Dubai gets the skyline. The desert starts twenty minutes later.
Which dune camp actually feeds you properly. What an hour of yacht off the Marina costs. Whether the Grand Mosque is worth the drive down to Abu Dhabi on half a day. Reviews of every tour you can book across the Emirates.
A tower, a dune camp, an hour on deck and the road to Abu Dhabi.
Four bookings that carry a first week in the Emirates. What each one costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The first eveningBurj Khalifa Levels 124 & 125 Entry Ticket + OptionsLevels 124 and 125 at the hour the light turns orange. Sunset slots close weeks before every other hour of the day.
02The desert nightDesert Safari, Quad Bike, Camel Ride & Al Khayma CampDune bashing, a camel, then dinner at Al Khayma Camp. The single most-booked thing in the country, by a distance.
03The morning on deckLuxury Yacht Tour with Breakfast or BBQ OptionTwo hours out of Dubai Marina past Atlantis and the Burj Al Arab, breakfast on board. Cheaper than the tower ticket.
04The Abu Dhabi dayDubai To Abu Dhabi: Grand Mosque, Royal Palace & Etihad TowersSheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, the Presidential Palace and Etihad Towers, back before dark. The dress code is enforced at the gate.
Red sand at Al Marmoom, forty minutes from a metro station.
The desert is the reason most people come back a second time. Three shapes of desert day, what it costs to get on each one, and how late it puts you back in the city.
The most popular days out in the Emirates.
Every tour we have reviewed →The tours more travellers take than anything else in the country, and what earns each one the slot.
1
Burj Khalifa Levels 124 & 125 Entry Ticket + Options
Review of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa Levels 124 and 125 ticket, with views, elevator ride, timing tips, queues, fountain shows, and optional extras.
From · $43
Read our review →
2
Desert Safari, Quad Bike, Camel Ride & Al Khayma Camp
from $32
3
Desert Safari, Quad Bike, Camel Ride and Sandboarding
from $29
4
Safari, Quad Bike, Camel Ride, and Buffet Dinner
from $46
5
Red Dune Safari, Quad Bike, Camel Ride, BBQ Dinner
from $29
6
Premium Safari, Camel Ride & Al Khayma Camp 3-Buffets
from $79
7
Burj Khalifa Sky Level 148, 124, & 125 Entry Ticket
from $122
8
The View At The Palm Observatory Entry Ticket
from $29
Dubai runs the show. The other six are an hour each way.
A skyline city that has never stopped building, a capital holding the Grand Mosque and the Louvre, a mountain emirate with the longest zipline on earth, and two quiet coasts on the Gulf of Oman.
The Gulf sits at bath temperature nine months a year.
Yacht hours out of Dubai Marina, a dhow down the Creek with dinner on the lower deck, jet skis running the line between the Burj Al Arab and Atlantis. This skyline was built to be looked at from the water.
Dubai makes most sense from about four hundred metres up.
Four observation decks now compete for the same evening. The Burj Khalifa has the height, the Frame has the split-screen of old city and new, and the deck at the tip of the Palm has the only view with the Burj Khalifa in it.
Every ticket and viewing deck →
What a day out in the Emirates actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by what it costs. A surprising amount of this country comes in under the price of a hotel breakfast.
Tower tickets, museum entry, the Creek boats and most half-day runs into the sand.
The full-day standards: premium camps, the Abu Dhabi run, yacht hours and the water parks.
Private drivers, chartered boats, balloon mornings and the Level 152 lounge.
Three things the Emirates do that nowhere else does.
Beaches and shopping malls exist everywhere. A camel string crossing Al Marmoom at first light, a museum floating under a perforated dome, and nearly three kilometres of zipline off a limestone mountain do not.
Camels on the Al Marmoom dunes
Before the oil, this sand was crossed on camelback and nothing else. The animals still work the same ground inside the Al Marmoom reserve, and the fifteen minutes bolted onto the end of a safari is the version almost everyone gets. The longer strings leave at first light instead, when the sand is cold enough to walk on barefoot and the light is worth the alarm.
