Singapore/Taiwan 2017

[peep]

Saturday 25th

This was our last day in Taichung, I think we were both grateful that we no longer had to stay at that hotel. So we left our suitcases at the main train station in Taichung and headed onwards to Lihpao Land.

How we got to Lihpao land:
We took the train from Taichung to Houli (義里里). This is a much smaller train station than we'd already visited, outside was a world of bikes and cab drivers looking for customers. However we walked straight down the main street until we got to a school (it's rather obvious), we then waited for bus 155. This bus then took us straight to the park/mall.

Honestly, I don't think either of us were expecting this park to be part of like a resort/mall complex like E-DA World.

We then got our tickets and headed in to the park. I was crazy excited/anxious, totally walked really fast around the corner and straight over to Gravity Max. Hadn't seen it run yet which was terrifying. The queueline was open though so we walked in. I don't know why but I never knew this coaster even had an inversion, so that added to my excitement.

We then noticed how massive the (empty) queueline was, I would not want to be here on a busy day that's for sure...

Yep, it has a multi-storey cattlepen, eat that Merlin!

There were maybe about 50-odd peeps in front of us, so a couple of trains wait. So why hadn't we seen it run yet? The park was running it once every 15 minutes. FIFTEEN GAWD DARN MINUTES. I was anxious as it was, did not need this. On top of that there's a video on loop providing a full run down of the evac procedure on the tilt section of track because if the wind gets over a certain speed it e-stops! WTF is this madness? No wonder we haven't seen Vekoma build a second one.

After what felt like eternity we were finally on the ride! We even got back row, it has been such a long time since I was last so excited/nervous about a coaster. We finally reached the top of the lift hill and rolled out on to the tilt section, heartbeat starts to speed up as it slows down to a halt. It then tilts and OMFG it was absolutely terrifying - in a good way. The best way to describe the sensation is like the S&S sky swats as they go over the top but then randomly stopping as you reach a vertical position. Some noises occur then BAM, the train just plummets into the tunnel. It was absolutely incredible, reminded me of my first ride on Oblivion. The speed it rushes through that tunnel is also amazing and then it just shoots you through the vertical loop which is super smooth, it then turns around a bit before hitting the brakes. Boy it was a proper rush.

I waited around to film it go round once before deciding to get the other cred via some food. The weather started to turn a bit since we made this decision, it really clouded over and the wind really picked up. It's safe to say it closed shortly after we left that area of the park. So close to being spited.

The park looks really old and just unkept. Gravity Max got a lovely new paint job last year though (looks fab) and some parts of the kids areas had been recently painted so maybe there's hope this park is finally getting some investment? I mean, whatever this was just looked like it was out of some dystopian sci-fi flick...

Still full of nightmares...

I didn't get any photos but I think this was the park where it dawned on us that there was a really weird trend in this parks. Each one seemed to have a Turkish ice cream vendor complete with Turkish man. It's obviously a Worldwide thing but it was the way each park had one, like you'd expect a dippin' dots in American parks. Found an example on youtube...

Anyway the other cred in this park is a standard Vekoma junior coaster. It was looking rather sad but rode like all the others. The queueline even had an attempt at theming.

There weren't any other rides that looked appealing, with a vast majority of them being for little kids. So we popped into the clearly brand new shopping mall which was quite popular. After wasting lots of time wandering around inside we hopped back into the park in the vain hope that Gravity Max had re-opened. It had not. Stupid weather. We did however get to hear the entirety of the parade soundtrack from Magic Kingdom in Florida - that was odd. Anyway, here's a couple more pics of this very sad park.

Really glad I got to experience Gravity Max but I was saddened to see it in such a sad location. Is it worth the excursion out there? Yes? If only to be able to experience such a unique coaster. If you do, I wish you all the luck for many re-rides.

So we jumped back on the bus and headed back to Taichung. At Houli station as we were waiting in the freezing cold (we were dressed for warmth, stupid us) a random old steam train came rolling in. Instantly everyone in the station became train goons, taking lots of pictures of the train. I joined in.

After collecting our suitcases in Taichung we headed to the high speed station to get a speedy train all the way up to Taipei. It was busy, so we stood the whole way, urgh. Safety signs in Asia continued to be my favourite thing ever...

