Yas Waterworld

In the middle of the park stands Jebel Dana, a dark slate mountain with carved spires. The smooth white pearl sits on the tallest spire and the falcon’s nest, a woven bowl with a thatched hut, on the broad one. Every slide starts from a deck with a stair up to it. Sebag’s six mat lanes come down in red and yellow colour blocks, with Hamlool’s Humps and Jebel Drop in blue beside them. Dawwama’s green and yellow tube runs into a red, blue and white striped sphere. Slither’s six striped tubes curl down to a splash pool and end in snake heads with open jaws. Falcon’s Falaj leaves from the nest, and Liwa Loop’s capsule waits on top of its own tower.

The souk by the entrance fort is under dense shade sails, and the wave pool opens like a fan from under the pearl to its beach. South of the old fence is the 2025-26 expansion: a white lattice tower with a blue and white helix, six racing lanes, the Lost City, and Bahamut, a purple fish whose flume comes out of its open mouth.

The park closes around dusk, but on the map it glows all night. The pools, the lazy river and the wave pool are lit turquoise from below. The pearl, lit by washes, is the brightest thing in the park, and warm uplights climb the spires. The slide towers, Dawwama’s sphere and Slither’s tubes take colour washes in magenta, cyan, violet and amber. Lanterns hang under the sails of the souk and along the fort walls.

I found no night photo of the pearl, so the light follows what the park’s lighting designers wrote about it. After midnight the floods ease off a little; the water and the pearl stay on until dawn.

How to see it: Zoom in west of Warner Bros. World and turn the map round the mountain.