- 1Desert Safari, Quad Bike, Camel Ride & Al Khayma Camp★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 68,962 reviews
- 2Desert Safari, Quad Bike, Camel Ride and Sandboarding★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 43,505 reviews
- 3Safari, Quad Bike, Camel Ride, and Buffet Dinner★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 33,424 reviews
The Louvre Abu Dhabi
Jean Nouvel dropped a 180-metre dome of perforated steel over a cluster of low white buildings on Saadiyat Island, and the holes throw what he calls a rain of light onto the floors below. The collection is hung by period rather than by nation, so a Qur’an, a Torah and a Gothic bible share a single case. The sea comes right up to the walls.
- 1Museum of the Future Admission Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 21,464 reviews
- 2Abu Dhabi Grand Mosque & Louvre Museum Full-Day★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 6,227 reviews
- 3Dubai Aladdin Tour: Souks, Creek, Old Dubai and Tastings★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 3,755 reviews
The Jais Flight zipline
The cable runs 2.83 kilometres down the side of Jebel Jais, the highest mountain in the country, and you ride it face-down in a harness at around 150km/h. It is ninety minutes from Dubai and roughly ten degrees cooler at the top than on the coast. Wind shuts it more often than the booking page lets on.
- 1Afternoon Desert Safari and BBQ Dinner★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 558 reviews
- 2Jais Flight – World’s Longest Zipline Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 110 reviews
- 3Half-Day Desert Safari with Dinner★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 95 reviews
Four Emirates bookings that will not wait.
Most of this country can be arranged from a hotel lobby the same morning. These four run on timed entry, sunrise weather windows and a calendar that takes no interest in when your flight lands.
- 01Burj Khalifa Levels 124 & 125 Entry Ticket + OptionsEntry runs on timed slots and the sunset hours on 124 and 125 go weeks ahead. Every other hour of the day stays easy.
- 02Luxury Hot Air Balloon, Land Rover Defender & Michelin BreakfastBalloons fly at first light and only when the wind allows, so the season runs roughly October to May and a cancellation moves you to the next clear morning.
- 03Burj Khalifa VIP Experience Level 152 Lounge AccessThe lounge on 152 seats a fixed number per sitting and there is no standby queue at the lift.
- 04Jais Flight – World’s Longest Zipline TicketJais Flight releases a set number of harnesses a day and closes on wind. Turning up on the mountain to buy one is not a plan.
When it is forty-five degrees by nine in the morning.
High summer here is not a heatwave, it is the season. Anything outdoors between ten and five is off, and the desert camps trim back to a short evening. The answer holds either way: take the air-conditioned half of the country by day, and give the desert the last two hours of light.
Abu Dhabi in a day: a mosque, a Louvre and a very fast rollercoaster.
Ninety minutes down the E11 and the pace drops by half. Most people take it as a long day out of Dubai, which works: the coaches leave early, the mosque enforces its dress code at the gate, and Yas Island is on the way back.
- 1Dubai To Abu Dhabi: Grand Mosque, Royal Palace & Etihad Towersfrom $90
- 2Abu Dhabi Grand Mosque & Louvre Museum Full-Dayfrom $74
- 3Small Group Abu Dhabi City and Sightseeing Tour From Dubaifrom $35
By emirate — coast, capital and mountain
By kind of day — dune, deck, tower or table
Dubai, the dunes, Abu Dhabi and the mountain: the run almost everyone does first.
The newest Emirates tour reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
Dune Buggy & Private Dinner in the Dunes in Mleiha National Park
Read our review →
Middle Eastern Food & Culture Walk in Old Dubai
Read our review →
Dubai Miracle Garden and Global Village Shopping Tour
Read our review →
Private Old Dubai Walking Tour: Forts, Souks, and Boats
Read our review →
Historic Old Dubai & Souk Small Group Walking Tour
Read our review →
Dubai Mall Aquarium & Underwater Zoo with Penguin Cove Tickets
Read our review →
Entrance Ticket to the Louvre Museum in Abu Dhabi
Read our review →
Abu Dhabi city tour with Entry ticket to Louvre Museum from Abu Dhabi
Read our review →