With less than a month since our trip to Disney World, we were feeling the hunger pangs for another theme park visit, and with our absolute love of our visit earlier in the year to Sunway’s Lost World of Tambun Theme Park in Tambun, we just had to make the short journey to Sunway Lagoon, here in KL.

Kuala Lumpur is perhaps one of the most thriving, exciting and diverse cities we have ever stayed in.

There is no end of activities to take part in; just stepping foot in any one of the 700 malls (no really!) you can expect to find at least a play area, or rock climbing walls, or bowling alley, or diving centre, or surfing or indoor sky diving – or like our nearest mall ALL OF THE ABOVE.

There is also beautiful nature, rich history and every culinary adventure you could possibly imagine.

On this day however we were craving a theme park and Sunway Lagoon was where we were headed.

The theme park sits South West to central KL, around 50 minutes grab from the KLCC, but as always in KL this is impacted by traffic. We were staying 20 minutes away so having purchased our tickets online the night before we left just enough time to walk in as the doors opened at 10am.

With over 90 attractions both little and huge, branching out around an impressive central volcano and surf pool, the 88 acres of park could have been pretty difficult to get around, if it wasn’t for the helpful escalators and suspension bridge cutting it’s way over the middle of it all.

As with the Lost World of Tambun, on entering we were offered wrist bands which you can add money to, for spending on food and merchandise throughout the park. We chose to stick to the contactless credit card instead, however the downside of this is that not all stalls except card; with the shear number of them though, we soon found one that did easily enough.

With the water park and theme park to visit, the burning question on entering was….which do we do first?

In the end we opted for the rides first. Being monsoon season (October to November) we were aware that we might get rained (more like stormed) off from the pools later but with the alternative being jumping on rides in swimming gear, we opted to take our chances with the weather.

There are some really cool rides at Sunway Lagoon, with the usual small stuff, like the teacups (in this case pots), carousel, Ferris wheel (or wagon wheel) and flying “aerial carousel” (called the vultures) which are all great fun for little ones.

We particularly liked the Vulture ride (actually pterosaurs), as you have controls for both height and spin, and so turn a full 180 degrees, giving fantastic views of the rest of the park.

The big stuff is just as impressive, this is the first park we have seen a Pirate ship “swing” that pulls a full 360 over the top with matching smaller versions in the form of the Tomahawk ride.

The best thing about visiting just about any theme park in Malaysia, is the total lack of queues, not once did we stand behind anyone in a queue, in fact on the tomahawks I had a small delay as we had to wait for more people to turn up.

There was a fair few rides we didn’t go on, simply because of the logistics of two small children who are under the height requirement, however just like the rider swap at Disney, if you choose you can easily swap over with very little delay because of the low turnout.

After riding a few attractions, we headed across “the longest pedestrian suspension bridge in the world”!

I wouldn’t get too excited. Don’t’ get me wrong, it was impressive; amazing views around the park, which is landscaped to appear like a Jurassic valley, overlooked by towering skyscrapers, and with a good amount of bounce and wobble, plus open grated floor, giving you a full view of the drop below (which made Emma and most of the visitors cling to the rope supports)

It’s just that we have found that the claim of “THE WORLD’S TALLEST/LONGEST/STEEPEST/WIDEST” is made for many attractions throughout Malaysia, so we now take it with a pinch of salt.

You can even pay an extra fee to bungee jump from the centre of the bridge into the pool below, sadly this wasn’t running the day we visited.

Once we were across the Longest Pedestrian Suspension Bridge in the World, we found ourselves heading toward the water slides and the Sponge Bob Square Pants splash zone.

We love a splash zone! Yes, the slides are tame in comparison but to be able to run around, avoiding the buckets of cold water falling from above and random hoses, to throw yourself down again and again and again in quick succession is perhaps more fun overall.

The ever-present risk of the “Big Bucket” falling without warning from above also gives the whole experience a sense of adrenaline; especially considering that grown adults were knocked off their feet by the sheer force of falling water!

Following the splash zone we made our way round to the bigger water slides, unfortunately there were very few that our 6 year old son could ride and none that our 4 year old was big enough for, however they were happy to sit them out whilst mummy and daddy had a go.

The best of which must be the Monsoon 360, reaching speeds of 60kph in under 2 seconds, this drop slide begins by strapping yourself into a back brace, which we can only imagine stops you from breaking your back?!

Then you step into a glass tube, where after a 3-2-1 monotone countdown, the floor disappears from beneath you. You then free fall for a few seconds before hurtling back up into the air round a couple of bends and being finally spat out the end of the tube – all in under 10 seconds.

As a word of warning to the guys, make sure you cross your legs – the guy in front didn’t heed the warning and his screams rattled back up the open tube!

After a few more slides, splash zones, and the strange 5D water plex cinema experience (a moving 3D cinema where much of the animation effects are lost because your eyes are full of water) we stopped for lunch.

If you have read our previous blogs you may well know how economical it is to eat out in Malaysia, but of course you would expect that food prices at a big theme park would be overpriced, and maybe this is still true in Malaysia as anywhere else; however overpriced for Malaysia still means amazing value compared to anywhere else in the world.

The Wildlife park added the third element to the day, with many exotic animals to watch and walk among. With white Lions, Bengal Tigers, Black Panthers, a plethora of snakes and many breeds of bird there was plenty to see. Ethically speaking the enclosures were large, and the animals seemed healthy and happy. The bears gave us an interesting and rather discussing show of how they chew, digest, regurgitate and then re-eat their plant-based diet – which of course the kids found hilarious, as they did the ugliest bird we have ever met – the Rhea.

We ended the day with the inevitable storm which forced us out of the pools, but to be honest it was at least a clear-cut way to tear the kids away from the fun, they probably wouldn’t have wanted to leave.

Our day at Sunway Lagoon was over; it was excellent fun for the whole family, exciting, a little strange at times but definitely something worth repeating, so much so, as we intend to be coming through Kuala Lumpur a fare bit in the future, we opted to buy the top up annual passes before we left.

We managed to find discount tickets online for the family that day for £116, and the top up in the park to annual passes was an additional £114.

We plan to make good use of it in the coming month and whenever we pass though KL again, but as we see it with just one more visit we will have saved a few pennies and quite frankly it puts the price of Disney World to shame! 😊