Rainforest Wild Adventure: The Safety Measures Behind the Thrills

Rainforest Wild Adventure is Asia's first adventure-based wildlife park, and it just expanded with a new EAST zone. You swing 8m over a ravine, glide 500m through the canopy and climb a 16m wall, with animals below you. It is a wildlife park, part of Mandai Wildlife Reserve alongside the Singapore Zoo, River Wonders, Night Safari and Bird Paradise. I went last weekend with my family. I was there for the animals. I ended up taking photos of the safety measures.

A park like this is a live risk assessment. Members of the public, heights, moving equipment, wildlife, rain. Here is what Mandai has in place, from what I saw and from their published rules.

By Nachi. Lead Auditor turned ISO and bizSAFE consultant, ZES Consulting. Photos are mine.

The glider: they stopped the ride after us

The Canopy Glider is a 500m roll-glider through the treetops. Level 2 on the thrill meter. You sit in a bucket seat with a restraint, like a roller coaster, no harness. 10 riders per session. Staff check every restraint is locked before the ride moves. Not an adrenaline ride. A slow, quiet view over the park, with the animals below. The best thing we did that day.

We were the last riders before staff closed it. They had detected a fault. The ride stopped taking passengers. Staff ran separate empty test rides before it reopened.

That is what a working safety protocol looks like:

The swing: engineering, staff, PPE, in that order

The Ravine Swing is rated 5 out of 5 on Mandai's thrill meter. You are lifted about 8m and released over the ravine. What I noticed:

Who gets on: screening before exposure

Mandai publishes the entry criteria for every Adventure+ activity. For the Ravine Swing:

• No riding if pregnant, with heart or blood pressure conditions, recovering from surgery, with neck, back, knee or ankle injuries, or prone to panic attacks.
• Not under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
• Sports attire and sports shoes required. No slippers, sandals or loose footwear. No skirts. No dangling items, no selfie sticks.
• Staff can stop your participation at any time.

Ground and barriers: the controls you do not notice

The obvious controls are on the swing. The better ones are underfoot.

• Anti-slip walkways. The elevated boardwalks are grooved composite decking with drainage gaps. Mandai gets a lot of rain. Nobody needs a "slippery when wet" sign because the surface handles it.
• Layered barriers at enclosures. Timber uprights and a rail at chest height, with a mesh panel below so a child cannot slip through, set back from the enclosure itself.
• Soft ground in the activity zones. The red flooring under the swing is a rubberised surface, not bare concrete.
• Separated traffic. Between the EAST and WEST zones you take the M1 or M2 bus, or a separate walking and cycling path. People and vehicles do not share the route.

Signs that work

Most workplace signs say "Danger" and stop there. The Mandai sign says three things: what not to do, a picture of it, and a number to call for assistance. If a child drops a hat over the barrier, a parent knows what to do instead of climbing.

Their park rules do the same for emergencies: stop all activities, follow staff instructions, leave by the marked exit routes. Short and unambiguous.

What your workplace can copy

Under the WSH Act, the occupier's duty covers every person on the premises, not only employees. The Risk Management Regulations say the same: anyone who may be affected by your work. A public attraction lives with that every day. Most companies only think about it after an incident. We wrote about the other side of this in our vending machine accident guide.

Frequently asked questions