THE downside to waterslides? The effort usually always exceeds the reward, at least where time’s concerned.

You climb dozens of steps to reach the slide’s entry point, huffing and puffing your way to the top, only to find yourself floundering about in the exit pool mere seconds later.

This won’t be the case with a new waterslide being built in Malaysia right now.

Stretching a whopping 1,140 meters long, the ride is now under construction at Penang’s ESCAPE theme park and looks set to smash the record for “world’s longest waterslide.”

Due for completion at the end of July, it will open to the public sometime in mid-August, staff said.

The current holder of the Guinness World Records longest waterslide certificate is in Action Park, a theme park in Vernon, New Jersey. It measures 601 meters in length.

But unlike the New Jersey version, which is inflatable, ESCAPE’s new slide is made of fiber-reinforced polymer and will be a permanent structure attached to steel poles.

ESCAPE’s massive new slide will take riders on a four-minute journey through the jungle.

“I’m always baffled by how rides are made so short and quick. I wanted to build rides that last a good few minutes,” Sim Choo Kheng, CEO of ESCAPE operator Sim Leisure Group, said in a statement.

Once open, the slide will offer a four-minute ride that snakes its way down a 70-meter slope, passing through jungle scenery.

Huffing and puffing won’t be part of the experience either. Visitors will access the slide via a cable car chairlift. (SD-Agencies)