WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en-GB

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This isn't some remote rainforest island.

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I am indoors, in a waterpark.

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This is the largest uninterrupted indoor space
in the world.

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There are a few bigger spaces, but they've
all got support pillars holding them up.

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This is just one big roof. In terms of volume,

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this is bigger than NASA's Vehicle Assembly
Building.

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You could fit the entire Houses of Parliament
in here. Twice.

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And still have room for some more waterslides.

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Along with the slides, and some cabins you
can rent overnight,

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there is a tethered balloon that'll take you
up to the rafters.

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Or it'll take six passengers and go for a
fly around inside.

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Those panels up there: they're transparent
to UV light so the trees grow here,

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which means you can get sunburn... indoors.

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But in winter, this place stays at tropical
temperatures.

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The amount of heating, cooling, water recirculation
required is ridiculous.

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There is no way that a company could ever
afford

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to build something like this, it would cost
far too much,

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they would never be able to charge enough
for admission to make their money back.

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And yet, here I am.

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Which brings me to my main question:

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what do you do with a disused airship hangar?

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That's not just a theoretical question. That's
what this is.

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And actually, it wasn't so much disused as
never used.

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This whole structure was built on an old German
airfield,

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at the turn of the millennium, during the
dotcom bubble.

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It was designed to hold an enormous cargo-carrying
airship that was never built,

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because the company went bankrupt a year later
as the economy crashed.

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The investors lost most of their money --

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it cost 78 million euro to build this thing,

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it's safe to say they never got most of that
back.

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A company from Malaysia bought the hangar
at a knock-down price,

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a price that could, in theory, be made back
over many years

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if you, say, spruced the place up and charged
admission.

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Maybe added a few waterslides.

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And the result is, bizarrely, the world's
largest indoor waterpark

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and a fluke of our weird 21st-century economy.

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