One of the items on my to-do list in KL is to spend more time with my family. I haven’t travelled with my family for almost a decade… so I think it is a good idea to travel with my mother and brother now (unfortunately my sister needs to work). This is a short trip – only 3 days 2 nights in Singapore. We stayed at Amara Singapore Hotel on the busy Tanjung Pakar Road. We took UBER to Universal Studios Singapore.
Universal Studios Singapore is a very popular attraction in Singapore. It is a theme park located within Resorts World Sentosa on Sentosa Island, Singapore. I have heard of it a long time ago and we decided to pay a visit to this famous place. It seems a bit weird for me to visit with my mother and brother, but who cares 🙂
The Universal Studios Singapore ticket price is SGD74 per person; but you can actually find cheaper tickets online. I did not buy online because (1) we decided to visit last minute but some deals require a few processing days, (2) some websites provide instant email confirmation, however I can’t find a cheap ticket online for senior citizen – there is a 50% discount for people over 60 years old (remember to bring passport) if you buy physically on the site (or you can buy from official USS website but it isn’t any cheaper)… And I do not want to buy ticket separately because I want to collect tickets for three of us at the same place.
The theme park opens at 10am. We reached at 9.20am on Saturday morning. My first impression of Universal Studios Singapore is: Super Super CRowded! People are everywhere. Although there are still 40 minutes to go before the theme park opens, many people have started queueing already. There are actually a lot of people queueing behind me and my brother in the photo below 😉
It is a beautiful theme park. It is a dream heaven for kids. The atmosphere here is nice – the theme park is very big; there are many different themes of animations e.g. Minions, Madagascar, Puss in Boots, Jurassic Park, Sesame Street, Transformer, Happy Feet, Shrek and etc… There are a lot of mascots to entertain kids and adults like me. If you are not into those, there are roller coasters and some other exciting games for you.
Our first game was Sesame Street ride – it was a cute ride 🙂 We queued for about 15 minutes and I thought it was long enough, but I didn’t know it was just a small piece of cake (read further)… The second game that we went was Lights Camera Action. If you are coming to Universal Studios Singapore, remember that the first hour is the ‘Golden hour’ as you can play some games in a short queue.
Our third game was the Transformer Ride and it was the pain. A picture tells a thousand words…
If you don’t think it is that bad, then you are wrong. The photo above was only a small part of the queue. There were a lot of corners at the queuing area; every time we thought it will be our turn soon and realized this is only another corner and saw a long queue again – we felt like there was no ending… We wouldn’t have queued if only we can see the end of the queue. My quick estimation is that there are AT LEAST 500 people queuing for the SAME ride at the SAME time. Furthermore, some areas have no air-cond so expect the heat if you are queuing. In the end we waited for 1.5 hours for this 2-3 minutes ride! Crazy right!?
Photo of us waiting for the game – it is a long wait but at least we are spending time together 🙂
Some people were very inpatient and grumpy; and I also saw a couple were waiting together happily. Well, it just depends on how you think and feel. It is just a game so why takes it seriously?
The game was actually very good and fun, but we will not queue so long for such a short game again.
Definitely want to take a selfie with the Transformer since we have been waiting so long!! See behind my mom!!
Finally, it is over. Fresh air. We are tired of waiting. It is still crowded everywhere… even the restaurant is crowded. We walked around and realized that there is an estimated waiting time written on the board for each game. It takes between 1 and 2 hours to queue for each game, and for some less-popular games it takes about 30 minutes to queue. This is absolutely CRAZY…!! By the way, I don’t know why the estimation time for the Transformer game was missing (so we queued without knowing it will take that long) – my mom and bro kept saying that we were being ‘cheated’. >.<“
There is actually a SOLUTION for this – some people say money can buy anything right? 🙂 You can buy the Express Pass and skip the queue. There are different types of Express Pass and you can buy them after you entered the theme park.
The Limited express pass (allow you to skip the queue for each game) is about SGD60 in additional to the entry price of SGD74 per person; the Unlimited Express Pass (unlimited time for all games) is obviously more expensive. I am not sure of the exact price as it may be different for each game or each type of pass. You should factor this into your budget because you wouldn’t be able to play more than 5,6 games without buying the Express Pass. There are a lot of good reviews about the Express Pass on the internet – so I believe it is a good buy. I was envious of those who skipped the line using Express Pass (you may still need to wait a little bit with the Express pass, but it is better to queue with 10 people instead of 500 people).
If you still do not want to buy express pass for the ride, you must be a big fan of the animations so you can enjoy by just seeing the animations.
Personally, I love minions so I can spend whole day taking photos with minions here. But, my family couldn’t understand why I love minions so much. My brother said “it is just a ‘yellow item’. =.=
We are only here for half a day because we are tired of waiting.
In summary, this is a well-built theme park – I just don’t like the crowd and the people. I knew Universal Studio is very popular and I expected there will be a lot of people, but I just didn’t know it is that much. Also, the staffs here are impatient and have little tolerance; most of them showed their grumpy face and raised their voice to the customers who are slow. I don’t like them.
I think Universal Studios Singapore will be fun and enjoyable to visit if it is not that crowded. Weekend is a terrible time to visit – but as I read online there isn’t too much better on weekdays (still better than weekends). If I come again next time, I will come on the weekdays and buy the Express Pass.
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