Speaker 1: Get in test with technology with tech Stuff from half
Speaker 1: stuff dot com. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren Vocal, and today we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about under the sea. Life is better downwards
Speaker 1: whether they give her me. Jonathan just got back from
Speaker 1: Disney World and no wonder has really never seen. I'm
Speaker 1: still there. Really part of me will always still be there.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, so we're talking about underwater hotels. We just
Speaker 1: thought one of those things where I just went on
Speaker 1: a vacation. I went to Disney that's got a lot
Speaker 1: of underwater theming and various parts of the park, and
Speaker 1: then I went on a cruise, which happens to have
Speaker 1: a lot to do with water. UHAMI would imagine. I'm
Speaker 1: actually not personally familiar with. I've never been on one.
Speaker 1: I kind of scare me. Uh well, we went through
Speaker 1: Hurricane Karen, so that was exciting. I'll tell you more
Speaker 1: about that after the show. Anyway, it was it was
Speaker 1: actually a very interesting experience. Nothing negative to say about that,
Speaker 1: but it brought me to think about, you know, some
Speaker 1: of the more exotic kind of vacation destinations. And I
Speaker 1: remember reading back when I first started at How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: I remember reading about these proposed underwater luxury hotels. We're
Speaker 1: talking like five star hotels with all the amenities, or
Speaker 1: or totally submerged in the case of one of them,
Speaker 1: which the one I'm specifically thinking of, the Poseidon, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about in a little bit later in the podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they started planning that in two thousand or two thousand
Speaker 1: one two one, I think, and it still doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: As it turns out. When we started doing research for this,
Speaker 1: we were like, oh, none of these really exists. Yet.
Speaker 1: There are a few that you can stay in that
Speaker 1: are real, right, They're not the super luxury hotels, though
Speaker 1: there's one that is a super luxury hotel that does
Speaker 1: have an underwater restaurant, and and there's one that has
Speaker 1: the underwater room because there's the Atlantis, But it's not
Speaker 1: a completely submerged hotel the way the Poseidon is supposed
Speaker 1: to be. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. We are,
Speaker 1: we are getting weight ahead of ourselves. Um, let us
Speaker 1: let us start, well, Okay, what do you wanna do?
Speaker 1: You want to talk about the problems here? Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: talk about the problems. Okay, So Lauren, if I were
Speaker 1: to tell you that you are going to go and
Speaker 1: sleep with the fishes, you would probably think I was
Speaker 1: going to put a hit on you, you know, Godfather style.
Speaker 1: But if I were to say, no, no, no, I
Speaker 1: mean that there's this hotel that's underwater where you can
Speaker 1: fall asleep underwater and wake up to looking outside of
Speaker 1: all these gorgeous fish, you'd realize that there are some
Speaker 1: issues you've got to work out too before anyone is
Speaker 1: comfortable staying in that space. I would I would ask,
Speaker 1: how am I going to breathe? I enjoy breathing. That's
Speaker 1: something I do. Every top of the list is the
Speaker 1: breathing problem. Yeah, As it turns out, don't know if
Speaker 1: you guys know this. We don't breathe water so well.
Speaker 1: We like air that has a mixture of some pretty
Speaker 1: typical gases that you find on our atmosphere. It's very
Speaker 1: convenient for us, seeing as how this is where we live.
Speaker 1: But if you go underwater, you know, you get that challenge.
Speaker 1: So you have to find a way of supplying breathable atmosphere.
Speaker 1: You have to find a way of maintaining pressure. Uh
Speaker 1: and and to prevent front water pressure from breaking the
Speaker 1: the the confines of your habitat and killing you because
Speaker 1: you could see above you can't breathe water, so yeah,
Speaker 1: so and if you're deep enough, then the pressure alone
Speaker 1: could kill you. Although for the habitats we're talking about, uh,
Speaker 1: you're in semi shallow water, shallow not to not like
Speaker 1: you're you know, waiting around in it. But we're talking
Speaker 1: maybe thirty to fifty feet deep something along those lines,
Speaker 1: not you know, a thousand meters below the surface of
Speaker 1: the ocean. Right. This is partially because water exerts more
Speaker 1: pressure on us than air at atmosphere pressure. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: the deeper you go, the more pressure you feel. Right, So,
Speaker 1: I don't know, we talked before the podcast you have
Speaker 1: not seen the ABYSS, right. So in the ABYSS, you
Speaker 1: have these characters who are going on these deep, deep,
Speaker 1: deep ocean UH missions, and at one point they start
Speaker 1: to experiment with a liquid oxygen. The reason why they're
Speaker 1: using a liquid oxygen is because if they were to
Speaker 1: go out in a diving suit under the amount immense
Speaker 1: pressure that they would be under as soon as they
Speaker 1: left the confines of their submersible, uh, all that air
Speaker 1: would end up dissolving into their blood and they die.
