A Grand Adventure at ESCAPE

Ever since we moved here, I've wanted to go to ESCAPE. All I knew about it was that it was a rather new adventurous sort of theme park, with ropes courses and trampolines and bungee jumping sort of stuff, and it sounded awesome (remember, I am an unashamed lover of theme parks). But...it has never been possible.

Either I've been pregnant, or very recently pregnant, had no money for tickets (the infamous cash-flow crisis of July 2017 which should never be repeated!), or the only days Angel had off of work were days that all public schools were also off, and for that reason, on a tiny island with a large population, you know that you have to avoid any place that is remotely interesting because there will be too many people in that location already.

But finally, everything happened to align at once, and off we went, to ESCAPE. Which has long amused me, because there are signs on the island road, saying something like "Escape 10 km," making me imagine that there exists an escape route off of our island. A handy thing that would be, indeed!

Back to the point. Angel and I and my two sisters were off on our big adventure. We prepared by making sure to wear closed-toe shoes and comfortable clothing, with the plan of tackling the 'dry' side of the park first thing, and then heading over to the waterpark side when the day got hotter in the afternoon.

(Just to start off with, nearly all of our photos of the day were taken by Escape staff. Their system is one in which they have photographers that take photos of guests throughout the day, and tell you to look up their page on facebook to go through the day's photos and find photos of your party. I appreciated that they had photo services with no add-on charge since I didn't bother bringing my camera to a park where I knew we'd spend most of the day ziplining or riding waterslides!)

The ropes courses were my favorite activity in the park--these were genuinely very challenging, and probably the reason my arms and abs were sore the next day! I did three different courses on the first and second levels. They also have a third level, where the courses are even higher and more challenging, but considering that during both of the second level courses I did...there were moments when I was not sure if I could really make it to the next platform...I decided to pass on the third level. Angel did one of the third level courses!

MaryGrace and Angel did the big zipline as well, but Sarah was a couple kilograms underweight (be aware, the weight limits are strict for some activities, and nearly every activity has a scale nearby so that you can check to make sure you're within the limits. This is a good thing! Although since it's New Year's and Angel's trying to get in shape for track season...we were joking about the scales at every ride!). While they were ziplining, Sarah and I went to go try out a maze.

I love mazes...but this one stumped us. It's pitch black inside, designed in a "cave" like fashion, and very, very tight, with occasional fake skeletons and tarantulas and stuff inside. The first time, Sarah and I probably made it 10 feet into the tunnel before turning back, worried we'd be lost forever. Then we took a happy selfie because we survived the maze. Sort of. I mean, we survived, but we went back out the entrance instead of finding the exit.

Then MaryGrace and Angel came, and we decided to try it again. How bad could it be? This time we made it probably 25 ft. in before deciding we might get hopelessly lost, or else the torch would burn out (i.e. Angel's phone battery would die) while we were still inside. And we went back out the way we came. Out of all the things at the park...the one that conquered us...was a maze. I can't believe it. I did rope courses 30 feet of the ground without missing a step but I couldn't find my way through the maze?! I might just have to go back someday. I don't recommend the maze if you have any fear of small spaces or dark places. None of us have any unusual fear of such things...but it was still pretty intense.

After playing with some stilts, jumping on trampolines, and other shenanigans, we decided to head over to the other side of the park--the waterpark--in time to watch the high dive show.

I felt like we happened to go to Escape on the coldest day in the history of Malaysia...not really. I mean, it was probably in the upper 70s or low 80s, but for us, that's nearly chilly, and the sun never came out the whole day. It was absolutely perfect weather for the dry park and rope courses, but I was chilly most of the afternoon in the waterpark, in spite of or perhaps because of my long-sleeved rashguard. For this reason, I found that I preferred the dry side of the park, although the water slides and the wipeout-inspired water courses were very fun, it's just that I was a little too cold for comfort.

However, the waterpark was the highlight of Angel's day. He and Sarah joined a diving "competition" of sorts that the park organizes for guests to participate in. Almost no one was actually diving, it mostly consisted of jumping off of the diving board and platforms with a greater or lesser degree of style, and being judged. I was super impressed with Sarah jumping off of 3 meter and 5 meter diving platforms! I couldn't have done that.

Angel also joined the "flipper" competition which you can see in the attached video. He went down this slide a couple of times, all of which created great amusement for me.


And a slight degree of...is this a safe enough activity for me to approve of for my husband and the father of my son? Because man...that's one intense slide! Angel came in second place and did not win the t-shirt he wanted to win. Guess he needs to fly off the slide with a little more "style" next time!

It was all in all a very fun day, and very satisfying after a few years of wanting to visit the park. I'd heard from reviews that the food is disappointing, so we packed a few snacks in the car and went to our car mid-day to have some water from our thermoses and some snacks--this was a very good plan. We did opt to buy a snack at the park later in the day, and even with our previously low expectations...were underwhelmed. We pretended to ourselves to be food critics as we attempted to eat potato wedges that had probably been under a heat lamp for five hours. Escape park is better for burning calories than consuming them, let's just say that. There's plenty of other places to get food in this world. Sarah had probably the funniest comment while we ate our potato wedges: "This is even worse than Disneyland's food!" We all looked at her in confusion, "Umm, I thought the food we had at Disneyland was good?!" She said, "Yeah, it was really good! That's why this is worse."

But...I'm not sure that "worse" was really the right word to use when comparing those potato wedges to any food that was even remotely good.

We loved our adventurous day at ESCAPE!