World’s longest waterslide nearly complete

A theme park in Malaysia will soon be opening the world’s longest waterslide, which will measure 1,140 metres in length.

ESCAPE theme park in Penang is halfway through building the astoundingly long waterslide, which will take four minutes to ride from launch to the bottom. So far, 705 metres of its projected 1.14 kilometres has already been built, already squashing the current record-holder for the longest ride of this kind in the world, the Action Park waterslide in New Jersey (602 metres). Due to this, the ESCAPE waterslide will be etched into the Guinness World Record books.

The average length for waterslides is about 200 metres, and the other slides in the ESCAPE park are between 200- and 300 metres long. This slide’s network of tubes, which is elevated and supported by steel frames permanently rooted into the ground, are made from a polymer reinforced with fibre, unlike the inflatable polyvinyl chloride used in the New Jersey slide.

The downhill joyride will send park visitors careening downwards into natural rainforests, zig-zagging and criss-crossing through tree canopies. A cable car chairlift (the first of its kind in the South East Asian country) will transport riders back up to the start of the course four minutes later.

In 2018, the park received roughly 185,000 visitors, and is the number-one ‘thing to do’ in Penang according to TripAdvisor.

‘Breaking the world record was never our intention,’ said Sim Choo Kheng, CEO of the Sim Leisure Group which owns ESCAPE. ‘I’m always baffled by how rides are made so short and quick. I wanted to build rides that last a good few minutes, with non-stop smiles and giggles as visitors fly through the rainforest – something never done before!’

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