Speaker 1: So they they have come up with this liquid stuff
Speaker 1: that would allow them to breathe. Well, we don't really
Speaker 1: have the liquid stuff that we can do, like on
Speaker 1: the level that they did in that movie, right that
Speaker 1: there is research with liquid forms of I do not
Speaker 1: have the name of it right in front of me,
Speaker 1: but it's some kind of flora carbon actually, which which
Speaker 1: is weird and interesting to me, but it's it's a
Speaker 1: pressurized liquid ish gas and odd, very strange. I don't
Speaker 1: know how that would feel. Doesn't seem comfortable to me personally,
Speaker 1: but it right. So, so the problem when you go
Speaker 1: deep enough, I mean, once you're getting down to ninety
Speaker 1: thing like that, some of the gases that you're breathing,
Speaker 1: especially nitrogen, are going to dissolve into your blood and tissues,
Speaker 1: which is okay for a short period of time, but hey,
Speaker 1: it's very bad in the long term and be when
Speaker 1: you go back up to the service. If you don't
Speaker 1: take steps to decompress, it can turn back into nitrogen
Speaker 1: bubbles and forming in yeah, in your tissue and blood
Speaker 1: and make you extremely sick. Yeah, you get it. It's
Speaker 1: called the bends or decompression sickness. Right, and it can
Speaker 1: be deadly. I mean, that's we're talking serious stuff here, right.
Speaker 1: It sounds like when you hear like, oh, he's got
Speaker 1: the bends, you might get the idea that yeah, I
Speaker 1: just I guess did you did you just eat something? Exactly?
Speaker 1: What's going on? Are you a crazy straw? What happened? No,
Speaker 1: it's very serious stuff. It's actually one of those things
Speaker 1: that divers have to consider. It's when if you've ever
Speaker 1: been diving, then you know all about this. If you've
Speaker 1: ever heard people talk about how you have to take
Speaker 1: dives in very gradual stages. You can't just swim straight
Speaker 1: down to the bottom of the ocean floor in a
Speaker 1: very deep area and then swim right back back up right.
Speaker 1: You have to you have to be much more um careful,
Speaker 1: or else you can suffer from it. And that's a
Speaker 1: huge part of your training when you go scupid eying right,
Speaker 1: and you have to occasionally go into something like a
Speaker 1: decompression chamber where the the pressure inside the chamber is
Speaker 1: controlled so that it will allow you to get back
Speaker 1: to the surface pressure gradually enough and then you can
Speaker 1: go outside and not not suffer from decompression sickness. So
Speaker 1: that's clearly one issue is you got to figure out
Speaker 1: not just the breathing, but also how do you do
Speaker 1: this in a way where people are not going to
Speaker 1: suffer decompression sickness as soon as they transfer from being
Speaker 1: underwater to being within the hotel environment or the habitat environment. Right. So,
Speaker 1: and so, there are two ways that you can pressure
Speaker 1: eze an underwater cabin and those are two the water
Speaker 1: pressure that's surrounding the habitat, in which case you're gonna
Speaker 1: want to use it in only very shallow situations. And again,
Speaker 1: have some kind of decompression process if if nest sary,
Speaker 1: or to pressurize this container to the surface atmosphere using airlocks, right,
Speaker 1: and that would be like a submarine. A submarine is
Speaker 1: pressurized to the surface temperature. Which is why when a
Speaker 1: submarine comes back up, it's not that you know, suddenly
Speaker 1: all the sailors on board have to go through a
Speaker 1: decompression chamber or else they'll all suffer from the bends.
Speaker 1: It's because that submarine itself is pressurized to the surface pressure.
Speaker 1: It's similar to what we see with airplanes to the
Speaker 1: pressurized cabins and airplanes to maintain a certain within a
Speaker 1: certain parameter UH closeness to the service pressure so that
Speaker 1: you don't have these problems that you would suffer otherwise. Now,
Speaker 1: all what we know about this pressurization and the the
Speaker 1: gases that you can breathe when you're underwater started. The
Speaker 1: research really started about the nineteen fifties. The principle of
Speaker 1: saturation diving, which is that prolonged exposure to UH to
Speaker 1: pressurized gases that's going to build up nitrogen in your system,
Speaker 1: was proposed by Captain George F. Bond, who is a U. S.
Speaker 1: Navy physician, And that's what really kicked off the ability
Speaker 1: for us to start doing research with with underwater habitats.
Speaker 1: And this was becoming important because of a little thing
Speaker 1: called the Cold War in the space race, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember that. I mean also environmentalism was on the
Speaker 1: rise and people were becoming really interested in all of
Speaker 1: the life in oceans. While to study that, yeah, that
Speaker 1: was still I would say that that really got a
Speaker 1: lot of traction in the seventies. Apart from one specific
Speaker 1: person who anyone who's familiar with marine biology knows the
Speaker 1: name Jacques Cousteau, right, was certainly instrumental in six. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so his work in the sixties certainly went a far
Speaker 1: away to giving us a greater appreciation and understanding of
Speaker 1: underwater environments. And in fact, um he started looking into
Speaker 1: an underwater habitat right right in nineteen sixty two he
Speaker 1: started launching experiments in these pressurized underwater trips. Uh. He
Speaker 1: created the con Shelf one, which was a free standing
Speaker 1: structure down about thirty six ft under under the water,
Speaker 1: and and divers lived in it for about a week.
Speaker 1: So O, that's pretty that's that's fairly impressive. I mean,
Speaker 1: considering that you know, you're you weren't going to have
Speaker 1: many Apollo astronauts going up until wait wait, I guess,
Speaker 1: I guess about that time, Well they're starting the training programs. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it wasn't until the late sixties that you really got
Speaker 1: them into going out into orbit. But yeah, so so
Speaker 1: you've got this this underwater habitat staying there for about
Speaker 1: a week, which that plays into our discussion on underwater hotels.