Taipei was rainy and horrible, so our walk from the metro to the hotel was interesting. Our hotel in Taipei was chosen because it was themed. It was a "that looks hilarious, we should book it!" - semi regrets were had when we realised the beds were quite thin and hard. However look at our Chinese tea house themed hotel, the details everywhere were Disney-level, each floor represents a different era - not sure what era ours was.

So as it was fairly late we just watched a bit of TV and got some rest, ready for another day of theme parking.


Full photo album - https://imageshack.com/a/5Zgl/1


Thanks for reading, I'll be posting the next part soon.

 

[Hixee]

I didn't realise Gavity Max has been repainted. Both a much better colour scheme and it looks better taken care of! Shame about the rest of the park, I suppose.

 

[jayjay]

Think I'm going to stop complaining about dispatch times. Fifteen minutes is obscene. Glad the drop lived up to your expectations though

 

[Gavin]

Got 15 rides in on Gravity Max. Just saying.

It's a long time since I hit those parks up, so I guess the transport options could have changed, but it really seems like you did a lot of that arse over tit.

Janfusun, Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village and Lihpoa Land all had direct buses from Taichung, leaving from the same bus stop. There was also a direct bus from Lihpoa to Taipei, meaning it wasn't necessary to go in the complete opposite direction back to Taichung first.

It's kind of sad that there's so little been added to any of those park. Without checking, it's around 10 years since I went, and other than a Mack water coaster at Formosan, there's f**k all else new.

 

[peep]

Sunday 26th

Another day, another theme park. Unfortunately the weather was not on our side this day but we certainly made the most of it. The plan was to visit Leofoo Village and then pop over to Window on China as it's down the same road. Due to the weather we took a lot longer at Leofoo than planned so had to skip Window on China and it's two creds (boo).

How we got to Leofoo Village:
We hopped on the metro over to Songshan airport (surreal being on a train surrounded by apartment blocks and offices, train turns a corner and there's just an airport next to you). There we caught a coach (E-go -Longtan line) to the park. There was meant to be a ticket desk somewhere but we couldn't find it, turns out halfway through the coach journey you pull over to a tiny office where you can buy your tickets. Journey took about 2 hours and the coaches leave fairly frequently.

As I've already pointed out, the weather sucked. We wandered over to the first cred, which was closed. There were animal enclosures nearby and a train safari. To stay a bit dry we hopped on the next train.

The train safari was rather depressing, a lot of the areas looked really poor for the animals (either too small or just barren) but it was all made worse by the wet weather as most of the animals were hiding. We did see some though...

The next area of the park was Arabian themed and it looked like it had a big indoor attraction so we went to check it out. Sultan's Adventure was an absolutely wonderful "discovery". This dark ride uses the same ride system as Dinosaur and Indiana Jones at the Disney parks. Now I want to know how many more of these exist! Clearly a lot of money had been poured into this ride but it was all a bit random. It felt like it was programmed by someone who didn't know what they were doing, it would slow down in scenes where there was nothing to look at and then a room where there were effects/something happening it just sped through at such speed it was a bit of a blur. The theming was a bit tacky ghost house budget but the sheer mass of it impressed both of us. This thing felt like it was so much longer than the Disney ones (I just checked youtube POVs - it's not). Overall it was certainly an A+ for effort but about a C for experience. Love random surprises like this when visiting parks. Oh I should point out it wasn't running consistently, we "queued" outside the building with about 20 other peeps despite their being an incredibly detailed indoor queueline.

The scale of the theming in the Arabian area was actually impressive but yet again it was looking really tired and worn down. Not helped by the two thrill flat rides in the area being closed (for refurb?).

Next we entered the South Pacific themed area of the park. First thing we came across was a massive log flume in a mountain ride with random dinos?

Water ride 1 looked too wet for us, so we moved on. Instead we went on Pagoda's Revenge an Intamin drop tower. I was really impressed with the theming on this, just really cool. As always, the drop tower was brilliant, all the air time!

Then we entered the Wild West area. OMG a cred was running! Little rattler is just another standard Vekoma junior coaster. It actually had a fair queue as the rain had pretty much stopped.

