A’Famosa Water Park: Everything You Need to Know (2022)

Visiting Melaka / Malacca, Malaysia and need a break from the relentless heat? Airconditioned malls and hotel rooms are great and all, but why not let the child in you have some fun while you battle the heat on some thrilling water slides?

A’Famosa Water Park is the place to be. We just had a really fun time on our day-trip to the waterpark in Melaka but there’s sadly little information about how to DIY it without renting a car or taking a taxi, so here’s our experience!

Lazing in the Lazy River

P.S. This isn’t a sponsored post.

Why Visit A’Famosa Water Park, Melaka

We were staying in Melaka and it was pretty damn hot (32-36 deg C!) in May 2022 so we were dying for some respite. While we were poking around into what to do in Melaka, A’Famosa Water Park popped up and I had fond memories of it (I’ve been there a couple of times as a kid I think, with my family and cousins and such and it was always good fun) so it didn’t take much persuasion for us to decide to go.

Supposedly Malaysia’s biggest water park, A’Famosa Water Park is located in the Alor Gajah region of Melaka (Malacca) state. If you look at a map of Melaka, you’ll see that it’s about 30 km away from downtown Melaka where the rest of the touristy stuff like Jonker Walk and Afamosa Fort and all the good Melaka food is. But still, I think A’Famosa Water Park was worth the trip, especially if you’re with friends / kids / just want to be in some water all day.

How to Get to A’Famosa Water Park

So getting out to A’Famosa Water Park was a bit of a challenge. Research on the internet was kinda useless, and when we asked around and everyone said to just take a Grab (South East Asia’s version of Uber). I mean, you could do that… but we checked the prices and it was like 120RM (27USD) one-way, which is perhaps not terrible if you’re a group of four. Since it was just the two of us and we didn’t quite feel like spending over 50USD on just transportation – I can think of 17 other things I’d rather spend that money on – we decided to get creative and find a cheaper alternative.

A’Famosa Water Park opens 10am – 6pm everyday except Tuesdays, so we decided to get an early start.

First, we got a Grab from our hostel to Melaka Sentral which is the main bus station, at around 830am. 12RM. We could have tried to take a public bus (less than 2RM / person) but those things are super infrequent (once every hour or two) so we decided not to waste time on that.

We took the bus towards Tampin and got off at Alor Gajah. (Platform 12 or 13)

At the bus terminal, we were lucky enough to get on the 9am “direct” bus to Alor Gajah. The bus left at around 910am. 3RM per person. The bus was fairly comfy with lots of leg room. The bus ride took us almost an hour but there weren’t too many stops.

We stopped for breakfast at the market in Alor Gajah and then continued on our way.

From Alor Gajah, we took a Grab from the bus terminal to A’Famosa Water Park. It was almost a 25min drive, and the Grab cost 14RM. The driver dropped us off at the guard post and we had to walk about 5 min in to the entrance of the water park itself.

Tip: Get the driver’s number to call him at the end of the day to pick you up again! (Sometimes this doesn’t work as you’ll see from our experience, but it’s still a good practice if you’re off to somewhere awkward and remote.)

Tickets and Getting Sorted at A’Famosa Water Park

We went on a Monday, so it was pretty quiet and there weren’t too many people at A’Famosa Water Park. We’d purchased our tickets online ahead of time – it says it’s only for Malaysians and Singaporeans, but nobody asked to see any ID.

Tickets cost 45RM for adults, and need to be purchased at least one day in advance. We got our tickets at 11pm the day before we went 😛 As part of our ticket, we also purchased a meal at around 16RM – you can’t bring food into the park so that seemed like a sensible way to make the most of our time at the park (that, and having a big breakfast before arriving!)

Once we arrived, we got ourselves hooked up with a double tube float (25RM + 25RM deposit) which we’d need for some of the slides, and went to dump our stuff in the lockers (25RM for the smallest size which was big enough for all our stuff + 20RM deposit). They also had giant sized lockers in case you want to leave your entire 80L backpack, tent, sleeping bag, and possibly a spare tyre too. The lockers come with fancy high-tech RFID bracelets that you can use to open and close your locker multiple times, and you probably won’t lose the bracelet on a slide somewhere.

