Unusual date night ideas in KL

While Netflix and chill is a great date idea, sometimes date nights call for some adrenaline-pumping action; here’s where AirRider dives in, an indoor skydiving facility located in 1 Utama Shopping Centre’s latest extension 1 Utama E. You’ll get to ‘skydive’ inside a vertical wind tunnel that mimics the experience of diving out a plane from 14,000 feet above ground. (If that doesn’t scream ‘exciting’, we don’t know what will.) Highly-experienced instructors will be on hand to show you the ropes and teach the basics, and you’ll be pulling off cool twists and turns in no time. Bonus: First-time flyers are encouraged to hold hands with their partners, for support.

First-time flyer packages include training session and two more free-flying sessions per person, from RM89.

While a movie and dinner might be a romantic cliche, a movie night out at luxe boutique cinema Aurum Theatre begs to differ. These cinemas in both Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru have been thoughtfully designed with luxury in mind – they’re also appropriately named after ‘Aurum’, the chemical element for gold. Sink into one of the plush seats, each of which comes paired with a fresh set of Getha pillows and fleece blankets. You can also head over to JIN Gastrobar to tuck into tapas-style sharing bites like chicken fajita wraps and crispy salted egg salmon skin. 

From RM120 per seat.

So you’ve got about as much artistic talent as Garfield after a bout of lasagna, but your date’s all for wielding a paintbrush and creating their own work of art. Join Art & Bonding’s Sip & Paint sessions, where you get to drink wine and clumsily daub paint on a canvas while your beau confidently builds up the colours on their masterpiece. The three-hour sessions (from RM130 per person) include a glass of wine, free-flow non-alcoholic beverages and all the art materials you need. And after painting romantic landscapes and vibrant florals (and after all that wine), you just might realise you have a flair for the arts after all.

There was once a time when taking a date out to a board game café would have been mocked. Not anymore. Board game cafés like Meeples European Boardgame Café, Boardgame Depot and All Aboard Gaming Community Centre not only offer a fun alternative to Netflix, but also give you and your date a chance to put away those smartphones, make new friends and nerd out on board game strategies. There’s no shortage of games to choose from either; these board game cafés have the lot, ranging from the fun strategy games like ‘Catan’, ‘Politiko’ and ‘Saboteur’ to the more accessible and light-hearted ‘The Lepak Game’ and ‘Cards Against Humanity’.

If you and your date want to escape reality for a while, there’s always virtual reality. Virtual reality (VR) gaming has been gaining popularity of late; but if you don’t have your own personal machine at home, game centres such as VR Lab offer a gaming experience within a safe, obstruction-free space. All you have to do is put on the VR headset and use the controllers in your hand to control your in-game character, and voila! You have a date in the virtual world. Book the double headset room, equipped with two VR goggles, and set off on an adventure with your significant other mauling down hordes of zombies in ‘HordeZ’, slicing and dicing fruits in ‘Fruit Ninja’ or travelling the world in ‘Google Earth VR’.

Double VR Headset room, RM100 per hour.

Put that Melaka road trip on hold if you’re going there purely for Huskies; you can cuddle the wolf-like pooches in Kelana Jaya at Huskiss Cafe! However, don’t just waltz in expecting to hold the dogs captive with your love (and loved one) for hours on end – you’re required to make advanced bookings for selected 1.5 hour sessions at RM25 (give them a call for more information). Looking for cats instead for your feline-loving date? TTDI’s Purradise Cat Cafe is home to cute rescue cats with equally cute names like Bubbles, Tomato and Tails. First hour goes for RM18 (inclusive of one drink) and every 15 minutes after the initial hour is RM4.

If you and your partner are looking to blow off some steam, District 21 is an indoor theme park that offers knuckle rides, slides, trampolines and aerial obstacle courses – all within the confines of a 70,000 sq ft space. Attractions such as the launch pads are great if you’re just looking for something simple and fun; or if you want to impress your date, the Ninja Warrior Course tests your agility and strength with 15 obstacle courses – because good hand-eye coordination is sexy too. 

Call for more enquiries/information.

For this idea, when you tell your date you’re going to fly a kite, we hope you mean it in the literal sense (and not the idiom). Have an old school date and bring your kites to Kepong’s Taman Metropolitan. Also known as ‘Taman Layang-Layang’, the park’s main attraction is its open field which plays host to visitors young and old looking to fly kites in the evenings. If you go during the weekend, keep in mind that you’ll probably be sharing the field (and sky) with lots of families and their kites too. And if kite-flying conditions aren’t great, the 95-hectare park is filled with lush greenery and also houses a huge lake, so you and your partner can still go for a calming stroll.