It was clearly in much better condition than the previous one at Lihpao. As we were in the queue we heard the magnificent sound of something even better running. The park's Intamin pulse coaster was open! So we obviously headed straight over to Screaming Condor. Weirdly the entrance takes you through an arcade before a staircase down to a massive underground station and queue area. I was really impressed with how this had been designed, having one of the pikes sticking out of the ground was awesome and the rush of that amazing launch system out into the open is great. I've loved all of these impulse coasters so this was no exception, the fact it had decent theming made it my favourite.

We then took a break for some food. All the burger buns had the park character faces on, which was nice (also tasty). There was also a ridiculous family meal on offer.

I wanted to go back on Screaming Condor but after food wasn't a good idea so we opted to go back over to the Arabian area for the movie attraction. Happy and Hunny (the park characters) 5D adventure. This looked new but in an old theatre. Before we entered they asked people to sign into Facebook via the park's wifi/app/website for "extra experience". No idea what was happening but about 60% of the peeps around us signed in. We then proceed into the theatre with small rows of motion simulator seats. The film was ok, nice to see the park incorporate their own characters into something like this. Then out of nowhere the graphics change to something a bit more PS2-esque. People are then waving their phones about. You signed into whatever via Facebook so you could turn your phone into a wand/whatever to battle the big bad! Mind was blown. What an interesting way to turn it interactive. Also having everyone's profile pic from Facebook introduced some funny moments.

We then went back to Savanna Spinner now that it was open. Actually had a queue which was weird. The ride was weird too, not very good but it was longer than I was expecting?

We then meandered for a bit, watched the random large fountain area that sets off to music. Then it was back to Screaming Condor for one more ride.

Looked ok but the weather was just too miserable for a rapids

It was then time to leave Leofoo Village, despite the wet start to the day we ended up really liking the park. It's a bit dated in places but it has some really good attractions, really exceeded our expectations. We did contemplate for a bit about still visiting Window on China and even though the coach stops there once we were on the coach we couldn't be bothered to leave it (also looked like the ticket desks had closed, not surprising, there was only an hour left of opening).

So it was back to Taipei where we meandered around a giant underground shopping mall and grabbed food nearby.

This is the main train station, the building is obscene

Full album - https://imageshack.com/a/mZgl/1

The next day will be up in a bit, thanks for reading!

 

[peep]

Got 15 rides in on Gravity Max. Just saying.

It's a long time since I hit those parks up, so I guess the transport options could have changed, but it really seems like you did a lot of that arse over tit.

Janfusun, Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village and Lihpoa Land all had direct buses from Taichung, leaving from the same bus stop. There was also a direct bus from Lihpoa to Taipei, meaning it wasn't necessary to go in the complete opposite direction back to Taichung first.

It's kind of sad that there's so little been added to any of those park. Without checking, it's around 10 years since I went, and other than a Mack water coaster at Formosan, there's f**k all else new.

Aww, jealous of your multi-rides on Max.

I think some options may have changed? It was an utter pain to find info on some of the trips, even some of the journey options since Nic and Jake's trip last year didn't seem to be available any more. As for getting from Lihpao to Taipei, that was more a big suitcase faff situation - I don't trust faffing around with a large suitcase to find out there's not a decent location to store it at the park etc.

 

[Gavin]

Yeah, I got very lucky in that there was some tourist leaflet in Taipei that had the parks in it, and the people at the tourist information pulled out some bus schedule for Taichung. I just showed up at that bus station - more of a bus stop with a ticket counter - and showed the relevant page of the brochure to get the right bus.

They kept my suitcase in some office at Discovery World as it was then called. There was no official luggage facility, but I think I was one of the first foreign tourists to ever show up, so they were very accommodating.

 

[Coaster Hipster]

Leofoo Village looks like it has some decent theming. Too bad parts of it aren't getting enough care Screaming Condor seems amazing though, the scenery really adds to the experience.

Seems that getting to ride Gravity Max is quite a journey itself I guess the anticipation is even bigger when you're finally boarding this thing.

Also the trains on Gravity Max look great Much better and elegant than those new trains on refurbished boomerangs for example. I wonder why Vekoma did not use GM's trains instead, or at least copy the design.

