Ain Dubai Square

The square at the base of the wheel was deliberately lowered below the promenade level. Snøhetta’s architects and WSP’s engineers concealed the boarding terminal in the terrain, and incorporated its roof into the passage between the shops and Bluewaters Island’s entertainment area. From here, passengers enter forty-eight cabins above the square.

Two months before the opening, Ronald Drake, a specialist in launching entertainment complexes, was appointed to run this attraction. He was to turn the wheel into a place that earned money all day long: through regular tickets, private cabins, dinners, and celebrations. One rotation took about thirty-eight minutes, and up to one thousand seven hundred fifty people could be at the top at the same time.

On October twenty-first, two thousand twenty-one, Drake and his team welcomed their first passengers. At two hundred fifty meters tall, the wheel became the tallest among operating Ferris wheels, and within a few months hundreds of thousands of visitors had passed through the terminal.

In March two thousand twenty-two, the management company suspended boarding for improvement work. At first, they promised to reopen the wheel after Ramadan. Then the date was moved to summer, then to the beginning of the following year, and in April two thousand twenty-three they announced that it would be closed until further notice. The ticket offices stopped selling tickets, the entrances from the square were blocked, and scaffolding appeared around the central axis. The attraction for which this part of the island had been created operated for only five months.

The owners never named the reason. TÜV, the German inspection organization that had participated in inspections of the structure, confirmed that it had withdrawn its certification, but refused to explain the circumstances because of a nondisclosure agreement. Stories of a sinking foundation, vibration, and a broken axle remained unconfirmed versions.

On December twenty-fifth, two thousand twenty-four, tickets reappeared on the website without any preliminary ceremony. The next day, visitors were allowed into the cabins, and the closed areas around the terminal were returned to pedestrians. The interruption lasted two years and nine months—several times longer than the first period of operation.

“Ain” means “eye” in Arabic. Now this eye is moving again: the ticket office is at the base, passengers pass through the square, and every cabin returns to the same boarding terminal in thirty-eight minutes.