Dubai attractions: the top places to visit, prices and opening hours

The commonest planning error is treating every entry as equivalent. The Burj Khalifa observation deck is a two-to-three hour commitment once the queue and the lift are counted, and the entrance is inside the mall, not at the base of the tower. The fountain, by contrast, is a few minutes repeated every half hour, so it slots into an evening instead of occupying one.

The creek district works the other way round: individually the museums and galleries are short, but the walking between them and the abra crossing add up to a genuine half day. Budget by district, not by attraction and the plan stops falling apart.

The split is sharper here than in most cities. Free covers the fountain, the souks, the historic lanes, the public beaches and the abra, between them a full and genuinely memorable day. Paid covers the observation decks, the waterparks and the theme parks, each of which takes a large share of a day and a large share of the budget.

Visitors routinely overweight the paid tier. One high deck and one desert trip is usually the right amount of paid activity in a three-day itinerary; a second deck or a second mall adds very little that the first did not already give you.

Dubai's attractions are not distributed evenly and that is the single most useful thing to know before planning. They sit in three clusters roughly forty kilometres apart along one road, and a plan that ignores that geography spends its time in traffic.

Downtown holds the tower, the mall, the fountain and the opera house within one covered walk. The creek district (Deira on one bank, Bur Dubai on the other) holds the souks, the historic quarter, the museums and the abra crossing. The coast holds the beaches, the promenades, Ain Dubai and the Palm. Each cluster is a comfortable day; any two in one day is a wasted afternoon.

The desert is the fourth destination and behaves differently: it is a half-day trip with a pickup instead of a place you navigate to.

The Burj Khalifa observation deck is the one view that explains the city's geography, showing the coast, the desert edge and the tower corridor in one sweep. Two to three hours including the queue, from AED 169 off-peak, and the entrance is inside The Dubai Mall, not at the tower.

The Dubai Fountain runs every half hour through the evening and costs nothing from the promenade. The Museum of the Future, on Sheikh Zayed Road, is the newest of the icons and the most architecturally interesting building in the city after the tower itself. Ain Dubai on Bluewaters is the observation wheel, and The View at The Palm is the only place the island's shape reads properly from ground level.

Burj Al Arab is visible from the Jumeirah beaches and is not casually visitable, access is by restaurant or spa booking, not by ticket.

The Al Fahidi historical quarter is the counterweight to everything above: coral-stone lanes, wind towers, courtyard houses now used as galleries, and enough shade to walk in for most of the day. Dubai Museum occupies the fort at its edge, the oldest building in the city.

Across the creek, the Gold Souk and the Spice Souk are working markets rather than attractions with an entrance, and the abra crossing between them is the best-value few minutes in Dubai. The Al Shindagha museum district along the Bur Dubai waterfront covers the city's pre-oil history in more depth than the older museum does.

Jumeirah Mosque is one of the few mosques in the country that admits non-Muslim visitors, on guided tours with dress provided. It is worth the hour.

A desert half-day typically means an afternoon pickup, dune driving, a camp with dinner and a return after dark, from around AED 180. The Al Marmoom and Dubai Desert Conservation reserves are the protected areas, and operators working inside them are more restricted and generally better behaved than those on unprotected sand.

On the water, dhow cruises on the creek and the Marina are the sedate option; speedboat tours along the Jumeirah coast give the Burj Al Arab views; and yacht charters are the expensive end. Skydive Dubai over the Palm is the single most photographed activity in the city.

Water parks (Aquaventure at Atlantis, Wild Wadi, Laguna) each take a whole day and should not be paired with anything else.

IMG Worlds of Adventure, Motiongate, Legoland and Bollywood Parks make up the theme-park cluster, most of it at Dubai Parks and Resorts out towards Jebel Ali. They are full-day commitments, they need a car or a long taxi, and they are the first thing to cut from a three-day plan.

Closer in, Dubai Aquarium sits inside The Dubai Mall, Ski Dubai inside Mall of the Emirates, and the Museum of Illusions in Al Fahidi. Global Village and the Miracle Garden are seasonal, running roughly October to April, and both close for the summer, which catches out visitors who find them on a list without a date attached.

The fountain, the souks, the historic lanes, the public beaches at JBR and Kite Beach, the Marina and Downtown promenades, and the Al Seef waterfront development are all free. The abra costs a nominal cash fare, which is close enough.

That list is not a consolation prize. A day made of the creek district, an abra crossing and an evening at the fountain costs almost nothing and is the day most visitors describe afterwards as the one they remember. The paid list buys height, speed and air conditioning; the free list buys the city.

Most paid attractions sell timed slots online at a discount to the gate price, and for the observation decks in high season a sunset slot needs booking days ahead. Combination passes bundling several attractions exist and are worth arithmetic rather than assumption: they pay only if you were going to visit everything in the bundle anyway, which on a three-day trip is rarely true.

Two practical notes. Timed tickets mean arriving inside the window, and the walk from the metro to the entrance is frequently longer than visitors allow. And children's pricing varies widely, some attractions are free under a height instead of an age, which is worth checking before buying.

From November to March everything on this page is open and comfortable at any hour. From June to September the outdoor list (souks, historic lanes, beaches, desert, promenades) moves to early morning and after dark, and the middle of the day belongs to the malls, the aquarium, the museums and the ski slope.

The seasonal attractions compound this: Global Village and the Miracle Garden are closed for most of the summer, so a summer itinerary has fewer options as well as narrower hours. Plan a summer trip around indoor anchors from the start and it works; rearrange a winter plan on arrival and it does not.

The modern attractions are almost universally step-free: the malls, the observation decks, the aquarium and the metro that reaches them all assume wheelchairs and prams, and lend both. The heritage areas are the opposite (narrow, uneven lanes with occasional steps) and the souks are hard going with a pushchair at any time of day.

For children, the reliable wins are the aquarium, the water parks and the ski slope, all indoors and all air-conditioned. The souks work early in the morning and not at all in the afternoon.

One day: Downtown only, done properly. Two: add the creek district. Three: add one half-day on the coast or in the desert. Five: add a water park or a theme park, or an Abu Dhabi day trip. Seven: the same list unhurried, with time to repeat what you liked.

The consistent mistake is treating the list as a checklist. Two observation decks add much less than one deck plus the creek, and the visitors who report being underwhelmed by Dubai are almost always the ones who saw three malls and no water. The three-day itinerary is built on that principle.

One more variable is worth planning around: the light. Almost every attraction here photographs badly between eleven and four and well in the hour after sunset, so the order you visit things in changes what you come home with. The photo guide pairs each viewpoint with the time of day it works.

The Red Line is the spine and it reaches most of what matters: the airport, Deira for the souks, Downtown for the tower and the mall, Business Bay, and the Marina at the far end. The Green Line covers the creek on both banks (Al Ras for the Gold Souk, Sharaf DG for the historic quarter) and the two interchange at Union and BurJuman.

The tram extends the Red Line into the Marina and JBR, and the Palm Monorail runs along the trunk of the island from there. Between them, the only major attractions not on public transport are the theme parks, Atlantis and the desert, all of which need a taxi or a pickup.

A Nol card is mandatory for the metro and tram, and it is the first thing to buy on arrival. Fares are a few dirhams even end to end, which makes the network the cheapest part of any Dubai itinerary by a wide margin.