To contrast my experience in Abu Dhabi, I distinctly remember my time in Istanbul where the mosques are literally 1,000 years old and the historical significance of each building weighs heavily on visitors and locals alike. Even when I visit European capitals today, while many have expanded over the years there is usually a core area that has been left relatively preserved (or in the case of Prague, even undamaged by war).

Here in Abu Dhabi, there is a brand new spacious highway system with wide driving lanes, clearly marked bi-lingual exits, and no chance for traffic jams or roadway confusion. But don’t mistake this for long-learned lessons of civil engineering. Instead, the highway system was built to accommodate a massive population that just hasn’t arrived yet, a throw back to the old saying, ‘If you build it they will come.’

It’s clear that the park was built for huge numbers of visitors, with its rows upon rows of comfortable beach chairs, stacks of hundreds of inner tubes, and those winding paths up to the slides that are designed to disguise how long the queue really is. The only difference is that we walked from ride to ride, never waiting more than a few minutes for our turn. Frankly, my 10-year old self would have been in heaven. But we wondered – did we come on a slow day or is it always like this? Is it better to build a place to manage potential future capacity issues, even if it means high sunk costs, bored staff and years of a strange empty awkwardness?