We booked our Dubai Land & Sea Tour via the very helpful Riam on the tours desk at Premier Inn Dubai International Airport T3. She advised that as a group of 4 we would definitely enjoy this combined package and it was sold to us at a great price on the day. We were collected from the hotel at midday and returned back there just before 9pm.
Part 1 - a tour of old and new Dubai. Our tour guide and driver for this part was Vikas who was friendly, knowledgeable, extremely helpful and patient. He was happy to recommend places for us to see as first time visitors but was also completely flexible with the route to suit us. The SUV was modern and comfortable and Vikas allowed plenty of time for us to explore areas and take photos and offered plenty of advice for the souks, getting us as close as possible to each site despite the traffic and showing us some very grand hotels that we could only dream of staying at! At The Pointe on the Palm he recommended places where we could to get some food before he delivered us to Dubai Marina after a full 6 hours for...
Part 2 - a circular boat trip up the coast and round the Palm that we hoped we be a good finish to the day. Well it turned out to be a lot more than we expected. We had the 33ft yacht to ourselves (apart from Ibrahim and John, the crew who looked after us very well). I say yacht, but it was more like a powerboat! The 4 of us sat at the front with our own music playing through a JBL party speaker. The guys proceeded to show us all of the main sights, cutting through the trunk of the Palm, over to Burj Al Arab, viewing of the Atlantis hotels out on the Palm fronds and back to the Marina. At each sight they stopped to help us take group photos. It was a full 2 hours and at times very, very fast over the water with the twin engines roaring.
Returning to the Marina we were met once again by Vikas who drove 4 very happy customers back to our hotel.
We would highly recommend this tour as a great way to spend a full day in Dubai, especially if you are new to the region.