 

[roomraider]

I seem to remember just getting a bus from the bus stop right below the train station to Lihpao land. but my memory is a bit hazy.

As for that weird Sci-Fi, dystopian structure thing I seem to remember reading its actually part of what used to be on the site before the park. Some research center maybe? and then they've kind of incorporated it into the park for some reason.

Like you I though Gravity Max was one of the biggest rushes ive had on a ride in years. It was brilliant. (I also got multiple rides )
The parks in general look a lot more run down than when I went and it was 4 or 5 years ago. Shame there is so little investment in what are otherwise really nice midsized parks,

 

[peep]

I seem to remember just getting a bus from the bus stop right below the train station to Lihpao land.

Houli station didn't have any buses running along the road outside it but if I recall correctly Lihpao was one of the parks where we found several station options. Maybe you went to a different station? Or they've changed the bus routes in the last 4 years.

Makes sense that the weird structure was from before it was a park, still it's a very odd structure.

 

[Pink Cadillac]

Leofoo's theming is fab! The pics from the Sultan's Adventure look amazing, shame the ride experience didn't match up!

 

[peep]

Monday 27th

Our plan for the day was grab the +1 in Taipei and then do some sightseeing. So after getting some breakfast we caught the metro over to Shilin station and then took a nice walk over to the park (its about a 20 min walk, there are buses available). We loved seeing all of the electrical boxes on the side of paths decorated, reminded me of Brighton...

The weather was lovely but maybe a bit too hot, a total contrast to some of our park days. Before long we had arrived at Taipei Children's amusement park. To enter we used our metro cards which was cool. It's quite a nice little park and each ride is pay to ride. So we simply rode the coaster and left. The coaster was super smooth.

We then took a rather lengthy but nice walk along the river/canal which finally led us to National Palace Museum. It's a magnificent building. We grabbed some lunch in their cafe before heading into the museum. It's nice but I got bored after a while as it was just a lot of pottery. The section I think we were both looking forward to with all the art was closed too so that was disappointing. We still managed to take hours walking around though, the air con was also appreciated after our long walk.

The room full of opium bottles was interesting, mainly because it showed off the British-influenced drug problem.

As we headed back to the metro I found this little guy...

We also walked through a little garden...

Some of the houses in the area were nuts....

We then made our way to the other side of the city for the Elephant Mountain hiking trail. Had seen lots of recommendations to climb up here for the city views instead of paying to go up Taipei 101. The trail was a really steep staircase. The stairs were old, uneven and sometimes falling apart, to say I wasn't thrilled about getting back down is putting it lightly (I don't do well with old staircases going down - up is fine, basically I'm a cat). We made it to the first viewing platform and had a bit of a chat with an old local guy who was awesome (he made it his daily exercise routine). Patrick headed up to the top one (the trail just gets worse so was glad I didn't do it) so I took in the view as the sun set.

It was beautiful and so tranquil. I even saw a few bats flying about which was cool. I highly recommend checking it out if you visit Taipei.

We then walked back down the mountain, checked out Taipei 101 up close and then went in search of food.

After grabbing some food fairly nearby we headed back to the hotel and getting some rest before another day of sightseeing.

 

[peep]

Tuesday 28th

While we grabbed breakfast we put together a bit of a plan for our day sightseeing Taipei. It was yet another hot and sunny day, which was nice. We started off by walking over to the National Taiwan Museum. We saw a few reviews saying it's not great for foreigners so we just milled around the gardens, saw a few squirrels and then headed onwards.

Our ridiculous walk then took us past the Presidential office. It was heavily guarded and there were a few media peeps waiting in the sun for something to happen. It's a really cool building though, built during the period where Japan ruled the country.

The whole area had really huge interesting buildings. Our next stop was Taipei botanical gardens. It wasn't that great, I suppose it's a pleasant enough little park but it's not really worth going out of the way for. There's an interesting little building that they're renovating though.

We then walked over to National Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. This place was huge and quite a sight to behold. The two buildings with golden roof tiles were big concert halls and then the amazing blue tiled building was the memorial hall which also houses a museum on Chiang Kai-Shek.

