The first park of the trip was one of the biggest on the trip with the newest park in the Universal chain. Having been to the ones in California, Orlando and Osaka this was the only one left and it's also the baby in the chain being the newest and smallest of them all.
The obligatory globe meets you at the entrance.
Main Street. We'd gotten here in good time and the park was not busy at all. We'd bought a fast pass but didn't feel like we'd be needing it today.
The first area of the park you come into is the 50's area that features nice cars, a diner and some theatre shows.
50's style waitresses provide some song, dance and knicker action.
Around midday some Singaporean B-Boys take to their lino.
The park is small enough that you don't need to hail a taxi to get around.
First coasters of the day was the duelling Battlestar Galactica pairing. The park prevent you taking anything into the rides so you can't take photos of the theming in the queue lines. There's a great cobra space ship in the human queue line and cyborg side has muscle and tissue themed walls.
Red is the Human sit-down side and Blue is the Cylon inverted side.
The best bit of both rides is unfortunately the accelerating launch up the lift-hill. It's down hill from there!
Although the track looks like a big knot there isn't much duelling with only a couple of obvious pass-bys, but the structure is impressive.
Of the two rides, human was the worse. The nice big train trundled around the track and it didn't feel very fast really. It's also the safer of the two as it doesn't go upside down.
The cylon does invert, 5 times in fact and for that reason it's my favourite.
The complex track layout taken from the other side of the lake that sits in the centre of the park.
Next to the sci-fi bit is the Egyptian bit and it's here you can ride the Mummy coaster. Exactly the same ride as the other Universal Parks so a really good ride. The nerd in the group pointed out that the turntable section turns in the opposite direction on this version of the ride. Again no loose items in the queue line meant only external photos could be taken, hence no ride photos.
Next up is the Jurassic region, which offers plenty of shade, and the obligatory water ride. However here the ride is a rapids not a big splash. It was OK, the tyres aren't as great as the boats and the journey has a few dead spots where theming is missing.
There's one coaster in this part of the park, the Canopy Flyer ride which gives a fairly gentle tour over the treetops in this section of the park. The final helix into the station does pick up a good bit of speed though.
This is Shrek's castle. Home to a restaurant and the 4d show, the same show at the other parks. Still it's a lot of fun if a bit wet (there I've spoiled it for those that haven't been on it)
Enchanted Airways is a kiddy coaster with some great punned theming in the queue line. Again, no loose items meant I couldn't take any pictures of them.
Tucked away between the Shrek Castle and the Jurassic area is the Waterworld stunt show attraction. We'd managed to miss this on our first lap but found it on the second.
The new attraction for this year is the Madagascar boat dark ride, and this is a load of fun. Incorporating animatronics and giant screens the ride takes you through the film starting in New York and journeying through the set pieces from the film. It's probably the first ride to make reference to flinging poo. There's also some very clever lighting tricks in this to hide some of the characters until the last moment. A really enjoyable ride and one where we had to exploit our fast pass to jump the queue that had built up.
Opposite Madagascar is perhaps the most bizarre carousel. I had to have a go at riding granny!
Back round to the Battlestar Galactica area of the park where we'd saved the best for last. Transformers had only recently opened and takes the ride system used in Spiderman and improves on it making this by far my favourite dark ride. Featuring huge pin-sharp hi-def 3d screens and 6 degree motion simulators the ride is exhilarating from start to finish and I liked this so much I took advantage of the fast-pass and the single rider queue to ride this 6 times. It's due to open in California this Summer and is bound to be as popular there as here.
Aside from the rides there are a multitude of live actors and sweaty people in suits.
There are tiny touches of theming that can be overlooked if you're not careful.
and they seem to have their beer drinkers sorted too.
Universal Studios Singapore is a pretty decent park but much more compact than I'd ever have envisaged. Get there early enough and you can do everything in half a day but take a full day to really enjoy it properly. Be prepared to use the lockers on the majority of rides; the entry staff are very thorough at checking people before they enter the rides. The park staff are OK, more professional than friendly.