Speaker 1: That's you know, a typical vacation stays is a week long.
Speaker 1: So it's funny to think that scientific research here, specifically
Speaker 1: looking into marine environments of marine life is somewhat paving
Speaker 1: the way underwater as it were, to underwater tourism and
Speaker 1: underwater hotels. Absolutely. Yeah, there there was another and named
Speaker 1: Edwin A Link who was um who who was another
Speaker 1: oceanographer who was working in the same field at the time.
Speaker 1: One of his projects called The Man in the Sea
Speaker 1: would in nineteen sixty four get adopted by the U. S.
Speaker 1: Navy and that would turn into the Sea Lab program
Speaker 1: that you guys might have heard of. Yeah, I remember
Speaker 1: that show on Cartoon Network. No, no different, different, different
Speaker 1: Sea Lab, although they did have at some point a
Speaker 1: trained dolphin that would run errands for them. Wow. Really,
Speaker 1: I I don't know what to say about that. That
Speaker 1: was That was Sea Lab two in nineteen sixty right,
Speaker 1: And so then you've also got uh, I mean Custo
Speaker 1: continued work of creating the CONSW three. Uh. There was
Speaker 1: the more sea labs, as I recall. So we have
Speaker 1: this development where we're learning more and more about how
Speaker 1: to create habitats that can safely house people for a
Speaker 1: certain length of time, increasingly long periods of time throughout
Speaker 1: throughout the sixties. We went from that first initial week
Speaker 1: two up to a month and more. Right right there, was, Um,
Speaker 1: there's one in particular I want to talk about, but uh,
Speaker 1: I want to I want to give you the opportunity
Speaker 1: to get through the sixties and seventies first before I
Speaker 1: jump into it, because I'm going to talk about the
Speaker 1: Noah one. Okay, I think, go go for it, alright, Alright, So,
Speaker 1: so again sixties and seventies, we see more and more
Speaker 1: of these same sort of environments used for Are these
Speaker 1: habitats used for scientific research? Noah establishes one called Aquarius
Speaker 1: off the coast of Saint Croix, and Aquarius is one
Speaker 1: of the two underwater habitats that are still really actively
Speaker 1: used these days. Um. The other one is now called Jewels,
Speaker 1: but it's it's now privately owned. It's now privately owned
Speaker 1: and operated as an underwater hotel. But it didn't start
Speaker 1: off that way. It started, right, It started off as
Speaker 1: one of these research habitats. And and and all of these
Speaker 1: that we've been talking about have been research habitats, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of based on ocean life, but also kind of
Speaker 1: based on exactly how can we do this crazy keeping
Speaker 1: people underwater? Right? Right? So the Jewels Undersea Lodge was
Speaker 1: named after, of course, Jules Willis Vern and his leagues
Speaker 1: under the sea, right, although this one is not twenty
Speaker 1: leagues under the ce certainly not. It is less than
Speaker 1: that sifically, it's I think it's below the surface exactly.
Speaker 1: It is The Surfaces, the world's first underwater hotel. It
Speaker 1: was originally called La Chaupapa Research Lab, Yes it was.
Speaker 1: It was created in the nineteen seventies and then renovated
Speaker 1: into a hotel in the nineteen eighties. And you it's
Speaker 1: it's scuba focus. It's really for scuba enthusiasts. I think
Speaker 1: you don't have to have SCOOP certification to go, but
Speaker 1: they will make you take a training course just to
Speaker 1: make sure that you're dive down because you have to
Speaker 1: scuba dive into the hotel. That's the only way to
Speaker 1: get there. The way it works is that they have
Speaker 1: a wet room. That's that's called wet room because that's
Speaker 1: where you go to when you when you come into
Speaker 1: the hotel, and that's where you end up storing all
Speaker 1: your scuba gears. And then entrance is what's called a
Speaker 1: moon pool, which I just love how romantic and lovely
Speaker 1: that name is, which is really a hole cutting the floor.
Speaker 1: It's much nicer than hole cutting. The floors names go
Speaker 1: and uh and right. It's it's compressed, I think, to
Speaker 1: the to the water around you. So you shouldn't stay
Speaker 1: in there very very long. And the idea is that
Speaker 1: you swim underneath the structure, you come up through the
Speaker 1: moon pool, you pull yourself out, kind of like pulling
Speaker 1: yourself out of a swimming pool, and then you are
Speaker 1: inside the hotel and uh. You know again, it's it's
Speaker 1: that that water pressure specifically, because if you were at
Speaker 1: surface pressure, then you'd have to worry about decompression. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you can then take off all your gear, take
Speaker 1: a hot shower, and then move into one of the
Speaker 1: other two rooms inside the jewels. UH. Motel is what
Speaker 1: I've seen it referred to by other underwater hotel companies.
