Day 5 - A Universally Great Day

Today was Universal Studios day! With no Blue Jays game to distract me, I left the hotel at a respectable hour and caught the MRT to Harbourfront station where there is a huge shopping mall called Vivocity. It is from Vivocity that one can catch the monorail onto Sentosa Island (if you are not singing the Monorail song from The Simpsons now, have words with yourself).

Sentosa Island is a ‘resort island’, which I think means ‘Island of Fun Things’ - it certainly felt that way. My main objective for the day was to go on all the big rides at Universal Studios - a task made a bit trickier by the fact that the park was closing early tonight for Halloween.

Completely going against my plan to walk straight to the big rides before queues got too long, I instead got distracted by all things Minion; and queued for the Minion Mayhem ride. I had been on a version of this in California, and it was even more fun than I remembered it. Essentially it’s a fun simulator for all the family!

Dragging myself away from Minion Land, I went to The Lost World for some dinosaur themed adventures. I stopped for a quick drink and snack, befriending a guy visiting from Portsmouth for work (but having a day off!) as I did, and then went on the Jurassic World rapids ride. It was absolutely lovely to get drenched on the ride! There was a slightly unnerving moment when the ride stopped for a bit when my boat was in the dark underneath a dinosaur roaring at us (It turns out that the stoppage was not pert of the ride!) but I loved that ride!

I moved on from dinosaurs to Ancient Egypt to ride Revenge of the Mummy: The Ride - a fun indoor rollercoaster. The single rider line for this ride treated me very well indeed, and the ride itself was fun.

Next up was Sci-Fi land and the big coaster of the park. I have never been on a dueling coaster before - where there are two coasters entwined - and it was a cool concept to have the ‘Human’ coaster and the ‘Cylon’ coaster in a Battlestar Galactica themed ride. The queues for both sides were pretty long and with hindsight I made the wrong decision to go for the ‘Human’ side. Whilst it was a nice ride, there were no inversions, and it was a bit tame. Apparently the Cylon side is the better coaster, but I didn’t know that at the time! I did get to meet a teacher from India called Nina in the queue, which helped to pass the time, but I decided not to queue for the Cylon ride afterwards as I did not want to queue again.

Still in the Sci-Fi zone, my next ride was Transformers 3D. This was my least favourite ride of the day (at least I didn’t have to queue for it!) - I think because I haven’t watched the films and didn’t really know what was going on!

Finally, I went into the New York City zone and had a real treat riding the Sesame Street Spaghetti Space Chase ride. I didn’t entirely follow the reasoning for why we were rescuing spaghetti from space, but it was a LOT of fun. If you’ve been to Disney, the ride had Peter Pan’s Adventure vibes. The Sesame Street shop afterwards was an absolute delight too but I did get my debit card out unscathed.

With it getting close to closing time, my final stops were to an ice-cream shop (YUM!) and then the Minions Mart because yes, I did need a new Minions t-shirt.

On leaving the park, I decided to explore more of Sentosa Island. I’d heard there was a luge experience that was well worth it, so hunted that down. Man was it worth it!

The luges are essentially three wheeled go-karts. There are four tracks (read: routes down the hill!) that you can take, each between 600m and 700m long, and after each ride you get to go back up the hill on the ‘Skyride’ - aka a chairlift. I had a LOT of fun. Whilst I do drive like a bit of a granny, I did do some overtaking and definitely wasn’t using my brakes as much by the fourth run.

After all the excitement, it was back to the monorail to Vivocity for a bit of food, and then back to my hotel for the night. With a very early start for parkrun tomorrow, and then an overnight flight to New Zealand, I should probably get an early night. Only after I have watched Celebrity Traitors though!