I was shocked how huge it felt once inside. We both also had no idea who this Kai-Shek guy was and that was all about to change. We headed down into where they have temporary exhibitions etc but also a permeant one on his entire life. We found it really fascinating and it gave us a little history lesson on the whole Taiwan/China thing. We even saw official American government peeps having a tour which was surreal. It's actually a really well presented exhibition which goes through each stage of his life/career. The last room has a really creepy realistic waxwork of him sitting at a desk.

We then took a stroll through the really busy gardens because blossom season.

We then did a pretty big walk to get over to Ximending which is pretty much like a chunk of Tokyo plonked in Taipei. It's really crammed with restaurants, shops, cinemas and bizarrely nail salons? It's really neat, just made me want to go back to Japan even more though.

We had a really nice Japanese meal before heading back to the hotel. It was a great day, but also exhausting.


Wednesday 29th

We flew back to Singapore in the morning. Our Eva Air flight was one of the special Sanrio planes. Everything was covered in Hello Kitty and friends. The cutlery, food packaging, head rests, everything. Here's the webpage for their ridiculous themed planes...

http://www.evaair.com/en-global/boo...-kitty-jets/guide-to-eva-special-livery-jets/

Once back in Singapore we checked into our lovely Holiday Inn Express, grabbed some dinner and watched Power Rangers at the cinema. It was a good day.


Thanks for reading, the next part will include some more Singapore sights.

Taipei photo album 1 - https://imageshack.com/a/Wugl/1
Taipei photo album 2 - https://imageshack.com/a/2ugl/1

 

[Hixee]

Some of the architecture in these places look so great. Whilst I do think they all look rather spectacular, Tapei 101 must be one of the best looking supertall buildings in the world. The design is lovely. That view from the hillside sounds/looks amazing, something I'd definitely bear in mind if I visit!

The more traditional stuff is also pretty impressive - I particularly like the white archways with blue tiles.

 

[peep]

Thursday 30th

We had a day of sightseeing in Singapore, we had a small list of things we wanted to tick off that we hadn't already done. We started off with a visit to Changi museum (free entry) over by the airport. It's a really small museum about the prison camps and Japanese rule during WWII after the British messed up big time. It was interesting to learn about this dark period in the countries' history but it wasn't organised very well, felt like the timeline of things as you walk around jumped all over the place and it was also very repetitive.

The weather was nice when we arrived but by the time we left it was heavily raining. Boo. Especially as we were going over to Sentosa island. We planned to grab a spot of lunch at one of the billion shopping malls which was on the way. We found an incredible bakery, it was awesome.

We then continued over to the island and we took the monorail all the way to the other side of the island. We then had to catch their beach-side bus to the fort.

The fort is actually situated up a big hill and they'd recently installed a giant lift attached to a bridge. It provided some nice views (despite the awful weather).

I'm not a beach person but even I found their beaches inviting.

I think this massive apartment complex (situated on a private island) looks like it belongs in some epic sci-fi flick

The fort was actually fascinating, free to enter it was really informative and essentially provided us with the same information that the Changi museum provided us with but in even more detail and told in much more interesting ways. Other sections even covered the earlier days of the fort where you followed Colonel Cooper (yay!) looking around the various facilities. I think we both loved this, a must-see if you visit Singapore and have even a slight interest in history.

It was then back over the epic modern bridge to get back down. This is where we encountered a wild monkey! We were amused by it for ages, honestly the last thing either of us expected.

As the rain had kinda stopped we decided to walk back to the monorail station. There is so much going on along this beach. There was an epic zip line over to an island (looked awesome), they were building a ridiculous bungy jump/swing tower thing and there were loads of cool looking bars. They also have a massive night show over here but its an extra cost. We were planning on seeing the free one anyway, more on that in a mo.

We decided to wander around the main bit over by Universal and grab some dinner at Hard Rock cafe.

It was then time for the crane dance show. It's an interesting display of technology and the two "cranes" are much bigger than they look.

It was then back to the hotel to get some rest for another theme park day. It was a nice day despite the weather, always enjoy learning about the history of where I'm visiting, I'm still in awe as to how much there is to do on that one little island, fantastic place.

Photo album - https://imageshack.com/a/9ugl/1


Thanks for reading, next part is Legoland.

