Jerudong Park opened in 1994 in the Brunei-Muara District, designed by a Perth-based Australian architecture and landscape firm. The Bruneian government funded its construction at a cost of one billion dollars, making it the most expensive amusement park in Southeast Asia. During its first years, the park charged nothing. No admission fee. No ride tickets. Everything was free, a gift from the government to the people of a country where oil and gas revenues made such gestures possible. The same design firm created the "Crystal Arch" -- known locally as the Diamond Roundabout -- at the entrance to the Istana Nurul Izzah near Kampung Jerudong, giving the surrounding district an architectural coherence that blended royal extravagance with public entertainment. For a time, the arrangement worked. Families streamed in, children rode the attractions at no cost, and Jerudong Park became Brunei's most visible symbol of state generosity.

The amphitheatre in Jerudong Park's garden became, briefly, one of the most exclusive concert venues on Earth. After Michael Jackson's secret performance for the Sultan's birthday, he returned on New Year's Eve 1996 for an official HIStory World Tour date. A month after that first Jackson concert, Whitney Houston performed at the park on August 24, 1996, singing for the wedding of Princess Rashidah Sa'adatul Bolkiah, the Sultan's eldest daughter. Janet Jackson later took the amphitheatre stage during her Velvet Rope Tour, performing a private concert for the twenty-first birthday of Princess Hamidah Jamalul Bulqiah. Every attendee received an exclusive audio recording of the show. These were not public events in any conventional sense -- they were royal celebrations staged with the world's biggest musical acts, held inside a public amusement park that happened to belong to one of the wealthiest monarchies on the planet.

By 2009, the crowds had thinned significantly. The government introduced a modest admission fee of 15 Brunei dollars and a ride ticketing system -- a quiet acknowledgment that the era of total free access was unsustainable. The park shrank its operational footprint to the original Playground area. In 2006, a revitalization effort had launched the GIGGLES, a seven-member entertainment team from the Philippines who specialized in family programming. Their shows regenerated some interest, and a "Family Night" program featuring local Bruneian performers drew more than 6,000 people on a single evening. By 2010, annual attendance had climbed back to 144,000. A 2011 remodel brought bumper cars, pedal boats, electric trains, and scooters. In March of that year, the park recorded over 70,000 visitors in a single month. But the billion-dollar grandeur of the 1990s was gone, replaced by something smaller and more community-oriented.

A fire tore through the Jerudong Park Food Court -- Brunei's largest -- near midnight on December 17, 2021, destroying 24 units in Phase 2 before the Brunei Fire and Rescue Department extinguished it in thirty minutes. No one was injured, and Phase 3 of the food court continued operating. In 2022, the park opened the Little Kingdom Petting Zoo, housing Indian peacocks, albino Burmese pythons, meerkats, hedgehogs, leopard tortoises, and Falabella miniature horses. The Mini Stadium within the park complex serves as the training ground for DPMM FC, the football club of Crown Prince Al-Muhtadee Billah, and hosts domestic league matches. Today, Jerudong Park is free to enter again, with ride fees of eight to ten dollars. It is a gentler, humbler place than the billion-dollar spectacle the Sultan once conjured from the coastal lowlands of Borneo -- but families still come, children still ride, and the amphitheatre still stands where Jackson once performed for a king who chose not to watch.