Abu Dhabi’s Stranger Things Experience: A creepily delightful chance to team up with the squad, one last time

For those 30 minutes, you really are in the town of Hawkins. You’re back in the 80s, nervously standing at sleep lab as a sleep subject, where perky managers and enthusiastic doctors reassure you that everything is just fine. It’s all good. You’re good. But…are you. The lights are fluctuating.

The high-pitched laughter from your host is sending shivers down your spine. The doctor ‘treating’ you has manic energy, and something’s not right.

But that’s what they want you to feel.  The Yas Island Stranger Things Experience ensures you feel the stress, anxiety that our protagonists face, well, on a regular basis. You almost forget that this is UAE and the reality: You play along.

You can’t help but chuckle at a very eager doctor testing your ‘superpowers’. You obey his instructions politely, just like everyone else. And before you know it, you’re in a room, with either your right hand stretched out or pressing your fingers desperately on your temples, trying to break a door down, or ‘freeze’ demagorgons.

The experience was enormous fun. It was a thorough joyride, with everyone playing their part. Without too many spoilers of what the storyline entails, it’s safe to say, that you see demagorgons up close. You have to save our squad from them, because Millie Bobby Brown’s Eleven can’t do everything.

There’s Vecna looming too, but you will put him in his place, don’t worry. Full credit to the effects and the storytellers: They got what they wanted. The crowds jumped as the demagorgons flew a little too close for comfort, or when they were battering down bloodied doors.

It’s remarkable. I looked around and saw excited fans eagerly trading conspiracy theories and dissecting plot points — a clear sign that, despite all the complaints about long gaps between seasons, Stranger Things still has an iron-clad grip on its fandom. Now, with the fifth and final season just around the corner, we’re preparing to say goodbye to a show that let us watch its cast grow up before our eyes.

It’s a bittersweet farewell to a series that somehow stayed in the spotlight, even with years between each return. The Upside Down has closed—for good.But the shadow won't fade.