the water shooting at you was stupid.

We had a late lunch and right after that we went for Fiorano GT Challenge. This is a smaller roller coaster compared to the Formual Rossa. This ride only goes to about 95km/h but the cool thing is that it is actually 2 roller coasters side by side both going on different tracks. It is called a Racing roller coaster because both coasters are racing against each other.

The seat is modelled to look like a Ferrari F430 Sypder and the most cool thing about this roller coaster is that it launches you a few times. In the old coaster you only get one big rush of speed when they drop you from a great high. This roller coaster has a couple of hydraulic launchers along the track so we get launched a few times during the 1 minute ride. It was so fun that my friend Jason Phua and I sat the roller coaster 4 times in a row. Twice on the left track and twice on the right track.

After that we went for the V12 Engine ride. While we were lining up, they started to hand out rain jackets and we could smell water. This wasn't a good sign and as we got into the ride, we understood why. We were actually sitting on a boat and the "track" was actually a "river". We did get wet a few times and the ride is about going through a V12 engine. So you can see a few stages in the engine like the combustion chamber, the crank shaft and the exhaust, etc. We thought it would be crap but in the end it was pretty fun.

Next we went to the Scuderia Ferrari Paddock where they have brought the trucks the Scuderia Ferrari team drives to most of the circuits and combined together it becomes the "entertainment" area for the Ferrari team and their VIPs.

The last free shuttle out of Yas Marina Island was at 5.50pm, so we had to go out to wait for the shuttle. This is how my friends look like after a full day of roller coasters and walking.

This is how I look like...

Took some pictures of the surrounding area as well. This place is really nice.

We didn't know but the shuttle had a few places to stop and pick passengers before we went back to Abu Dhabi. The first stop was the entrance to the Yas Marine Circuit and I had to a do a runner to take a few pictures.

The next stop was the Yas Hotel, now this is a fantastic hotel. The Yas Hotel was built to integrate directly with the Yas Marina F1 circuits. It sits almost in the middle of the track and to get to the main entrance of the track, you need to cross a bridge which actually goes over the F1 track. It would be a terrific place to stay during the F1 race but also I would think freaking expensive. Maybe when I am a Billionaire (Singing I Wanna Billionaire Song in my head).

That basically concludes Part 1 of Ferrari World. The next part will be basically about all the Ferrari Cars in Ferrari world. Stay tuned.