Burj Khalifa At The Top Admission Ticket For Levels 124 and 125

Can't understand why this is so well reviewed. Reviewers must all be people who like standing in line for hours. We booked for 5:30 pm, thinking it would be really nice to see the sun go down and the city lights come on. Our booking told us to make sure we were there by 5pm as latecomers would not be allowed to go up and no refunds would be given. To make sure, we arrived by 4:45. The crowds at the ticket office were unbelievable. Hundreds of people and no clear direction as to where to go. We eventually realised we were supposed to join one of the four, indistinct lines, of people which were snaking around the mall - a long distance from the actual ticket office. So we waited and after half an hour reached the front and were directed to another line. After having our photo taken (at ground level - later to be superimposed onto a variety of backdrops should we wish to purchase a copy) we reached an escalator - where we had to wait again. Even then, we had no clue what was in store. It was now well past our viewing time. Up the escalotor and more queuing - round those snaking soft barriers. We proceeded- at snail pace- through all the line to get round the corner to find even more lines. This was repeated several times. To make matters worse, every 10 minutes or so, a large group of people would be fast tracked in front of us. Apparently these had purchased VIP tickets to allow them to jump the queues. When we paid our £54 each for tickets we were not made aware of the fact that other tickets were available. The Burj really missed an opportunity here. They could have provided interesting displays about the construction of the Burj and much else but the information was very sparse given that we had so much time to spend in the queue. (This display was positioned along the way out of the tower. By this time people just wanted to get out so spent no time looking at the exhibition). We eventually reached floor 124 at 8:30 pm. The 90 minute experience that we were told we were booking for consisted of 4 hours queuing and a brief time at the viewing level.The views were good but it was crowded and the 'illuminated, choreographed to music, spectacular fountain show' was hard to see and not very spectacular from such a height. There was a gift shop at the top - I can't imagine it does very well as people were pretty exhausted and disappointed by this stage. One book featured in a stand (which we could see from the queue to catch the elevator to go back down - was entitled 'Happiness and Positivity' - available in several languages) - we remained positive by reminding ourselves that we'd laugh about this in years to come. The queue to catch the elevator back down was an hour long. So in conclusion: It's just not worth it. You get a better view of the fountain show at ground level. It really seemed to be a way of screwing as much money as possible from gullible tourists. What is hard to believe is that all other days were fully booked so I imagine the queues would be even worse. We visited on our first night in Dubai - we found out later that the queues are the same all the time. I'd give no stars if I could. I don't usually review but feel honour bound to share our experience. At least if you do still want to spend your money, you'll know what's in store.

Queue for 50 minutes in heat as no air con. 10 minutes up to with no reference maps explaining what you are looking at except North, South etc 20 Queue to come back down Total disappointment, very expensive

We booked ourselves the expensive tickets with an evening time slot. At 4:30 p.m. we were there, tickets were for 5:00 p.m. However, there was already such a long queue there that was also valid for ticket holders. So we had to wait a whopping 2 hours to get to the observation deck. Just to look at everything that was viewable with this crowd for 20 minutes, only to have to wait a FULL 2 hours again to get down. All in all, the purest disaster and not worth the money at all. Especially not the extra money for the evening.