 

[Coaster Hipster]

Cool report! Singapore appears to be a fab place to visit, very modern but still distinctive and charming

 

[peep]

Friday 31st

Our plan for the day was to hop over the border and visit Legoland Malaysia. We booked a coach and ticket package through the official website in advance, we booked a slightly later coach and decided to get a fairly late coach back. The coach service is operated by some travel company located at the big Singapore Flyer. It was only a short bus ride from our hotel, which was nice.

The coach takes a couple of hours with some border faff in the middle. Going out was fairly efficient, especially considering how coach was full. Got loads of stamps in my passport too which made me happy. The park was further from the border than I was expecting and seems to be surrounded by a lot of nothing. There's a giant hotel and quite a few peeps on our coach were actually staying there, seemed odd to us.

The toilet signs amused me.

We headed straight for Project X, a complete clone that you'll find at some of the other parks. Meh, +1.

The weather was slightly overcast but the humidity was intense so I needed some air con. Oh look, an indoor Star Wars miniland.

Next up was the Kingdom area with the two other creds. I like the theming in this area but most of it I've seen at the other parks.

Dragons Apprentice was a bit more forceful than I was expecting. The Dragon is a fun family coaster, lots of things weren't working in the dark ride section though.

We then went in search of food, got a little distracted by miniland on our way. Thought this was a decent one, lots of really big Asian landmarks.

We ended up grabbing lunch at a cafe near the entrance, it was really tasty.

We then went in search of Lego Batman, they had quite a few things going on related to the movie. There was a hunt for little Lego Jokers that they'd hidden in miniland etc and they had a big room set up for large chunks of Gotham etc.

We then popped back into miniland for a bit.

We then headed into Lost Kingdom Adventure, their Egyptian themed shooty ride. I think these are ok, lots of targets and lots of things to look at.

Literally next door was the brand new Ninjago interactive ride. I was looking forward to seeing one of these in person (the one at Windsor just opened). I really liked the theming. The ride, not so much. It makes zero sense and the wave motion barely works, it's lame and becomes frustrating.

I think these are a neat thing for the queueline

The big log flume was closed, which was a shame.

We decided to watch something in the 4D theatre. It was one of the much older films, pretty lame. We wanted to go on the tower ride but after waiting for it to do a cycle it broke down, no idea what they did to it but it was down for the rest of the day. We randomly ended up on a spinny ride instead.

After another ride on the Dragon coaster it was back over to the 4D theatre for the Lego Movie 4D film (in Chinese, we missed the English ones). Despite not knowing what they were saying it was amusing here and there and the animation is fantastic. Afterwards we thought it would be best to give Ninjago another go, maybe we were just being bad? Nope, it just doesn't work, silly ride system.

After another little look at miniland we pretty much had to kill time in the shop before waiting for our coach back. Urgh, really should have booked an earlier coach, we were so bored by the time we had to leave.

This bit of miniland had a canon effects going off between a fort and ship, it was pretty cool....

The coach back hit massive traffic getting into the Singapore border control. It was frustrating. Once we got off the coach the queue inside for passport checks was insane and moved so slowly. I think we were in there over an hour? Maybe 90 minutes. It was gross and everyone was getting anxiety about the coach waiting for us. So unpleasant. We finally got back to Singapore but so much later than planned. We grabbed some dinner somewhere and headed back to the hotel.

I think I'm giving up on bothering with Lego parks now, I just don't enjoy them, they're just stale? Sometimes there's something cool but for how much these parks cost to get into (granted, I think the Malaysia one was cheap) it just doesn't feel worth it. Also hated we couldn't just leave whenever we wanted to, that was frustrating.


Full photo album = https://imageshack.com/a/cugl/1


Next part is the last day of the trip with more Universal goodness. Thanks for reading.

 

[peep]

Saturday 1st April

Our last full day of the trip was finally upon us and we had another full day at Universal Studios Singapore. It was nice to have another full day to just relax and enjoy the park, it was also busier than our first day which made me glad we added that initial visit in to our plans.

Our first attraction of the day was Sesame Street: Spaghetti Space Chase. I really do love the amazing puns everywhere.

Outside we saw Oscar the Grouch, it was a little odd seeing him walk...

