Pahang, Malaysia – Saturday, March 5th, 2011
The rainforest had always held great fascination for me when I was younger, so much so that I even decorated my bedroom as a rainforest. Nevertheless, it wasn’t until today when I left the city of Kuala Lumpur behind that I finally had the opportunity to get close to a real rainforest. After boarding a bus through the Malaysian countryside, I was dropped off at a cable car station…
…for a flight above the rainforest canopy…
…where the whooping and hollering of monkeys echoed through the trees…
…ascending all the way up the side of a mountain…
…even passing through the cloud frontier…
…and finally arriving at a Famous Amos in a shopping mall.
Welcome to Genting Highlands, the Tackiest Place on Earth!
I think a little part of my soul just died when I realized what I had brought myself to (literally and figuratively).
Genting Highlands is a large resort complex located atop the Titiwangsa Mountains to the northeast of Kuala Lumpur, where the climate is notably cooler than it is closer to sea level. In addition to the casinos and hotels, the facility contains a mall complex with an indoor theme park called First World Plaza, while outside is Malaysia’s largest outdoor theme park, Genting Theme Park. The entire facility is operated by Resorts World, who also operate the Resorts World Sentosa complex in Singapore, home to Universal Studios Singapore. Despite being their original flagship resort, the Genting location was significantly lower in quality as of 2011.
For just 47 ringgit (about $14) I was able to get a round-trip bus/cable car ticket with theme park admission.
A little over two years after my visit, the entire theme park would be closed and demolished to make way for a brand new theme park to be called 20th Century Fox World. While the intent was clearly to bring the park closer to the standards set by Universal Studios Singapore, as of this writing in 2019 the almost fully-constructed new park is still in limbo due to a lawsuit between Genting and Fox (plus their new corporate overlords, Disney).
Ah, to be in simpler times, when the worst thing to worry about was the presence of a Zamperla Volare.
I’ll start the tour in the First World Plaza indoor theme park. A colorful European-themed fun zone, the park had one attraction of interest for me, the Euro Express.
The race car themed Euro Express was one of two custom-designed Zamperla powered coasters at Genting Highland, both sporting relatively long layouts for powered coasters. Both have since been removed.
Here’s a video of Euro Express, sitting behind a little girl who seemed very excited to be riding with a foreigner.
After the ride she even insisted on taking a picture of me with my camera.
Moving on to Genting Theme Park…
Perhaps even moreso than the average Asian theme park, Genting Theme Park is a hodgepodge of rides and colors in every variety. The park doesn’t have a very organized layout or any cohesive zones, although there are small pockets where it appears an individual theme was attempted, which only makes the overall identity even more confused.
The park’s five coasters are what I was most interested in. Unfortunately the most unique among these, the Soquet-built Rolling Thunder Mine Train, was out of operation for the entire day. Apparently it wouldn’t reopen until sometime in 2012, only to get torn down with the rest of the park in 2013.
Flying Dragon is the other Zamperla Powered Coaster on property, located next to the boating reservoir.
This ride is perhaps even longer than Euro Express, mostly because the layout starts off by acting like a monorail in order to go all the way back to First World Plaza where a second station (unused on this instance) is located.
It then slowly chugs all the way to the station, where it finally does a compact series of zippy helices to finally pretend it’s more like an actual coaster than the transportation ride it secretly wants to be.
Apparently after Genting Theme Park shut down they still ran the Flying Dragon using the station in First World Plaza… the first time I can think of where a coaster “relocated” to another park just by flipping a switch. While not a good ride, this fact alone by far makes it the most unusual ride of the day.
This coaster also offers an “on-ride photo”, which consists of an attendant taking your photo on a DSLR before the train leaves, and while the train is on the circuit they run the SD card down to the photo booth.
Here’s a full on-ride video of Flying Dragon:
The next ride on my agenda was the Cyclone, a standard Pinfari Zyklon coaster operating with one-car trains wedged in a corner of the park.
Capacity wasn’t great but it was the first time I had ever seen these sliding bench seats in the queue. Appreciated!
Also a good opportunity to people-watch from the queue. This photo never fails to bring a smile to my face.
Despite the ubiquity of the Zyklon / Galaxi design, somehow over all of my travels the only two other versions of this layout I’ve been on were both located in the state of Indiana, neither of which is there today. I guess that made this ride something of a novelty for me? All other factors neutral, it might have been the most purely enjoyable ride of the day.
I even recorded my adventure for posterity.
An amusing find: a cowboy-themed Frog Hopper that had leather saddles for seats. Not sure how the restraints were supposed to work.
The Space Shot was an S&S Turbo Shot tower that I rode later in the day when the line was shorter.
Looking down over the Cyclone.
