Off On Our Next Adventure

With highs of 34 degrees, bright blue sky and blazing sunshine, Singapore well and truly delivered as the first city on our trip.

Family fun

With so many attractions to choose from and only 3 days to explore Singapore, we bought Gocity Explorer passes online that we could use to enter 3 of the main attractions: Gardens by the Bay Cloud Forest and Flower Dome, the Night Safari at Mandai Wildlife Park and the 4D Experience at the top of the Sentosa Island cable car. It turned out to be amazing value. Not included in this type of pass was the long anticipated visit to Universal Studios, which we all loved. We ended up paying the extra money for Express passes to avoid long queues at every ride, so it was a very expensive day out, but well worth it for a once in a lifetime experience. Our kids were the perfect  ages to enjoy it.

Every ride I went on in Universal Studios ranked         

by Leo

Universal studios was a fun and engaging experience which had many good rides, so I am going to rank all the ones I went on worst to best.

8. Treasure Hunt

Treasure hunt was the only ride in the park I found boring. It was a slow golf cart ride in which you went around a tiny lake and had unrealistic animatronic animals that only had one movement each, and the worst part was that it had no express queues meaning we had to wait around 30 minutes for this, obviously targeted at little kids and honestly I would rather drive around a golf course than sit through this again.

7. Accelerator

The accelerator was a sped-up teacup ride when you could control your speed it had a short queue and the ride wasn’t that long either. But other than that, it was a fun and charming ride for all ages.

6. Dino Soarin

A fun and slow-moving ride when you can choose the height of the pterodactyl, you’re in and get a good view of your surroundings, it is a good ride for younger children.

5. Enchanted Airways

An extremely fun and thrilling rollercoaster in which you got to ride on the dragon from Shrek’s back and go at a high speed on this themed rollercoaster. The only big flaws were that the ride lasted only about 40 seconds and even the express queue was long. Don’t recommend it for kids unless they don’t get scared by roller-coasters.  

4. Sesame Street Spaghetti Space Chase

The only reason this was better than enchanted airways was because it lasted a solid 3 minutes and told a good story as well. It is great for all ages ranging from infants to elders and is entertaining the whole way through. The only flaws are that it is slow moving and is not scary in any circumstances.

3. Jurassic Park Rapids Adventure

A fun water ride when you are in a bumper boat and are looking at the dinosaurs but then there is an outbreak and your boat must escape. By the end you go down a 12m drop and get splashed all over by water. A family friendly ride where you can get cooled off from the humid temperatures of Singapore.

2. TRANSFORMERS the ride: the ultimate 3D battle

An amazing 3D ride in which you witness a battle between good and evil and fight along as well. It gets you really immersed in the ride and was the best experience of my life by a mile up until…

1. The Revenge of the Mummy

A horrifyingly entertaining high-speed indoor rollercoaster with a max speed of 64km/h! in which you must lock the mummy back in his tomb and you go through several rooms and see flames bursting out of the walls and roof, many huge drops and high-speed movement and so scary that you get horrified before you even get on the ride. Truly one of the best rollercoasters in the world!

Anna’s journal and scrapbook

Anna is keeping a travel journal and filling a scrapbook given to her by Sharon at school. You can see her first entries about Singapore below.

Anna really enjoyed Universal Studios, although she wasn’t as impressed with the Transformers Ride as Leo was. Shaun talked her into it, promising her it wouldn’t be too scary. The result…

The Cloud Forest and Flower Dome at the Gardens by the Bay

One of my highlights in Singapore was visiting the Gardens by the Bay on Saturday. It was a glorious, sunshiney day and we made our way there after brunch at the Amoy hawkers’ market. We were a bit disappointed to only find half of the stalls open because it’s more of a weekday market catering to office workers but we still enjoyed a cheap and delicious meal there.

From there, we made our way to the Harbourfront, and enjoyed the chilly air conditioning as we had a good look around the Marina Bay Sands luxury shopping mall where designer shops sell an interesting array of fashions and accessories, including baby and toddler clothing that was eye-wateringly expensive. The Marina Bay Sands hotel is a fascinating piece of architecture…Shaun’s description of it looking like three pillars with a large hotdog bun resting on top was a pretty accurate description.

It was a long, hot walk through the gardens to the Cloud Forest Avatar experience and Flower Dome, and we were impressed with how easy it was to collect our tickets using our Gocity passes. The Avatar installations amidst the beautiful plantings of a huge variety of plants, ferns, trees, vines, flowers, and water features in the spectacular conservatory was truly magical. As Leo observed, it was very relaxing and calming compared to our busy Universal Studios mission the day before.

The Children’s Garden

The Children’s Garden, built by the Far East Organisation, is an amazing place to take kids. I’m glad I had done some research and remembered to bring the kids’ togs along, because as soon as they heard the sound of running water, and caught a glimpse of children frolicking around on the splashpad, they sprinted to the entrance, begging for their togs so they could join in the fun. We all enjoyed a peaceful hour there, sitting on the shady steps while Leo and Anna played happily in the fountains.

Singapore is Foodie Heaven!

The food from hawkers centres and food courts was delicious and a lot cheaper than NZ. We enjoyed black carrot cake, char siu pork with rice and greens, sweet and sour pork, chicken and rice, prawns in a fish broth with rice noodles, chicken, pate and pork banh mi, teriaki chicken don buri, lobster done two ways plus a yummy Mother’s Day breakfast at Common Man Coffee Roasters just down the road from our hotel. We also loved trying the icy cold drinks on offer everywhere…all of us were constantly drinking water to stay hydrated in the heat. Leo was very taken with 7/11s and needed to visit nearly every single one that we passed in order to check out the drinks and snacks on offer…winning purchases included Cheeto Puffs, Lay’s stacks, lemon/lime Gatorade and Pepsi with lime in it.

Little troopers

Leo and Anna have been the most amazing travelers so far, getting the hang of public transport using the MRT and public buses, coping with the intense heat while walking thousands of steps every day and managing to wait to eat until we found suitable places to  have breakfast, lunch or dinner. We were glad we packed a container full of muesli bars to bring with us to help us get through some of the longer days. Both of them reached breaking point at separate times, with Leo’s exhaustion catching up on Saturday evening (after walking more than 20,000 steps that day) and Anna having a meltdown when she was woken from her sleep in the taxi after the Night Safari. Considering how much they had done in the 2-3 days beforehand, these were pretty minor episodes, and it was good that they were able to express their frustration. After Leo described his utter exhaustion on Saturday evening, we reviewed our plans the following day and scratched the visit to Singapore Zoo, opting for the less intense 4D experience on Sentosa instead and saving our energy for the Night Safari. Both Leo and Anna were awestruck by the sight of the majestic Asian elephants, cute tapirs, lions, rhinos and a hippo at dusk. The Creatures of the Night show afterwards with owls, snakes, a gorgeous otter called Bubbles, and other nocturnal animals was spell-binding. We hope to return to Singapore and Singapore Zoo at a later date because it is such a vibrant city with so much to offer.