Water park opens doors with higher standards

GEORGE TOWN: As the water theme park at Escape Theme Park in Teluk Bahang reopens, the chlorine level of the pool is monitored every two hours, instead of three, says CEO Sim Choo Kheng

This was being done as part of the park’s new standard operating procedure (SOP), he said.

“With the correct level of disinfection, we will be able to kill any pathogen, including viruses.

“We have our international standard benchmark conforming to the TUV Nord ISO 9001 Theme Park operations standards,” he said during an interview yesterday.

Theme parks, including water parks, were allowed to reopen yesterday, and the green light from the government clears the way for 54 theme parks with a workforce of more than 10,000.

In Penang, theme parks were allowed to reopen on June 12, except those with water-based attractions.

Escape Theme Park comprises Adventureplay, Waterplay and Gravityplay.

Waterplay was allowed to open yesterday.

Sim said water parks should have been allowed to reopen much earlier as they were all outdoors.

“It is the safest place because it is an open outdoor space with sunlight and no air circulation issues.

“Today (yesterday) is the busiest day since we reopened the adventure park two weeks ago, he said.

Sim said most customers preferred to wait for the water park to reopen.

“Our concept is to allow visitors to sweat it out at Adventureplay and Gravityplay before they come to the water park to cool down in the afternoon,” he said.

Sim said they needed time to regain the confidence of tourists who had been staying indoors for months due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The size of our theme park is equivalent to 25 football fields.

“It is so big but crowd control is never a problem. We’ve always practised social distancing and it is rather safe as everything is outdoors.

Sim said in order to ensure social distancing, only 1,000 visitors are allowed into the park at any one time.

“We do have social distancing markings on all of our attractions, but we realised that people are so accustomed to social distancing that they automatically keep a distance while waiting for their turn,” he said.