Early afternoon I found all of the rides either had impossible waits or were closed for random maintenance, such as what would have been my next hit, Corkscrew.
In addition to random ride closures, I also had to contend with random fog rolling in like it’s adapted from a Stephen King story. (From lower altitudes this fog is more typically known as “clouds”.)
Dinosaurland sounds kinda interesting…
Rawr.
From terrible lizard kings to fossil fuels for go-karts is the common theme here, I guess.
Recycled and painted tires as a pathway fence. I think 20th Century Fox World missed out on not reusing more of the existing park infrastructure.
At this point I was getting frustrated with everything being closed (I thought perhaps it was weather related), so I decided to put the remaining two coasters on hold for later in the afternoon and return to First World Plaza. I actually ended up catching a movie at the theater for about $4.00. (The Adjustment Bureau, as I recall. The only new release movie I’d see my entire five months in Asia, and it wasn’t all that great.)
While passing through I stopped for some Malaysian culture, of the sort that comes completely free of all context.
Heading back into the park…
Finally, Corkscrew was once again open. Time for a lap on the biggest coaster at Genting Highlands.
Thankfully the ride was upgraded with the new vest restraint trains, which helps with the head-banging although less so for the general jerkiness of the layout.
The ride is a Vekoma Corkscrew with Bayern Curve model, the same as I rode at Holiday Park in Germany the year before. Lacking that ride’s unique forested setting, this was still the inferior attraction.
One interesting aspect is how close the exit ramp gets to some of the track.
Pirate’s Train served as the park’s only dark ride, so I opted to give it a try. You never know when you might discover an unexpected gem.
Instead, I found my leading candidate for the worst dark ride I had ever been on. Less than a minute of winding back and forth past black spray-painted walls with no scenic effects save for the light from a few exit signs. Beyond pointless. The only redeeming quality was that I hit it later in the day after the previously full queue had already cleared out.
Okay, time to wrap things up…
Last, and quite certainly least, was the Flying Coaster. Possibly one of the worst production model coasters ever designed, this was now the third version of this coaster I would try.
It’s an upcharge ride strategically located just outside the park’s gates so you have to pay about $3USD to ride. Fortunately this meant there was virtually no queue for it.
The spiral lift modeled on an Archimedes’ screw should be a fun concept. Why did it have to be associated with such an abominable ride and forever tarnish its reputation?
Being the newest coaster at Genting Highland, it was also evidently the only ride to survive the transition to 20th Century Fox World. Not as part of Fox World, but relocated as part of the indoor park. Whether it actually moved indoors or they simply redefined that park’s boundaries to include this attraction I’m unsure of.
Regardless, 20th Century Fox World looks to be a huge improvement over Genting Theme Park, even if I do slightly lament the loss of a unique Soquet mine train coaster. On paper, Genting Theme Park reads like a more interest park than it actually was: a vivid carnival atop a rainforest mountain peak, with a wide variety of amusements built up over a 30+ year history, some completely unique to Asia. Yet the simple truth was there were any good attractions that warranted riding more than once, and operations were such that just getting a single ride on each of the coasters within a day was a challenge. Still, it was perhaps marginally better than an unfinished construction site caught in a never-ending legal limbo.
After descending down the mountain, I found I was late for my bus by thirty seconds (and really, they left by at least 1-2 minutes early). It worked out okay because my original route involved an obscure transfer station on the outskirts of town, but for about $1.30 more I got a route taking me directly to KL Sentral station. It also gave me a half hour to get a cheap noodle dinner before the bus left. Once at train station, I boarded a night train that would take me to Singapore overnight.
While not exactly a comfortable or restful night, it was undoubtedly a unique experience and allowed me to combine the cost of transportation and accommodations into a single fee.
Waking up the next morning (by customs as we crossed the border), I found myself now in a very different world from the past two days.
They finally gone and opened Fox World, if you can believe it, albeit under a different name. From what I’ve seen of it, it didin’t turn out bad, but something puzzles me to no end. You build this theme park high up in the rainforest, and then from inside it looks like you could be absolutely anywhere. You can just about catch a glimpse of the natural environment from the shot tower, for the rest the park could be in North Dakota for all you see of the outside.
In the process of “upgrading” this place – and I admit, the rides do seem to be much better – they have completely forgotten to incorporate the main reason having a resort in that part of the world in the first place. It’s that thing you’re always on about, about parks being in dialogue with their environment. The old parks were tacky and cheap but at least it made sense for them to be were they were. That’s it with these modern branded parks. All money, no imagination.
To be fair, one of the main reasons for building atop a mountain is that it’s one of the few places where people can consistently enjoy temperate weather outdoors in a country that sits a few degrees north of the equator.