Universal Studios Singapore (Part 1)

Sentosa, Singapore – Monday, March 7th, 2011

In 2010, I had my first experience with a Disney “castle” park at Disneyland Paris. The following year in 2011, I would now have my first experience with a Universal “studio” park at Universal Studios Singapore. By 2013 I would have completed all parks in the world from both chains. A rather unorthodox order to experience them in, but in the case of Disneyland Paris I appreciated getting to start with the most beautiful and elaborate of the castle parks.

Universal Studios Singapore, on the other hand, wouldn’t go on to become one of my top tier studio parks by Universal… in fact, if I had to rank all four, Singapore might be last. I feel bad writing that because it’s not quite a fair comparison. Universal Studios Singapore is by far the smallest of Universal’s parks. It doesn’t quite have enough space to let its themed environments breathe the way they want to, nor was the attraction lineup by 2011 (just one year after its grand opening) quite up to par with the other locations.

Despite having “Studios” in the name, this park is really much closer to the design intent of what’s so far Universal’s only non-studio park, Islands of Adventure. A big lagoon at the center with distinct themed lands dotted around it, most of a more whimsical or exotic flavor like Islands of Adventure, compared to the realistic urban environments that traditionally made up the studios parks. From the perspective of environmental design and conceptual cohesion, Universal Studios Singapore could arguably be the most successful of Universal’s theme parks. And on paper the rest of the park seems like it should be pretty good, serving as a concise distillation of every other Universal park. Too bad that the best bits of other Universal parks tend to be found in the excesses.

Universal Studios Singapore is located on Sentosa, the resort island at the southern tip of Singapore, operated by the same folks that run the Resorts World Genting I experienced two days prior. Needless to say, they’ve improved their product tremendously with the Singapore edition.

The entry area is the main area that hews more closely to the Studios park model than the Islands of Adventure model, with a clean deco gate into a typical Hollywood style main street.

The big difference is the presence of a large glass atrium covering the entire street, which robs the zone of its authenticity (though is much better than what I would later find at Tokyo Disneyland’s entry).

Hooray for Hollywood’s gendered workplace roles!Arriving at the end of Hollywood is the big reveal of all the park’s lands across the lagoon:

To be perfectly honest, I’m not a huge fan of the central lagoon motif Universal has used on several occasions. Getting a clear viewshed of all the lands at once just reveals the obvious forced scaling and artificiality of it all since this is not the perspective that anything inside the lands was designed to be viewed at (except for the roller coasters which dominates all else). It also makes navigating the park a chore since there’s no real choice in pathways, only forward or backward. Plus with as little land as this park had to work with, I’m sure there’s better uses of this space than a big body of water that can’t even support a nightly spectacular water show.

Anyway, that way to New York City…

Like Hollywood, New York City is protected from the elements.

It’s also the most obvious place where the “Studios” DNA runs strong. Its lone opening day attraction is the only one in the park that puts any emphasis on the movie making aspect of the Universal Studios brand. Lights Camera Action! is a behind-the-scenes disaster effects show. Incredibly, despite feeling like the perhaps the most archetypal Universal Studios attraction ever, it somehow is a completely original production.

The queue isn’t exactly a testament to quality, neither thematic design nor cinematic…

We begin standing in three tiered rows for a multimedia preshow with a live host. (In case you’re wondering, everything at Universal Studios Singapore is conducted in English.)

They were even using the exact same laptop computer I had at the time.

Then we filter into the main show room. Having previously covered earthquakes and tornadoes, it only makes sense that on this attraction we get treated to a hurricane. Instead of crashing subways or flying cows, we get a big boat that wanders into the wrong room.

There were plenty of facades in New York City that seemed ready for an attraction to get installed behind them.

Yet there was also a lot of really nice detailing that encouraged exploration, far more than I found at other Universal New York streets.

Battlestar Galactica and Sci-Fi City are up ahead, but since Battlestar Galactica was closed for the first several hours of the day (no surprise there), I’m going to backtrack and continue this tour of Universal Studios Singapore in the opposite direction.

Madagascar is one of two zones at Universal Studios Singapore based on a Dreamworks Animation film. Interestingly, these were built before Universal acquired Dreamworks and had to license the films; now that they own the rights, apparently this area is slated to get replaced with a Minions-themed land.

The land was pretty underutilized when I visited, but that was largely due to the fact that the main attraction, Madagascar: A Crate Adventure, was still closed in order to be completely redesigned when it was discovered that the original flume ride system didn’t work. Evidently it was built to have lifts and drops, but the version that finally opened a few months after my visit was just a slow-moving enclosed boat ride like Small World.

While I can’t attest to if the ride was any good, I am a bit bummed it’s getting replaced with what I presume will be another Minion Mayhem simulator. I’ll take a one-of-a-kind dark ride with practical scenery over a cloned simulator attraction any time.

The only attraction in operation in this zone was King Julien’s Beach Party-Go-Round. It looks decent enough but wasn’t exactly drawing in the crowds here.

That’s a lot of design and infrastructure to support two benches.

While the landscaping is lovely and works well with Singapore’s climate, I’m not entirely sure why Madagascar exists as an entire land. There’s a lot of space that doesn’t really serve any narrative or design purpose, since the land essentially only exists to funnel people into the ride queue. It might have made a lot more sense to place a Madagascar ride in the New York City section, since the story really should begin in New York anyway, and it would have freed up a lot more space in the front of the park. I can’t see Minions requiring even half this space, given that the simulator surely has a smaller footprint than the boat ride, so maybe they’ll be able to squeeze two new lands out of it?

Up next is Far Far Away, aka the Shrek land.

Visually, Far Far Away is perhaps my least favorite in the park, leaning heavily on a beige color palette with lots of open hardscapes that don’t play well with the Singapore sun. Up close, however, are lots of playful details.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of this park is that they built this enormous castle that promises so much from the exterior, and then they only placed a duplicate of the tired Shrek 4-D Adventure show inside of it.

The queue is at least a modicum better than the stateside installations… not that that’s saying much.

Same pre-show, which is probably the best part of it.

And while the main show isn’t terrible (it actually tells a dramatic story within the same continuity of the movie series and the writing quality is generally about the same as the movies), it’s a little awkward out of context in a theme park and has very low repeatability value. There’s only so many times I need to feel an unsanitary plastic cord swatted against my legs before the novelty value wears off. This is where a Minion Mayhem simulator would serve as a much better replacement.

They do have an indoor mini Ferris wheel at the show exit, which is one of those completely unnecessary additions that maybe ends up being the thing I remember most about the experience.

As far as screen-based show attractions go, Donkey Live! is easily the best in Far Far Away.

Donkey Live! is what I believe is Universal’s first attempt at a digital puppet style interactive show, much like Disney’s Turtle Talk or Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor. While the technology isn’t seamless, I would actually say that I like Donkey Live! better than either of those examples. The character of Donkey is better for an “all-ages” audience than being more strictly targeted at young kids. I’m also amazed they were able to cast such a good sound-alike improv voice actor in Singapore. During one audience work bit, Donkey found out a couple had been dating for five years, and after an extended berating of her deadbeat boyfriend Donkey and the live facilitator went on to arrange an impromptu wedding ceremony for the two.

What is now the Puss In Boots suspended coaster was in 2011 just a dead end.