Standing on the glass floor of the cable car.
I was 8 or 9 when I last visited Genting Highlands. I had such fond memories of the place. There used to be an outdoor theme park, which was the only theme park in Malaysia.
Now, I am bringing my kids for the very first time. I just realized it's been almost 30 years!
Accommodation
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We won a free night stay in a Family Dome (that sleeps 6 adults) at
Glamz Genting in last year's Family Day. I added a couple more nights because I thought we'd have tons to do there.
Boy, was I wrong!
Glamz Genting was supposed to give us the hillside glamping experience. The dome isn't air conditioned as Genting Highlands is already mildly chilly. It does, however, gets really hot in the afternoon. So, we were forced to leave the dome and had to find things to do outside.
The domes are awkwardly positioned too close to each other, you can
literally hear guests in the adjacent domes snoring. The way the dome is furnished and decorated, it is not worth the money we paid for. We're better off staying at a 3-star hotel! The entire premise is covered with carpet grass and the workmanship is very sloppy. This makes the place looks cheap. Clearly, the owner hasn't been paying attention to details.
Each dome has a dedicated bathroom outside. They are small, but clean. You literally have to guard your bathroom from other guests as they are not labelled and hence, guessing which one belongs to you could be tricky.
The rate comes together with packed breakfast like
nasi lemak and fried noodles, for six. They weren't very good, but we didn't have much choices.
The only activity the kids enjoyed was the big jacuzzi, which for them, was big enough to be a swimming pool. They were in there once, but it was out of service when we tried to use it again.
Sightseeing
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We went to all the usual tourist spots, which was only a handful; Chin Swee Cave Temple, SkyAvenue Complex and Genting Strawberry Leisure Farm. Shopping at the Genting Premium Outlet was dull.
The only fun thing we did was going on the cable cars. The one with the glass floor was very cool! The ride from the bottom to the top was about 15 minutes. We thoroughly enjoyed the view from up there. The fog was thick and made the ride more interesting.
It was very unfortunate that the indoor theme park, Skytropolis was closed for an undisclosed reason. The new outdoor theme park, SkyWorlds has not started its operation. We saw the entire park from the cable car and it's not that big. It's rumored to open this year, but no dates yet.
Food
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It was hard to find good restaurants in Genting Highlands. We tried looking for authentic local cuisines, but everything in Google pointed us to the SkyAvenue mall. My wife and I don't fancy food joints in malls.
We wanted to try
Five Guys or
Burger & Lobster, but the queues were ridiculous. So, we bailed.
We tried the fish and chips at
The Laughing Fish by Harry Ramsden and they were pretty good. The High Line Roof Top Market on the top floor of the SkyAvenue mall was a rather interesting scene and I loved it.
On the last night, we discovered a local Chinese-Muslim restaurant,
Restoran Makanan Enak, that serves pretty good food at a reasonable price. Other nights, we were having either leftover food or instant noodles in our dome.
Overall Experience
According to our kids, this was one of the worst vacations we've ever gone on. It was so boring, they even requested to go home early.
If you do have plans to go to Genting Highlands, maybe hold that off until the outdoor theme park opens. Else, you would have nowhere to go and nothing to do.
