Review: Monster Meet 12 at Dubai Festival City
We filled up car parks and caused traffic jams with over 700 cars and bikes on a fabulous Friday
By Shahzad Sheikh
‘You should have got a bigger car park’ people kept telling me on the day.
‘This WAS the bigger car park’ I kept retorting!
Motoring Middle East (MME) marked its first anniversary with a monumental and unprecedented Car and Bike Meet that exceeded our most optimistic estimates of the turn out by some considerable margin.
With near 700 cars and bikes in the event car park, and the adjacent car park also full with many cars not even making it to the venue because of the sheer volume of traffic, some estimates put the number of attending cars even higher at closer to a thousand.
This Meet was covered in UAE newspaper Khaleej Times (click this link) and on national TV station, City7 – see video below (watch from 2:37).
With new areas of the Meet including a massively popular R/C drift car section and a spectacular crowd-pulling gathering of stunning motorbikes, alongside incredible music systems from ICE-laden modified cars pumping out the tunes, Friday afternoon developed a carnival atmosphere that was enjoyed not only by massive crowd of car and bike owners and enthusiasts, but also regular mall-goers, families, children and passers-by who popped in to see what all the fuss was about.
This meet was brilliantly supported by Dubai Festival City, Chrysler Middle East, Al Futtaim Toyota, Emirate Motor Sports Federation (EMSF), Rolling Art Emporium and Baremelon.com. Toyota had an FJ Extreme on display with some lovely ladies handing out much appreciated bottles of cold water on the day.
UAE’s car clubs turned out in full-force including Trucks, Mustangs, Dodge Challengers, Mitsubishis, JACCK classics, Hondas, VWs, Seats, GTZ club Nissans, Minis and many more. We thank them for their support with apologies to those not able to get into the main venue on this occasion.
Despite a start time of 4pm, the massive overflow car park next to Plug Ins at Dubai Festival City on the IKEA side, where we were, was half full by 3:30pm as our amazing team of volunteers – already having been out in the sun since 2pm struggled to get the cars parked up according to the original plan quick enough to get them off the streets. It turned out to be an impossible task.
Safety and security were a priority, which meant leaving enough space for cars to manoeuvre and spectators and visitors to walk around. An avalanche of cars arrived at 4pm and just shortly before 5pm we had to close the car park and the adjacent car park also started to fill up.
Because of the traffic caused, many could not even get to the venue and had to find alternative parking in Dubai Festival City – which fortunately does have ample spaces – and walk over.
We’re are massively grateful to the Mall security and staff, to the local police and the EMSF which helped coordinate the flow of cars and maintain order! On the day, our small team was overwhelmed by the response and we could not have staged this event without their help.
Most of all though, our thanks goes out to all the visitors and participants who made the day one of the largest gathering of motoring enthusiasts ever seen in Dubai. Despite our shortcomings, we hope you enjoyed the Meet. We’d love to have your feedback on this page, or you can email us at MME@MotoringME.com.
Use the same email address should you be interested in talking to us about sponsoring future Meets in order to promote your products and services.
Check out some of our pictures below, but to see our full official album of the show on our Facebook page, click here.
Within hours of the event ending, participants had started posting albums and we’ve compiled the links below – enjoy and thanks to all that posted!
- Adil Ahmad
- Mohammed Al Marri (video)
- TeamDDF
- Nia Aziz
- GTZ Club
- Colin Handy
- Sam S Gad
- Stewart Kirkcaldy
- Muhammad Aneeq
- Cars Photography
- Mohamed El Mamlouk
- Osama Tahir
- Armin Hosseini
- Eletrico Capoeira
- Tom Paye
- Kabir Kay Dutt
- Laurie Bridger
- Majed Fouz
- Eletrico Video
- MINI Club Dubai!
- Ankit Soni
- Caren Jochner
- DubDrift Weekend RC drift meet
I really loved this meet…I hope the next one will be bigger and in a colder place and the crowd should be more and better and this should be published in various papers and magazines to show the World that even UAE has cars which can prove themselves around and not just SEMA.
I saw a lot of rare cars in the parking lot due to late entry including my own NSX and RX-7. But it was one of a kind experience as it was totally dedicated to the car lovers and not the vendors. I am 100% sure that from the look of this meeting next meet will defintely be Bigger and Better.
I miss the old small but very personalized and meaningful meets with petrol heads and gear heads alike. I have stopped attending your meets due to the sheer crowds and the unrulyness involved. I miss the Pavillion Meets! Back then we had quality not quantity.
Sadly we can’t go back to having smaller meets, there is just too much demand. However we are looking to ensure better organisation and structure, so people can continue to enjoy them in a safe, comfortable, still intimate and most importantly, fun environment! Stay tuned for more info coming soon.
[…] vehicles and caused traffic to come to a standstill around Festival City Mall on a Friday afternoon (read about it here) – we decided to call it a day and move […]