Speaker 1: Uh it is. If you want to know some statistics,
Speaker 1: it's fifty ft long, which is about fifteen meters, it's
Speaker 1: twenty ft wide that's six meters, and eleven ft tall,
Speaker 1: which about three point four meters. It was. It's off
Speaker 1: the coast of Key Largo in the Florida Keys, made
Speaker 1: famous of course by the Beach Boys in their song Anyway,
Speaker 1: so that you uh, you know, like you said, Lauren,
Speaker 1: you have to get there by diving. Whether or not
Speaker 1: you're certified doesn't matter. They can put you through that course,
Speaker 1: but you have to get there by diving. They don't
Speaker 1: have some other means of getting you there. I think
Speaker 1: that originally they had let guests go down breathing through
Speaker 1: a tube, a pipe that was piping oxygen down like
Speaker 1: Snooba diving, which is a combination of snorkeling and scuba, right,
Speaker 1: But due to safety concerns, they moved it to a
Speaker 1: full exactly. That sounds like that was a good idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: moving it. Um, it's uh. You know, once you get
Speaker 1: in there, you've got some interesting amenities. They have windows
Speaker 1: that look out their forty two inches in diameter or
Speaker 1: um uh the wait wait I wrote down how many
Speaker 1: how many centimeters? A hundred seven centimeters. I'm look it
Speaker 1: out for you guys. I just I can't make the
Speaker 1: conversion in my head yet. I'm not that good. Um.
Speaker 1: Other amenities include things like air conditioning and an entertainment center.
Speaker 1: The picture I saw was was an old uh caval
Speaker 1: ray tube television showing I think it was the ABYSS
Speaker 1: actually on pause. Um. But anyway, it's the You also
Speaker 1: can have meals delivered down there, including from the tower
Speaker 1: of Pizza Um restaurant. I know because I actually looked
Speaker 1: into this to see, you know, I was curious to
Speaker 1: see how much it was. Did you see how much
Speaker 1: it costs to stay there? I did not, or if
Speaker 1: I did, I did not make a network. So it's really,
Speaker 1: you know, when you think about it, you're staying underneath
Speaker 1: the Ochian. So, first of all, when we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about these other underwater hotels in the moment, we're talking
Speaker 1: about super luxurious experiences. At least that's the idea, and
Speaker 1: so they tend to be pretty pricey, with one in
Speaker 1: particular really breaking the bank on a per night's day.
Speaker 1: But the Jewels Undersea Lodge, if it's if it's a
Speaker 1: party of two, it's eight hundred dollars per night. So
Speaker 1: that's a party of two. That's expensive. But you're like,
Speaker 1: you're talking about being underwater as a unique experience right now, right,
Speaker 1: So uh, if it's three to but it gets lower
Speaker 1: per person if you add more people. So if you
Speaker 1: have three to four people staying there, it ends up
Speaker 1: being three fifty dollars per person. Instead four hundred per person.
Speaker 1: If you have five to six people staying there, it's
Speaker 1: three hundred dollars per person. However, you are then staying
Speaker 1: with five to six people in a tin can. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, not all of us hate everybody, Lauren, So
Speaker 1: you know we can get along some of us with
Speaker 1: lots of people in an enclosed space. This open floor
Speaker 1: plan that we have in our office is really keyed
Speaker 1: up us on our anxiety levels and aggression levels have
Speaker 1: gone off the charts, pretty cranky. Yeah, this is only
Speaker 1: the first day, Lauren. We've got lots more of these
Speaker 1: to look forward to, Succa. You have to deal with me.
Speaker 1: There's some behind the scenes stuff from how stuff works
Speaker 1: right there for you guys. So anyway, yeah, not not
Speaker 1: so expensive. Comparatively speaking, it is very expensive our hotel room,
Speaker 1: but for a hotel room underwater, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: not so expensive. Um So that's that's kind of the
Speaker 1: first one I wanted to talk about because it was
Speaker 1: a direct descendant. In fact, it was one of these
Speaker 1: underwater research habitats for us to talk about the other
Speaker 1: underwater hotels, the one that exists and then the several
Speaker 1: that are proposed before we do that. I want to
Speaker 1: take a quick break and thank our sponsor. All right,
Speaker 1: so now we're gonna talk about some other underwater hotels.
Speaker 1: There is one other one that we can talk about
Speaker 1: that's actually running. It's working. You can go and you
Speaker 1: can book a room there if you wanted to, or
Speaker 1: the room there. There's only one. There's only the one.
Speaker 1: This is called the utter Inn. It is in Sweeten
Speaker 1: on Lake something or other. I can't pronounce it. I'm
Speaker 1: not even gonna try, like Millaren, Let's let's say that
Speaker 1: is that is the English looking pronunciation of that name.
Speaker 1: It is probably completely incorrect because, as we have previously
Speaker 1: learned in the episode, Sweden be crazy. Yeah we we are.
Speaker 1: Our mouths don't make those sounds utter in obviously that
Speaker 1: that means otter in it's the cool So it's about otters.
Speaker 1: It was created as an art project in the year
Speaker 1: two thousand by Mikhail Genberg. And okay, so so it's
Speaker 1: got it's got an above above surface part in a
Speaker 1: below surface part above above ground, above surface. I keep
Speaker 1: wanting to say ground. There's it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: red shed with a deck around it. Yeah, it looks
Speaker 1: like it looks like it's got a little floating dock
Speaker 1: that's got nothing but a little tiny red shack on it.
Speaker 1: So if you were looking at it just from the surface,
Speaker 1: you think that is the weirdest looking thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: It's just floating out there on the lake. And what's
Speaker 1: that very small barbridge which with a very small wood
Speaker 1: shed on it. Um it does have you know, a
Speaker 1: little bit of a deck for sun chairs or something.