I’m 1.65m and the biggest lockers came up to my shoulder.

Let the Fun Begin at A’Famosa Water Park

Firstly, the park was pretty damn big. I’d remembered it being big, but I was quite surprised at how big it actually was!

All of the slides that were operational were open when we went (except for a closed tube slide), and we had great fun going on all of them multiple times.

Just a few of the slides we went on.

Almost all of the slides could be done with the double tube we rented, with a couple of exceptions.

1. High Speed – it’s a single rider (individual) slide that goes straight down from like 5 storeys or something. Intense. No tube needed. There are two slides, but only one was open.
2. Family Raft – you don’t need a tube for this one, they provide the float when you get to the top of the slide. Minimum of 2 adults needed for this one, I can’t remember if you could do it as 3 adults.
3. Ice Cream Cone – Pictured below. MUST have 4 people to ride (35-80kg weight limit), and you have to carry the tube up from the bottom. Definitely the most fun ride but we only managed to go on it thrice because finding an additional two people to go with us wasn’t that easy.

Ice Cream Cone – I think it’s named for all the screaming people do on this ride. SUPER fun, but quite intense and I almost fell off my tube seat once. 😛

If you’re not a fan of wild water slides, you can hang out in the Lazy River and Wave Pool which are pretty tame but fun enough to relax in the water.

The Lazy River is pretty shallow but nice enough to float along after lunch or something.

You can see the wave pool in the back, a nice enough pool to splash around. Some kids were having a lot of fun with water guns while we were there.

It was a little disappointing that the individual slides (without tubes) were closed – I think they’re permanently closed and they definitely looked like they’d seen better days so maybe it was a good thing.

There was also a kiddy section for children with smaller slides and fountains + a couple of slides designed specifically for bigger kids who don’t meet the height / weight requirements for the adult slides. We didn’t poke around there too much but it looked pretty decent.

The meal we got was average at best, nothing to write home about, but nothing else was available so we were glad we had at least that. Drinks are also not included, so it was a pretty expensive meal compared to eating out in Melaka, but it was something we expected.

Getting Out of A’Famosa Water Park

Based on the timetable we’d grabbed a picture of at Melaka Sentral, we were aiming to take the bus leaving Tampin at 6pm – we estimated it’d arrive at Alor Gajah at around 6.20pm, so at around 4-ish, we started making our way out.

Phew getting out of A’Famosa Water Park proved to be a reaaaaal challenge.

So I called the Grab driver who’d dropped us off in the morning to ask if he could pick us up. Surprise surprise, he was in Melaka city and wasn’t available to pick us up.

We tried booking a Grab. For 30 minutes we kept trying – no luck.

Eventually, we asked some of the staff there who were able to direct us to a shuttle bus to A’Famosa Freeport (the shopping section of the resort) where they said it’d be easier to get a Grab. Thankfully, we didn’t have to resort to that, because when we got to the entrance, we managed to get a Grab.

We made it back to Alor Gajah bus station with enough time for a satay snack before our bus.

I need more satay in my life.

The 6pm bus obviously didn’t leave at 6pm, but we eventually got back to Melaka Sentral at 7.10pm… perfect timing to take the 7.30pm bus #17 back to our hostel. For whatever reason, that bus didn’t leave till almost 8pm or so, but eventually we were back at our hostel.

And that wraps up our adventure to A’Famosa Water Park in Melaka, Malaysia.

To Go or Not To Go?

I’d say GO. It’s cheap, it’s fun, it’s a great way to spend a day forgetting that you’re an adult with bills to pay or work to do or responsibilities. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and as a bonus I got to stay out of the heat for the day!

If you’re in Melaka and have an extra day to spare, check it out!

It’s probably more fun with friend(s) though.

Anyways, hope this little guide was useful for any readers passing through Melaka now that borders are opening up again and tourism is starting to pick back up after 2 years of hiatus.