Have an Ice Day

A recent trip to the Wisconsin Dells impressed upon me the impact of “out of the box” thinking, when I saw how the numerous indoor water parks there had helped to turn a summer playground into a year around tourist attraction. The economic impact has been dramatic.

While a number of towns in the USA are building or studying building indoor water parks, I’ve yet to hear of any that are following the example of Ski Dubai, which recently completed an indoor ski resort the size of three football fields in the middle of the desert.

The 200-foot vertical drop ski area includes a quarter-pipe, frozen waterfalls, a snowboard area, stalactites, an ice cavern and even falling snowflakes. The building is 25 stories high with five ski runs (the longest is a quarter of a mile long). Thirty tons of snow are produced every night, quite an accomplishment in a country where temperatures often reach above 120 degrees.

The next time someone in your town says, “We could never do something like that in our town,” show them these pictures of what someone did in the United Arab Emirates.