USS - Expansion Minions and Nintendo

[Baconjack]

9 hours ago, TV15 said:

As someone who's experienced the full SNW at USJ, I felt it to be quite underwhelming and a bit too gimmicky. The land has awful guest flow, the stairs that you must go down to walk around the land (to access 2 of the 3 rides, food and merchandise stores) are awful and you will get stuck there as people take photos, the land can only be exited by going up those stairs when you will get stuck again (or you can try to take the stairs up near bowsers castle where the extended queue was overflowing to). Yoshi's adds kinetic energy to the land, Mario should just use regular 3d glasses not those awful AR head weights, and Donkey Kong is just ok (cool concept, just not really executed as good as it could be). The powerup bands are a nice touch and actually work... but in queues that have the 'power ups', you will hear that the whole time going off.

Universal must be very happy with this land considering that they've cloned it to 3 parks, and looks like this will be the fourth. I'd say that their Harry Potter lands are superior... and should be cloned, but that's just my opinion. 

Having been to SNW in Japan yes those stairs get obscenely crowded. I was shocked at the land's layout having gone in pretty much blind, it is so poorly optimised for the crowds USJ gets. The stairs were packed basically all the time and my timed entry was a couple of hours before close. Could barely move in there. I'd imagine it would be even worse with Donkey Kong open.

That said Singapore gets nowhere near the amount of patrons that USJ gets I think the stairs won't be too much of an issue in that iteration.

As for Harry Potter, the park is landlocked and Hogsmeade takes up a lot of room. Would be very very hard to fit it in that tiny park without coming at the expense of the ride count.

Edited February 17 by Baconjack

[WCE87]

Heading to Singapore in September, hoping to spend a couple of days at Universal

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

Truthfully except for the busiest days you can get USS done in a day. Especially if you spring for Express.

I love USS, but Singapore has so much to offer - i'd really recommend trying to knock the park off in a day so you can do other things on the other days. There is no shortage of things to do!

We've just booked our third trip since 2022 to Singapore, this time round we've allowed more time to explore Changi (we're still discovering new things at that bloody airport) and we're planning on a stay at the Banyan Tree lodge at Mandai.

I'm not even sure if we will go to Universal this time around.

[themagician]

31 minutes ago, DaptoFunlandGuy said:

Truthfully except for the busiest days you can get USS done in a day. Especially if you spring for Express.

I second this.
 

I’ve been to USS twice (Singapore three times in total), during first visit I got everything done in a day and on the second visit the park was so quiet we were done by mid-afternoon. There is so much to do in Singapore, so I’ve you’ve never been before just spend one day at USS and give that second day you were planning to something else. The zoos are amazing (there are now 5 within the one area of the country), so I would suggest allowing two days for that instead.

[Aw hype]

We went recently. USS was spectacularly busy, but we still felt we got it all done quite easily in a day. The Bird Park and River Wonders are both half day ventures. The zoo you can stretch out to a whole day if you really wanted to, and the night safari is self explanatory. Both Waterparks are pretty shit and a half day each at most. 

Honestly, there is so much to do in Singapore. Amazing place.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

10 hours ago, Aw hype said:

The Bird Park and River Wonders are both half day ventures. The zoo you can stretch out to a whole day if you really wanted to, and the night safari is self explanatory.

This is part of the reason we're planning to stay at Mandai - bird paradise and river wonders in a day - night safari at night, the original 'singapore zoo' is - i would say - around a two-thirds to three-quarter day on it's own, and you still have Rainforest Wild Asia which opened a few months ago.

It's too far from the 'city' to make multiple day trips, so staying nearby and knocking them all on the head means two days will get it done, but any of them are worth the trip - even if you only have a half day - pick what looks most interesting to you and give it a go.

If you aren't interested in zoos, or you're not keen on travelling that far (nothing is far in singapore, really) then there's still a mountain of other activities to do on Sentosa outside of USS including the luge, zipline, aquarium, waterpark, beach, minigolf, indoor karting and a whole host of other activities.

[Aw hype]

5 hours ago, DaptoFunlandGuy said:

 Rainforest Wild Asia which opened a few months ago..

Damn...Didn't even realise they were adding another one!

The Public transport is so good in Singapore that you can just about get anywhere. In saying that, if you have kids, it would be very convenient to just stay at mandai.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

I had completely forgotten about it until Magician mentioned it, but I had watched a local youtuber tour the new park with their kids earlier in the year (Wanderlust is the channel if you want to check it out) - so now we have to factor that into our planning as well. 

1 hour ago, Aw hype said:

The Public transport is so good in Singapore that you can just about get anywhere.

It is wonderfully efficient to get just about anywhere, but Mandai is pushing it...

The shuttle from Khatib station \ Route 138 from Springleaf are your best public transport options (and they are both reasonably cheap and services are very frequent - every 12-15 minutes) but you're still looking at up to 90 minutes one-way with interchanges from a central location like Dhoby Ghaut - which isn't ideal if you're planning on hitting multiple parks in a day. 

Our last two visits we stayed on Sentosa, which further compounds the issue - average travel times shoot up to over 2 hours, with 4 different interchanges - not the sort of journey you want to do after night safari, that's for sure!