Bukit Gambang water park attracts more than half a million visitors since its opening

Floating: Visitors enjoying a raft ride.

KUANTAN: Since its official opening on July 22, 2009, the Bukit Gambang Water Park in Gambang near here has attracted more than half a million visitors.

Park manager Ezwina Shafai said up to last month, the park had registered a total of 610,224 people with many repeated visitors coming from east coast states and the Klang Valley.

“On an average, we received between 2,000 and 3,000 visitors during off peak seasons and normal weekends. “During peak periods such as school holidays and public holidays, the crowd can double up to over 6,000 people. “Last year on Nov 27 saw us recording an all-time high record with a crowd of 11,629, surpassing even our opening day,” she said in an interview during a recent media familiarisation trip.

Ezwina said plans were in the pipeline to develop the second phase of the park to add more fun and challenging rides as well as other water attractions.

She said due to high demand, wooden cabanas had been increased within the park to 89 units and they had placed orders for another 11 from Bali, Indonesia to benefit more visitors especially groups and large families.

“Our top attraction is the Coco Beach consisting of a 1km man-made tropical beach with eight modes of waves and Penguin Island with facilities such as kids slide, adult leisure pool, unique aqua play structure particularly a giant piranha spurting out gallons of water and glacier river ride around a tunnel.

“Presently, we have more than 100 qualified life guards to monitor the park to prevent any untoward incident,” she said, adding that their target now was to register one million visitors. Other attractions include the longest family raft ride, crystal, galaxy and canopy slides as well as the six-lane racer slide complete with timing scoreboard.

Big splash: Visitors getting themselves wet at the Bukit Gambang Water Park in Gambang.

The water park is part of the integrated Bukit Gambang Resort City, developed and managed by Sentoria Themeparks & Resorts Sdn Bhd, over a 10-year period. The entire project, built based on the concept of nature preservation and family-oriented attractions with an estimated cost of RM1bil, aimed to spearhead the growth of Kuantan and bring in more visitors to the coastal town.

Meanwhile, its marketing and communications manager Karen Tan said the first phase of the project with an investment of RM140mil comprised the water park, the Carribean Bay Resort with 578 units, a mini amusement park and the Active Academy Teambuilding and Development Centre was running smoothly.

Tan said the second phase involved the construction of the Arabian Bay Resort with 546 units of family deluxe, studio deluxe, Arabian suite and Penthouse suite was completed in May this year. “The resort starts to receive guests in August and staged the first private mammoth dinner officiated by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak.

“We also held the first concert - Datuk Siti Nurhaliza Live in Kuantan on Nov 9 — with a crowd of almost 4,000 people,” she said.

Tan said construction on the Safari Park was now in progress and targeted the first phase to be completed by the middle of next year. Among the attractions are Night Animal World, Foreign Village, Drive Thru’ Safari, Ape Land and Bird Valley. The main highlight is a roaming white lion in which visitors can dine and observe other animals in their natural habitat.

The third and final stage of development include an adventure park, a marine park, global heritage, heritage square and themed accommodation villas. She said visitors should also try out its teambuilding activities with facilities such as a 18-part obstacle courses, flying fox zipline, jungle trekking, jungle walk, paintball warzone and target shooting and ATV (all terrain vehicle) fun ride or ATV off the road course.

For more information, contact 09-548 8000 or visit its website at www.bgrc.com.my
-thestar online.