![]() ![]() ![]() As a bonus, it also provides the occasion for a teachable moment on American prudery. Like the Frontierlands and ToonTowns of other parks, this center of “wellness” represents a clear departure from the adjacent neighborhood. And so it was that I warmed to the idea of Tropical Islands despite myself.Īlas, one martini provided insufficient ballast for the park’s spa and sauna area, which occupies a generous one-third of Tropical Islands’ real estate. Both are magically transformed each evening from entertaining schmaltz islands to islands of schmaltz entertainment.Īround showtime, three-course meals of guinea fowl, blue marlin and blueberry mousse can be procured at the adjacent Paradiso restaurant, but “we can make you a cosmo or another cocktail right now,” said the faux Samoan behind the bar. The attraction, in addition to the sea itself, with its stainless-steel ocean floor, is the pair of sandbars floating on it. Germans of all ages frolicked in the sand nearby, while others camped overnight in canvas tents (just $30 a person for a pallet with high-thread-count sheets). A cerulean screen, of course, dotted with Magritte-style clouds and mounted over a tropical sea called Tropical Sea. ![]() Densely planted coffee bushes and banana trees conspired to create a remarkably realistic jungle, the effect spoiled only by the sound of flip-flops and the occasional bad European bathing suit.ĭeep and dark it was, the palms overhead eventually obscuring the sky, until they stopped obscuring it and a great cerulean-ness came into view. Just beyond the turnstiles, there was a bridge over a swamp heavily stocked with mangroves, and paths leading past thousands of specimens of tropical flora. The snow might be piling up against the building’s base, but inside is 175 million cubic feet of air kept at a temperature of 79 degrees round-the-clock, 365 days a year, not to mention eight football fields of landscaping made barefoot-friendly by an under-floor heating system. Instead, in 2004 it became a German water park with an English name, Tropical Islands, the moniker apparently lending an extra touch of the exotic for the hordes of Berliners who patronize it. Sure, CargoLifter went belly-up in 2002, its business plan disintegrating, but still: You’d expect that a scheme equally grandiose, or at the very least sinister, would have found a home there. There before us stood hubris of a rare order: 14,000 tons of steel supporting a 700,000-square-foot structure 32 stories high, an aviation Xanadu. ![]()
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