Jordan
TS Contributor
Last month, I had a long weekend in Singapore, and spent a day at Universal Studios. Since I quite enjoyed writing my last trip report at SFGA, I decided to write another.
Universal Studios Singapore is part of the Resorts World Sentosa development, one of two "integrated resorts" in Singapore. This basically means there's hotels, shops and other attractions built alongside a casino in the same development. (The other resort is the flashier and more centrally-located Marina Bay Sands.) Resorts World Sentosa is on Sentosa Island, which has its own monorail system and, bizarrely, a small entry fee.
The day started in the top floor of a shopping centre on the mainland, in a long queue for a monorail ticket. Top tip in future: you can actually pay the monorail and Sentosa entry fee directly at the gates by using your EZ-Pass card (the Singapore equivalent of Oyster). Once you're on the monorail, it's one stop along to the Harbourside station, which ejects you straight into Resorts World.
The first thing that struck me about Universal is its size: it's very small. I walked a lap of the lagoon in fifteen minutes flat. There are officially seven themed areas of the park, but they heavily bleed into each other.
Anyhow, size aside, there's some particular highlights of the park:
The Battlestar Galactica duelling coasters are an interesting proposition, but neither track is anything to write home about. Actually, I tell a lie: the sit-down track is boring enough to warrant a mention. Both tracks drew in substantial and slow-moving queues, consistently greater than an hour each. This was mainly down to the poor throughput typical of duelling coasters, with the wait for both sides to be ready before dispatch.
There was also a Sesame Street ride that I didn't do, writing-it-off (possibly wrongly?) as a typical 4D experience akin to Hollywood's Despicable Me ride.
And... well, that's about it for Universal Singapore. On the whole, there's not a great deal to fill a day, especially if you turn up early and get ahead of the few rides with long queues. This is reflected in the opening hours, with the park open 10am - 6pm on the day I visited. Interestingly, it looks like there's little room (if any?) for future expansion beyond the current footprint.
If you're in Singapore, the park is worth a visit, but do make time to visit other things on Sentosa Island whilst you're there: the beaches are particularly nice.
However, I left with a sense that Universal Studios Singapore is really an add-on to one of the most profitable casinos in the world, included to sweeten the construction bid.
Universal Studios Singapore is part of the Resorts World Sentosa development, one of two "integrated resorts" in Singapore. This basically means there's hotels, shops and other attractions built alongside a casino in the same development. (The other resort is the flashier and more centrally-located Marina Bay Sands.) Resorts World Sentosa is on Sentosa Island, which has its own monorail system and, bizarrely, a small entry fee.
The day started in the top floor of a shopping centre on the mainland, in a long queue for a monorail ticket. Top tip in future: you can actually pay the monorail and Sentosa entry fee directly at the gates by using your EZ-Pass card (the Singapore equivalent of Oyster). Once you're on the monorail, it's one stop along to the Harbourside station, which ejects you straight into Resorts World.
The first thing that struck me about Universal is its size: it's very small. I walked a lap of the lagoon in fifteen minutes flat. There are officially seven themed areas of the park, but they heavily bleed into each other.
Anyhow, size aside, there's some particular highlights of the park:
- The version of Revenge of the Mummy is almost the same as its Orlando sibling. In fact, I'm sure track and train is the same, and there is a trick ending, but some of the show scenes were different to what I remember from Orlando. Either way, it's very good and never had a queue all day.
- WaterWorld from Hollywood makes an appearance here too. It's a direct copy of the American show, but it's still one of the best shows I've seen at a theme park, along with a ridiculous quantity of pyrotechnics. It's hidden away at the back of the park, behind Jurassic Park.
- Unique to Singapore is the Madagascar: A Crate Adventure ride (I'm sure they tapped-up @Joelio for the name). From the outside, this looked like a knock-off It's a Small World, but it turned out to be a very decent dark ride. There's some superb animatronics, clever use of screens, and an overall long ride length.
- I didn't do any of the Shrek attractions, but the facade for the 4D attraction is above and beyond - way out of Merlin's league for theming a cinema.
The Battlestar Galactica duelling coasters are an interesting proposition, but neither track is anything to write home about. Actually, I tell a lie: the sit-down track is boring enough to warrant a mention. Both tracks drew in substantial and slow-moving queues, consistently greater than an hour each. This was mainly down to the poor throughput typical of duelling coasters, with the wait for both sides to be ready before dispatch.
There was also a Sesame Street ride that I didn't do, writing-it-off (possibly wrongly?) as a typical 4D experience akin to Hollywood's Despicable Me ride.
And... well, that's about it for Universal Singapore. On the whole, there's not a great deal to fill a day, especially if you turn up early and get ahead of the few rides with long queues. This is reflected in the opening hours, with the park open 10am - 6pm on the day I visited. Interestingly, it looks like there's little room (if any?) for future expansion beyond the current footprint.
If you're in Singapore, the park is worth a visit, but do make time to visit other things on Sentosa Island whilst you're there: the beaches are particularly nice.
However, I left with a sense that Universal Studios Singapore is really an add-on to one of the most profitable casinos in the world, included to sweeten the construction bid.