Speaker 1: You can fit a good few sun chairs out there,
Speaker 1: and then there's a tube leading below the surface. You
Speaker 1: can go down a ladder through this tube into what
Speaker 1: I believe is a single room. It does not look
Speaker 1: terribly roomy. No, I think it's a room. It has
Speaker 1: two beds and a few picture windows that will let
Speaker 1: you look out into the lake. As of as it
Speaker 1: listed for UM, I think a thousand, seven hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty dollars for seven nights for one week stage, so
Speaker 1: not bad. It's actually cheaper than the Jewels one if
Speaker 1: you're looking to stay for a week. Uh. If you, however,
Speaker 1: you're pretty much left up on your own here, you
Speaker 1: can opt in to getting food delivered to you for
Speaker 1: an extra charge. Where I think I think it's row
Speaker 1: about distance to them. Yeah, they give you an inflatable
Speaker 1: canoe where you can you can row back to shore
Speaker 1: so that you can go and get things like food
Speaker 1: or entertainment. It is, it is pretty impressively creepy looking. Actually,
Speaker 1: I have to say, I was looking at some pictures
Speaker 1: of the interior, and the lake is a very living lake,
Speaker 1: and so it's a little bit briny. It's kind of
Speaker 1: grayish and greenish, lots of allergae, lots of fish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it gets very dark at night, and I'm sort of
Speaker 1: uncomfortable with that. Yeah, the idea that you, yeah, you're
Speaker 1: not getting any starlight or moonlight down there. I mean
Speaker 1: it was the same sort of thing with the Jewels one, right,
Speaker 1: like the Jewels Hotel that if you ever see pictures
Speaker 1: of it, you see these big round windows since looking
Speaker 1: onto very green water, you know, and it's it's not
Speaker 1: like it's not the kind of don't think about those
Speaker 1: Caribbean beaches or the ones and you see in Southeast Asia,
Speaker 1: whereas that crystal blue water it's not like that. So anyway,
Speaker 1: the those are the two that you could actually book
Speaker 1: a room at right now and go and stay in
Speaker 1: right now. The Jewels and the other. But therefore, for
Speaker 1: a room underwater, there are a couple other hotels that
Speaker 1: do have portions. There's something underwater, like the Atlantis Hotel
Speaker 1: in Dubai. Specifically, there are two Atlantis resorts. There's one
Speaker 1: in Dubai and there's one in the Bahamas. If you
Speaker 1: ever look at this thing, it looks like two giant wings,
Speaker 1: and the center of it um has sort of an
Speaker 1: outline that looks like an Arabesque tower with a sort
Speaker 1: of a bridging kind of section on the very top.
Speaker 1: That will come in into play in just a second,
Speaker 1: because I've got a tangent that I have to talk about.
Speaker 1: But anyway, it has two suits, the Poseidon and the Neptune.
Speaker 1: Very clever. The Posidona Neptune suites are multi floor suites
Speaker 1: and part of it is above the level of a
Speaker 1: lagoon that it looks out over, but the bottom floor
Speaker 1: is actually under the surface of the water line and
Speaker 1: has windows look out into the lagoon. So according to
Speaker 1: one picture, although I couldn't find any confirmation on the
Speaker 1: actual Atlanti site, it was one of those pictures where
Speaker 1: I wondered if it was a an artist rendition or
Speaker 1: if it was actually this was really taken inside the suite,
Speaker 1: and one of them that showed a bedroom where the
Speaker 1: entire bedroom was submerged in the lagoon, so you you
Speaker 1: are looking out like when you look up from your bed,
Speaker 1: you're looking at the aquarium a centially or in the
Speaker 1: inside the lagoon, so you're looking at all the sea
Speaker 1: life swimming around you. None of the pictures I saw
Speaker 1: on the actual site reflected that specific setup, so I
Speaker 1: don't know that that's really how it turned out. That
Speaker 1: might have been one of those things like and what
Speaker 1: it really looks like is No, you've got a window
Speaker 1: that looks out into the lagoon, which still is gorgeous,
Speaker 1: but it's not the same effect obviously. Um. Anyway, these
Speaker 1: two suites are a little a little expensive. If you
Speaker 1: want to stay at either the Poseidon or the Neptune
Speaker 1: Sweet in the Atlantis Resort in Dubai for one night,
Speaker 1: that will set you back eight thousand eight for one
Speaker 1: night's stay. Yeah, it's not the most expensive Sweet in
Speaker 1: the hotel I and I'm sure it's not by far
Speaker 1: the most expensive sweet in Dubai. The most expensive Sweet
Speaker 1: in the Atlantis Resort and Dubai is Remember why I
Speaker 1: said I had that bridging kind of section that's at
Speaker 1: the very top of that Arabs tower. Well, that that
Speaker 1: bridging section is actually a suite. It's called the Royal
Speaker 1: Bridge Suite. And one night's stay will set you back
Speaker 1: about thirty seven thousand, eight hundred dollars for one night.
