Ok, so I wasn’t going to go up in the Burj Khalifa (world’s tallest free standing structure) until daylight, but some random guy gave me a free ticket while I was reading a brochure. His friend apparently chickened out. Just the encouragement I needed to hear…

Any how, I went up. A few things I found interesting:

– The amount of total concrete used in the Burj Khalifa weighs as much as 100,000 elephants
– If you put all the rebar they used end-to-end, it would stretch from Dubai to New York
– The elevators travel about 32 feet per second…yeah, that seemed fast to me too

Those are some of the facts they give you in the museum part of your “At the Top” experience. (presumably to make you feel like the $30 you just spent to go up in a building was worth it). Some things they didn’t tell me:

– My ears were popping like crazy in the elevator ride. It was weird to have them pop in an elevator…
– From the observation deck, you could hear the wind whipping around the building through the glass windows. This was a little freaky, I have to tell you. If I hear wind, I assume things aren’t sealed. If they aren’t sealed, they are apart. And my thought process only gets worse from there…
– Despite spending untold billions on a beautiful, record-breaking structure, the floor of the observation deck is regular wood decking. Fine except that it has some give to it. Not what you are looking for in a floor at 140 stories up.
– One of the windows was broken so it was covered by a sheet of metal or plastic. And call me crazy, but it looked like duct tape was involved in holding it up. Check please!

Jokes aside, it is an awesome engineering feat and something my lame pictures and videos will never truly capture. But I hope they paint at least a better picture for you.