Inside the refrigerated hangar where penguins entertain diners in Dubai

In Dubai, visitors pay to dine alongside penguins confined in a refrigerated shopping mall hangar. This luxury experience masks exploitation as entertainment.

In Dubai, right in the middle of the desert, there are people who pay to dine and lunch alongside penguins. The experience, offered by Ski Dubai inside a shopping mall, promises a “close encounter” with king penguins and Gentoo penguins. But behind the soft lighting and themed tables lies a far less idyllic reality: animals taken from their natural habitat or born in captivity, forced to live in a refrigerated hangar and move from table to table to entertain customers.

A life far from authentic ice

These Arctic animals, accustomed to vast expanses of ice and natural climate conditions, spend their existence in an artificial environment, regulated by thermostats and lights on a fixed schedule. The facility maintains temperatures around 24°F (-4°C), a far cry from the dynamic conditions of their natural habitat. Every interaction follows a commercial program: the penguins enter, are shown to visitors, photographed, then returned to their holding area. They cannot express behaviors typical of their species, such as swimming in the open ocean or foraging for food, because every moment of their day is planned to satisfy the needs of the show.

Visitors receive precise instructions on how to behave: no flash photography, slow movements, don’t get too close. But the contradiction is evident: if animal welfare were truly the objective, they wouldn’t be used as a tourist attraction. The idea of “raising awareness” about wildlife conservation through confinement in a shopping mall is a paradox. Instead of promoting conservation in their natural habitats, it normalizes the view of wild animals as living room entertainment.

A luxury at a high price for their freedom

The experience is sold as exclusive, with reservations required weeks in advance and high costs—typically running several hundred dollars per person. Customers dine comfortably while the penguins are brought by a trainer to the center of the room, forced to stay still and “presentable” amid noise, odors and lights. The result? Animals deprived of the ability to decide where to go and whom to interact with. All this for a couple of photos and the memory of a “special” dinner.

What entertainment can there be in watching an animal outside its habitat, away from its colony and deprived of the freedom to move? These birds, designed by evolution to dive up to 655 feet (200 meters) deep in the Southern Ocean and travel thousands of miles during their migrations, find themselves performing for tourists in what amounts to an elaborate shopping mall attraction. A penguin doesn’t belong in a shopping center, and no scenography, however well-constructed, can replace the vastness of the ocean and ice that nature intended for them.

The irony deepens when you consider that visitors to this experience are often told they’re contributing to conservation efforts. Yet the very existence of these penguins in such an environment runs counter to everything we know about their natural behaviors and needs. Wild king penguins, for instance, can live up to 26 years and spend most of their time in colonies of tens of thousands, engaging in complex social hierarchies and behaviors that simply cannot be replicated in a dining room setting.

Perhaps most troubling is how easily we’ve normalized this spectacle. The fact that reservations book up weeks in advance speaks to our collective willingness to prioritize novelty over ethics. We’ve created a market for animal entertainment that reduces magnificent creatures to props in our Instagram-worthy experiences, all while convincing ourselves we’re somehow helping them.

The “Dinner with Penguins” package may promise an educational component, but what lesson are we really teaching? That it’s acceptable to confine wild animals for our amusement? That a meal becomes more special when shared with creatures who have no choice but to be there? These questions linger long after the last course is served and the penguins are escorted back to their artificial ice world.

Source: Ski Dubai