I’ll be honest with you – Cebu City isn’t my favorite place in the world, but I ended up living there for six months last year. (Staying at the Waterfront Hotel, among others.) But I did find a diamond in the rough for tourists to spend a few hours – without sitting in traffic for 3-4 hours to reach Kawasan Falls and the other beautiful natural attractions.
Review of the Zip Line at the Crown Regency Hotel
Head to the Crown Regency Hotel in downtown, go to the elevator, and push “UP,” because you’re going ALL the way up to the top floors, where they have a really cool entertainment and action sports complex.
In fact, up there on the roof of the building you’ll find an urban zip line. Now, zip lines are pretty common these days, and a lot of them are not so spectacular, but this one holds the unique distinction as being the only URBAN zip line in Asia, which means it goes from the roof of one building to the roof of a neighboring building – all with the view of the city streets and buildings below!
The staff there give you a quick briefing, dress you in an orange jumpsuit, and harness you in outdoors to their zip line, 473 feet in the air. The ride to the next building is only 250 feet long, so it goes by very quickly. But still, it’s really unique that you’re zip lining like Spiderman among skyscrapers in a city, and the photos are well worth it.
Speaking of photos, they don’t let you hold your own camera or phone of course (if it fell, you’d crack someone on the street below). But they will take photos with your device or for you from the send off ramp, which come out great. I don’t remember what they charge for their own photographer to shoot them, but the really bizarre thing is that they have a rule against taking video.
The easiest way around this I think is to have your friend – who is next up in line for the zip lining – to hold your camera and take a video, pretending that they’re just taking photos.
But I went solo, so I was perplexed when they insisted that I couldn’t take a video. After all, I was going upside down on the zip line (they do allow that), so this was going to be memorable. Luckily, I got around it by talking to the lady behind the counter and the zip line operator in hushed tones, offering a sizable tip (bribe!) if they would take a video with my phone. They agreed quietly, and told me to wait until a big tour group of Japanese were finished, so I was the only one up there and they wouldn’t be noticed taking a video. So strange!
Although the ride was only 8 seconds, it was worth it.
If that’s a little too dangerous for you, they have plenty of other adventurous activities, like the Skywalk platform that allows you to circle the outside of the building on a small glass ledge, harnessed in of course. There’s also a roller coaster on the outside of the building 38 floors up, which allows you to ride a track around the building and tilt about 55 degrees towards the ground far below!
If you have young kids or for more family activities, they have a big restaurant, 6D movie theater, gaming area, observatory, mini golf, and a crazy climbing wall that makes it look like the ground disappears beneath you because of the angle it’s on!
So if you’re in Cebu City and you don’t have a whole day to dedicate to going to go explore the island, or it’s raining and you just want a quick but exhilarating experience – including lunch and stuff to do for the kids – stop by the Crown Regency!
About Norm Schriever
Norm Schriever is a blogger, Amazon best-sellling author, cultural mad scientist, and enemy of the comfort zone. His work appears in the Huffington Post, Business.com, Good Morning America, The Anderson Cooper Show on CNN, NBC, MSN, Yahoo, Hotels.com, and media all around the world.
Norm grew up in Connecticut and graduated from the University of Connecticut, where he was never accused of overstudying. After expatriating to Costa Rica in 2011, he started traveling the world and documenting what he saw. He now lives in Southeast Asia, writing his heart out and working with local charities.
