Universal Studios Singapore
Sentosa, Singapore
March 2012
We never miss a chance to visit theme parks whenever we are out of the country. The theme parks in here the Philippines are just not good at all and are not even 5% as good compared to the big ones like Disney and Universal Studios.
We had a short trip to Singapore with the baby in March 2012 and we took a day off our quick trip to visit Universal Studios Singapore at Sentosa. We rode the MRT to Vivo City and took the Sentosa Express (SGD 3.00/ticket back and forth) to Universal Studios. We booked our tickets in advance online so we saved a bunch of time not having to buy tickets at the ticketing booths.
After initially seeing the map of the park online, I immediately thought to myself, “This seems even smaller than Disney Hong Kong”. And indeed it was… well at least it felt like it. They had 7 sections of the park similar to Disney HK but the areas were so small and the activities in each one quite few.
We went around the park clockwise, first to Madagascar and the last was New York. We had dinner and end of day shopping at Hollywood (the main avenue to the various areas). We went clockwise (we often do) and it seems that if you are with a family (kids/baby), clockwise is the right way to go. If you are a group of teenagers or friends though, maybe going counter clockwise would be smarter. Counter clockwise gets you to the more popular thrill and adult rides faster (in Sci-Fi City and Ancient Egypt).
me at Ancient Egypt
The areas were quite small; Madagascar for example was actually just a restaurant, snack bar, ride and a show. Ancient Egypt had a nice setup but actually only had two rides. New York in fact has almost nothing in it (an attraction and two restaurants?). I really think the whole park can be finished in one day easily. We had a baby with us and despite having to do the baby stuff (feed, change, etc), we were still able to finish almost everything by 5:30pm. Granted we missed some of the attractions (baby not allowed) but we also spent so much time taking photos with almost all of the mascots! I’m pretty sure the whole park is a piece of cake especially for a group of friends/teens. No need to buy an Express Pass, that’s for sure.
Sci-Fi City is probably the most popular area with the impressive Battlestar Galactica Rollercoaster. There are actually two roller coasters, the Cylon: suspended roller coaster and the Human: seated roller coaster. What’s interesting is both roller coasters loop around each other and it seems like you almost meet each other at one of the loops. Sci-Fi City also has the Transformers Ride and Autobots can be seen hanging around who you can have your picture taken with.
Autobots hanging around (person in stilts is inside the costume!)
Cylon: blue track / Human: red track
I found Disney Parks to be more fun… at Disney I feel like I’m in a different world and city. Here, the different areas are not related to each other at all and so the park seems divided into many smaller parks. Disney has a more coherent, “I am at Disney” feeling that I really love.
We went on a Friday to see the fireworks but we decided eventually to go home early (around 530pm). We were done with everything (even done with our early dinner) and didn’t have the patience or energy to wait until 7pm for the fireworks show.
I really was a bit disappointed as this park came after Disney HK and I would think they would have done it bigger and better. But all in all, the Universal Studios Singapore was good enough. A really big bonus is that the park is located in Singapore. Singapore is very accessible from anywhere in the world, the food there is affordable, the people there are courteous (unlike in Disney HK, fellow tourists were cutthroat) and the whole country is very convenient and safe to go around in even for strollers and kids.
Charlie Chaplin in New York
Universal Studios Singapore… Check! Waiting for Disney Shanghai to complete and hopefully a trip to Japan for Disney Tokyo to remove more things to do in the Theme Park To Do List :).