We then queued 20 minutes or so for Battlestar: Cylon. The wait was actually quite frustrating as there was like maybe a train load of peeps in the normal queue and it took 20 minutes, all because of a continuous stream of fastpass peeps and the ride staff were being useless at life. Urgh, those people can go eat a brick.

We then joined the single rider queue for Mummy which was being organised really well. Good ride staff, complete opposite to those on Battlestar.

Love this merch stall

As we were exiting the ride building the weather had taken a rather wet course. We initially ran for cover in the Jurassic Park fast food place for a spot to eat, however it felt like everyone else had the same idea. So we stupidly decided to run to the Sci-fi city/America area as it was all under cover. During this run we got absolutely soaked through, this storm was unpleasant.

After food the weather had calmed to a mere drizzle so we went back to the Jurassic area, tempted by the rapids (for the lolz) we were slightly disappointed when it was closed. After a bit of shopping and faffing we made our way over to the Shrek area.

We rolled our eyes and entered the castle where Shrek 4D is. The queueline was fairly well themed until you get to the main waiting room with its bare industrial ceiling.

Urgh, so Shrek 4D is as terrible as I remember it being in Orlando. It's just so awful, not helped by the seats in this one being really aggressive. The theatre exits into a massive shop which unexpectedly hosts a small ride...

We both loved the theming in this shop.

We were waiting for the afternoon parade to begin but then there was an announcement for it's cancellation. We spoke to a member of staff who informed us that when it's cancelled due to weather there's actually a thing down in the New York street area. So we headed over to there where we found a huge crowd of people, somehow everyone else knew this was a thing? So essentially they play a song, a bunch of dancers do a bit of a dance and then they break up into groups for photo ops. Was rather disappointing.

I don't think I've posted a pic yet of the huge Madagascar boat?

After a bit of shopping we met Oscar and the Cookie monster.

The theming in the street sets is just so awesome. Still find it amusing that it seemed like the "in" place to pose for photos.

Transformers didn't really have a wait so we walked on to that. We then caught a singing act outside Mels Diner called the Cruisers. They were pretty good.

After grabbing some tasty slushes we went for a ride on Madagascar.

Honestly I think we were a bit bored by this point, the only thing we wanted to re-ride lots was Battlestar Cylon and it was like the only thing with a burdenous queue (40+ mins in a stuffy small staircase where the queue barely moves, no thanks). So we opted to take a ride on Faraway Express, passing Shrek's house on the way.

We queued up for the Mummy, we were going to do single rider but some awful man running the queuelines was being adamant that the single rider queue was already "too long" - it wasn't.

We headed back near the entrance for some dinner next, I took some photos of Battlestar on the way...

We had dinner at the Chinese restaurant which was actually pretty good. It was getting dark when we got out which made us happy. After taking more photos we had two rides on Battlestar Galactica: Human (no queue because two trains!). A shame it was the more boring side but it's still fun.

It was then time for the evening fireworks. Well, they were certainly loud. Wasn't that great tbh, just very loud and not that impressive.

And that was the end of our time at Universal Studios Singapore. It was a very relaxed day and I'm really glad it wasn't our only day at the park, I would have been proper stressing about getting things done, especially during the storm.

We had a quick look round the big shopping mall where you catch the monorail and there was a big shop that sold like collectible stuff for comics/films etc. At the back they had these huge models, I can't see how/why anyone would buy one but they were cool...

Full album - https://imageshack.com/a/sugl/1

And that's it, thanks for reading through my rambles and I hope you gained some sort of enjoyment from it all. I really recommend visiting both Singapore and Taiwan, both are fab. Singapore is certainly on my list of places I'd like to revisit.

The parks were certainly a mixed bag but there's some really interesting and good things out there.

 

[Hixee]

Nice final section, and a good conclusion to what sounds like a great trip.

Thanks for taking the time to post it all!

 

[Mysterious Sue]

Wow, odd to hear that you needed the two days. It was absolutely dead when I went - although it was when BSG was down (boo).
Like US Japan, it has terrible operations in places but overall is a great-looking park.

Also, photos don't do justice to just how big the Madagascar boat is. I actually quite enjoyed the ride too for what it was.
The worse thing about the park was the constant repeated playing of one of the Madagascar songs in that area though.