Speaker 1: So that's a good salary right there for one night's stay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's much like many people's yearly k Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: to stay for one night. Yeah. Anyway, clearly there's a
Speaker 1: section of the world that lives in a different bracket
Speaker 1: than I do. Uh, it's still pretty interesting, but it's
Speaker 1: not the same thing as the submerged hotel idea that
Speaker 1: we were promised. No, and uh, well there's there's also
Speaker 1: a restaurant that you can go to in a Hilton
Speaker 1: hotel out in Maldives, Maldives Islands. Yes. Um, that's the
Speaker 1: Conrad mal Dives Rangali Island. It's it's owned again by
Speaker 1: the by the Hilton Hotel chain. Um. The hotel itself
Speaker 1: spread over two islands connected by a bridge. Most of
Speaker 1: it is top side, but it does have this this
Speaker 1: undersea restaurant that's available. Um. It only has fourteen chairs,
Speaker 1: but you can also rent it out for events for
Speaker 1: an undisclosed amount of money. Undisclosed huge amount of money,
Speaker 1: meaning huge. The pictures of this are very similar to
Speaker 1: what I was talking about about that bedroom where it's
Speaker 1: the you know, because the the ceiling itself is also
Speaker 1: made out of a crylic it's this arc. There's an
Speaker 1: arch all the way through the dining room where you're
Speaker 1: surrounded on both sides and above it's like a two
Speaker 1: seventy degree so you're you're you're looking around underwater, and
Speaker 1: it looks very much to me like the there's a
Speaker 1: tunnel in the Georgia Aquarium in downtown Atlanta that is
Speaker 1: a very similar view or um. Maybe if you guys
Speaker 1: have seen a really terrific BioShock causplay of a big
Speaker 1: daddy and little sister, it took place in this in
Speaker 1: the Georgia. Have you've seen the documentary Jaws three, which
Speaker 1: takes place in Sea World and they walk through some
Speaker 1: of the Sea World tunnel, same sort of thing, except
Speaker 1: you know, wider. Uh So that kind of brings us
Speaker 1: to some of the ones that have been proposed, posed,
Speaker 1: but as far as we can tell, have yet to
Speaker 1: be built. In some cases have yet to have any
Speaker 1: work done on them whatsoever. In most cases, have yet
Speaker 1: to have any work done on them. And that that
Speaker 1: I think we should probably go ahead and just start
Speaker 1: with the Poseidon, because that was the one that that
Speaker 1: I first heard of and was so impressed by and
Speaker 1: could not wait to hear. But it was originally supposed
Speaker 1: to open in two thousand eight nine, I think, okay,
Speaker 1: two thousand nine. Uh, as far as I know, no
Speaker 1: work has really been done on the the like they
Speaker 1: haven't installed any of the actual units. Now. The Poseidon
Speaker 1: approach was really kind of a cool idea, and it
Speaker 1: may still be a cool idea, like as an it
Speaker 1: may still be built. But the idea is that they
Speaker 1: would have an underwater corridor that was the connecting uh
Speaker 1: like like permanently fixed corridor underwater, and then the suites
Speaker 1: would be connected to it, but detachable and surfaceable in
Speaker 1: case of either emergency or repair. Right, so so each
Speaker 1: suite could be built completely separately. UH. They're neutrally buoyant,
Speaker 1: so you can move them fairly easily through the water
Speaker 1: either up or down. You bring them down to the
Speaker 1: right level, you connect it to the corridors. The corridor
Speaker 1: has a a sealed door, and so does the suite,
Speaker 1: so that you can therefore use you can pressurize it
Speaker 1: to surface pressure. Right, and so the idea is that
Speaker 1: you could be uh transported by submersible down to the corridor,
Speaker 1: You get out of the submersible into the corridor, you
Speaker 1: go to your room. The entire time you are under
Speaker 1: surface pressure. You never have that decompression issue, UM, and
Speaker 1: you have this gorgeous view where you can control the
Speaker 1: privacy of your room through l C d UH screens.
Speaker 1: So you could actually make them opaque or transparent and
Speaker 1: then either you know, look at just a little section
Speaker 1: of the water, or say, you know, modesty be darned,
Speaker 1: I'm going to turn all of the walls into windows
Speaker 1: for right now. And uh just you know, any divers
Speaker 1: are swimming by are just gonna have to They're just
Speaker 1: gonna have to live with the way I hang out
Speaker 1: in my hotel room. Uh yeah. Those that that that
Speaker 1: would be some four inch thick plexiglass windows that it's
Speaker 1: planning on using in twenty four underwater speed. Specifically, I've
Speaker 1: heard UM construction was supposed to be in Portland, Oregon,
Speaker 1: and you know it's still in the works. As far
Speaker 1: as I can tell, it has not started again. They're
Speaker 1: they're gonna lead it over to Fiji when it's done hypothetically,
Speaker 1: and it was announced in they're scouting for a second
Speaker 1: location that they have so much interest that they want
Speaker 1: to build two. However, also that the same year a
Speaker 1: Swiss firm called Strategic Hotel Consulting estimated that the cost
Speaker 1: of one suite building one sweet, not staying there, just
Speaker 1: building it, would be eleven point four million dollars for
Speaker 1: one suite, So that could end up being a huge issue.
Speaker 1: If that actually is an accurate estimation, then that could
Speaker 1: really cause problems with them building this and you know,
Speaker 1: affording to build a full hotel. So we're still waiting
Speaker 1: to find out if that's in fact going to happen. Um,
Speaker 1: there's some other cool ideas that are part of this
Speaker 1: hotel there they talked about Each room would also have
Speaker 1: underwater lights, so you could light up the scene around
Speaker 1: you at night and see the fishies swimming around the night. Also,
Speaker 1: they would have push button fish feeders, so if you
Speaker 1: wanted to feed the fish eies and and or attract
Speaker 1: more fishies around your window, you push a button and
Speaker 1: it shoots food out and Okay, this sounds gorgeous and wonderful,
Speaker 1: and the cynic in me is saying that it is
Speaker 1: going to be awful for the local ecosystem. You might
Speaker 1: see a lot of obese fish like I just yet,
Speaker 1: I've never seen a flounder around before. Really delicate balance.
