I have seen photos of the Sunway Lost World of Tambun many times. It seems to be advertised in every Air Asia flight magazine and I saw it often when we were living in Malaysia. It always looked like fun so it was firmly in my mind as someone we had to visit.

When we decided to visit Ipoh on our most recent trip, we finally had the chance! The Lost World of Tambun is located on the outskirts of Ipoh and it’s easy to reach from this city. I visited it with my 5 and 6 year olds and we were very excited.

So did it measure up to our expectations?

Sunway Lost World of Tambun review

YES!

We loved this theme park.

Our Lost World of Tambun theme park review found a well presented and well maintained park. Actually, I was surprised how great it all looked considering the low entry price.

I think it probably has the best backdrop of any theme park in the world. It’s surrounded by limestone hills and I realised on arrival that the name of the park is very apt. Between the hills and the architecture, it does feel like you are in some gorgeous lost world.

The Lost World of Tambun consists of many mini lands. The main ones are the water park, amusement park, tin valley and petting zoo. They are all quite small and, alone, none of them are that amazing. Add it all together though and this park is lots of fun.

Below in my Lost World Tambun review are my thoughts about some of the different themed areas.

Amusement Park

The amusement park of the Lost World of Tambun is very small. The rides are very low key and better for kids than adults. There is only one roller coaster and it’s not scary.

Miss 6 thought it was cool. Mr 5 is very cautious and found them all too scary except the carousel.

We did not find the small size of the amusement park to be an issue as there were plenty of other things to do. It’s important to have the right expectations about this area though.

Water Park

The water park is lots of fun and was our favourite part of our Lost World of Tambun review

It consists of water slides, a big wave pool, a lazy river and a cool kids’ playground area with lots of little water slides. When we visited, they had a “pool party” daily with music and live dancing. We loved just floating around in this main wave pool watching the show, enjoying the views of the surrounding limestone hills and just relaxing. The kids could not get enough of it either.

The kids’ area is also fabulous with many little slides and plenty of shaded area to watch from.

My one disappointment of our visit was the lazy river attraction. It cost money to get the floating ring thing for it (RM26, 10 was a deposit) and I don’t think they understood what a lazy river is supposed to be. It wasn’t lazy at all as there was no current and we had to push ourselves along. It also wasn’t very clean.

We had been looking forward to enjoying the lazy river so it was disappointing.

Tin Valley

Ipoh boomed in times gone by thanks to being home to a lot of tin! Tin Valley describes this heritage on information boards and there’s the chance to search for tin.

The kids loved the chance to look for tin especially after enjoying a similar activity looking for gold back in Australia last year.

Petting Zoo

I didn’t have high expectation of the petting zoo area in the Lost World of Tambun review but it was very good and not like any petting zoo I have been in before.

The first thing that caught our attention was the hamster enclosure. It was unreal with so much piping and so many wheels for the hamsters to play in. It was fun to watch them.

There are also rabbits and raccoons playing near the entrance and fish in a long water area around the hamster enclosure. There are buckets and nets to catch the fish (before putting them back), but they were far too clever for us. They would swim away fast whenever we just approached the water.

There are also bird sections, reptile sections and much much more. It’s quite extensive. There’s also tarantula alley built into the limestone hills. You can see many different types of creepy tarantulas!

Just walking around this area is great as it’s incredibly scenic.

Other areas

Other areas in the Lost World of Tambun include Tiger Valley, Hot Springs, Porcupine Trail and the Adventure Park. We walked through all of it and they all looked fine but the above were our highlights.

There are also shows on throughout the day. Unfortunately, the map for the park doesn’t label any of the places where the shows take place so it wasn’t easy to find them!

Food

I was surprised by just how good the food is at Lost World of Tambun. It’s also very affordable. It’s not like the usual theme park experience at all.

We had some fabulous Malaysian dishes in the hawker centre area. There’s also many other food stalls throughout the park as well as “Ipoh Street” which is very well set up.

We ate ice balls here in the afternoon and were able to sit on tables in the water. Very cool!

Other tips and tricks

You can hire a locker starting from RM20 for one entry. It’s a steep price!

Most people in this theme park were locals when we visited and were well covered up, even in the pool areas. I don’t recommend wearing a bikini but I felt comfortable enough in my bikini bottoms and bather singlet top.

We visited on a weekday during school term which was perfect. We never lined up at all and often had areas of the park to ourselves. It rained on and off but this didn’t impact our visit.

Buying tickets and more information

I recommend buying tickets online on their website beforehand. They currently offer a discount and had a special deal when we booked on their website which meant that we only ended up paying about AUD$50 (US$37) for 1 adult and 2 kids. Bargain!

Find more information on their website.

Lost World of Tambun Hotel review

It’s also possible to stay on site at the Lost World of Tambun Hotel.

The benefits of this are the easy access to the theme park and also the chance to visit the Lost World Hot Springs and Spa at night.

Click here for more information and to see the latest prices.

We loved out visit here and definitely recommend adding it to your list of Ipoh attractions. Read our full guide to Ipoh here.

You can find all our other guides to wonderful Malaysia here and our guide to nearby Cameron Highlands here or Sunway Lagoon here.

We were not compensated in any way for this Tambun Lost World review and they did not know we were visiting.

Tags:  Malaysia Travel Blog