Speaker 1: There's there's certainly some things that you've got to take
Speaker 1: into consideration. Although I supposed just the mirror, you know,
Speaker 1: anchoring of a giant corridor and twenty four submersible rooms underwater,
Speaker 1: we're probably screw stuff up. There's probably environmental impact there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's also uh, you know, it's not just made of
Speaker 1: acrylic obviously, it's also made of steel that steals about
Speaker 1: an inch thick. It's about twenty five millimeters. For you
Speaker 1: guys out there who don't follow the imperial system like
Speaker 1: I do. Um. Then we've got a couple of other
Speaker 1: hotels we can talk about. I mean, there's more stuff
Speaker 1: we'd say about the sign, but the biggest thing is
Speaker 1: that we're still waiting on the poseidon that much information. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: China has plans to build one into the cliff side
Speaker 1: of an abandoned rock quarry in Shanghai heard about this,
Speaker 1: not at all. This is the SMaL Wonderland. And it
Speaker 1: would have two submerged floors. The rock Quarries is partially
Speaker 1: flooded and so so two submerged floors, and then uh,
Speaker 1: you know, down there they would have a sports complex,
Speaker 1: spa swimming pool, restaurant and some guest rooms and then
Speaker 1: top side there would be some rock climbing, bungee jumping,
Speaker 1: that kind of extreme sports sort of thing. It was
Speaker 1: planning on opening, which looks unlikely as of right now,
Speaker 1: but CNN reports that there are reports of initial construction
Speaker 1: having started. Um, which is about as vague as I
Speaker 1: think it deserves to be. Well, there's another one. Um.
Speaker 1: Did you hear about the Hydropolis underwater hotel and Resort.
Speaker 1: I didn't, but that's a really terrific word. So this
Speaker 1: one was proposed back in two thousand six, again in Dubai.
Speaker 1: Dubai is going to pop up a lot here. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: So this one was proposed back in two thousand and six.
Speaker 1: The projected cost at that time was either, depending upon
Speaker 1: the source you read, three million dollars or three million pounds.
Speaker 1: That's a big difference. That is a really huge difference. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: half the sources I looked at said one, and the
Speaker 1: other half the sources said the other. And I think
Speaker 1: it all depended on whether or not the person was
Speaker 1: writing in the US or in the UK. So I
Speaker 1: do not know which one of those figures is correct.
Speaker 1: I would imagine that both of them are way low,
Speaker 1: yea from what it would actually cost. I also, do
Speaker 1: you want to take this opportunity to say that a
Speaker 1: lot of our research about these hotels has come from, um,
Speaker 1: perhaps less reputable sources than we would usually use, just
Speaker 1: because all of these are technically fictional, right, Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: just kind of ideas. Yeah. In fact, if you ever
Speaker 1: do a search for underwater hotels, you're gonna come across
Speaker 1: all these top ten lists or seven lists or whatever
Speaker 1: wacky travel blogs, and and most of them are talking
Speaker 1: about like these hotels are either in operation right now
Speaker 1: are going to open it really soon. But that does
Speaker 1: not appear to be the case. It looks more like
Speaker 1: these are great ideas that mayhaps are before their time. Um.
Speaker 1: But anyway, the Hydropolis was supposed to open years ago,
Speaker 1: and it has not opened yet. In fact, as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell, there's been no construction performed at
Speaker 1: all um or even plans for construction, like actual concrete
Speaker 1: plans to build something. It's just been in the discussion stage.
Speaker 1: But originally the ideas that it's supposed to have a
Speaker 1: land station, so you would enter this hotel through the
Speaker 1: land station. Then there's a connecting tunnel from the land
Speaker 1: station to the main hotel, and then the suites of
Speaker 1: the hotel are all underwater. Uh, and that was supposed
Speaker 1: to be two hundred and twenty suites. This hotel is,
Speaker 1: if it were built, would be enormous, would be two
Speaker 1: d sixty hectairs, which is about the size of Hyde
Speaker 1: Park in London. Yeah. Big one night's stay was projected
Speaker 1: to be at a measly five thousand five dollars now
Speaker 1: pocket change. Yeah, I'm sure that that number has probably
Speaker 1: gone up as the hotel has failed to be built,
Speaker 1: but I would imagine that number is even higher now
Speaker 1: due to inflation if nothing else. But then we've got
Speaker 1: another another Dubai one right, the water discus right, and
Speaker 1: this is being designed by Deep Ocean Technology, which has
Speaker 1: plans to launch several of these suckers around the world,
Speaker 1: including one over in Maldives. Um and Yeah. This this
Speaker 1: plan is for twenty one rooms under the surface, plus
Speaker 1: a lobby and in a Scooba training pool. Useful. This
Speaker 1: one actually looks like imagine two frisbees. One of them
Speaker 1: is above the water and one of them below the water,
Speaker 1: and they're connected by a tube, and the tube actually
Speaker 1: has inside of it an elevator and stairs, and then
Speaker 1: there's a few kind of outlying disc ufo kind of
Speaker 1: looking things coming coming off of it as well. Occasionally
Speaker 1: they kidnapped cows for no reason. I don't know why,
Speaker 1: you know happens. Uh. Supposedly, the latest estimate I read
Speaker 1: was that it would be finished if everything goes as planned,
Speaker 1: by March two thousand fifteen. So we still have a
Speaker 1: couple of years to go before this thing gets built.
Speaker 1: If it gets built, keeping in mind that we have
Speaker 1: the Poseidon and the Hydropolis, both that predate the announcement
Speaker 1: of this hotel that still have not been built. UH.
Speaker 1: This one, that underwater portion would also be serviceable, like
Speaker 1: like those room pods from from the Poseidon and UH,
Speaker 1: and those top side portions that the kind of outlying
Speaker 1: UFO things that I was talking about can be released
Speaker 1: and used its flotation for the rest of the hotel
Speaker 1: in case of him agency, which is important. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, if you have an earthquake or something, or
Speaker 1: tsunami or some other issue when you're right next to
Speaker 1: the ocean. Um. Then there's also there's one that I
Speaker 1: saw where I found mentions of it across the web
Speaker 1: except for anything that actually said it existed. There were
Speaker 1: a lot of blogs that said this is going to
Speaker 1: be an amazing underwater hotel, and then when I tried
Speaker 1: to actually find any real information about it, it would
Speaker 1: just fade away. But it's called Reef World and it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be a floating hotel that's along the Great
Speaker 1: Barrier Reef in Australia, and it would have eight underwater
Speaker 1: suites UH that you could stay in. So the suites
Speaker 1: themselves are submerged underwater. The rest of the hotel is
Speaker 1: sort of floating on the surface and even had like
Speaker 1: a helipad in the illustration I saw where a helicopter
Speaker 1: could land ah, But it was all artist concept drawings
Speaker 1: that I could see. I couldn't find any actual information
Speaker 1: about whether or not construction ever started. There is a
Speaker 1: Reef World UH project in Australia, but that refers to
Speaker 1: these pontoon boats that you can go out to two
Speaker 1: snor Cole and to explore the Great Barrier reef, and
Speaker 1: there are a couple where you can do an overnight
Speaker 1: stay as part of a package. But it's not it's
Speaker 1: about Yeah, it's a boat. It's not designed as a hotel.
Speaker 1: It's a boat. It does have it does a underwater
Speaker 1: viewing area. It's kind of like a like a glass
Speaker 1: bottom boat. But it's not a submersible. So it's and
Speaker 1: it's not. It's clearly not the same thing as what
Speaker 1: all these blogs were saying, or if it is the
Speaker 1: same thing, they scaled down big time because they went
Speaker 1: from this massive floating hotel with a helipad to a
Speaker 1: pontoon boat that I would say is a step down
Speaker 1: into the water, you know, And anything without a helipad
Speaker 1: is obviously yeah, I don't I don't stay and I
Speaker 1: won't stay in a holiday in unless it's got a helipad.
Speaker 1: It's such as the life of a podcasting, right, you know,
Speaker 1: I live in a helipad. That was a terrible joke.
Speaker 1: That was bad even for me. I feel almost ashamed.
Speaker 1: If I could feel shame, I would feel it right now. Well,
Speaker 1: you know that's getting Do you have any other underwater
Speaker 1: hotels you wanted to talk about? I do not. That
Speaker 1: was everything on me. Yeah, yeah, there's there. Occasionally you'll
Speaker 1: see other suggested underwater hotels, but most of the cases
Speaker 1: it's not really an underwater hotel. And again, the ones
Speaker 1: I'm really interested in are these ideas that the submerged,
Speaker 1: the totally submerged hotel, where you you aren't just looking
Speaker 1: out into an aquarium or a lagoon, you really are
Speaker 1: under the ocean. I think that's really an interesting idea.
Speaker 1: I would be willing to try it. Lauren, you said
Speaker 1: the dead's doesn't really appeal to you. Yeah, I'm kind
Speaker 1: of quicked out by open water. I'm not really okay
Speaker 1: with it. I really like breathing, and I really like
Speaker 1: walking on solid stuff. It's all they don't. They don't
Speaker 1: reject you into the ocean, I think, not on purpose.
Speaker 1: And accidents can happen. You get that champagne bottle in
Speaker 1: there and the cork explodes with just a little more
Speaker 1: force than you were expecting the next thing, you know,
Speaker 1: and acrylic panel pops in that would be an issue.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm sure I'm sure that they if you know
Speaker 1: that the safety issues are why they do not exist
Speaker 1: right now, and that if they were created that they
Speaker 1: would be very safe. I would certainly like to go
Speaker 1: check one out and maybe leave afterwards. Maybe not stay.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if I could sleep, so uh, while
Speaker 1: I I do still want to do the tech stuff
Speaker 1: travels around looking at cool things. Idea that we have, um,
Speaker 1: the underwater hotel, we may just may just breeze through.
Speaker 1: I have maybe have like a five star meal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would be fine with justifive star there and then
Speaker 1: we'll go stay at the holiday and with the helipad
Speaker 1: that works, I can I can deal with that, all right. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: this wraps up our discussion about underwater hotels. It's one
Speaker 1: of those science fiction ideas that I really do hope
Speaker 1: we see come to life in the near future. Guys,
Speaker 1: if you have any suggestions for things that we should
Speaker 1: talk about in future episodes of tech Stuff, let us know.
Speaker 1: Send us an email our addresses tech Stuff at Discovery
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