Great Tips For Visiting Universal Studio Singapore (USS) & LUGE SKYLINE Sentosa Island on Christmas Eve

This post is not going to have any pictures of the rotating globe which is significant to Universal Studios around the world. You ain't going to see any selfie pictures with any mascot and pretty much there ain't going to be no pictures in this post! However, I'm going to share with you some really GREAT TIPS to make the most out of your USS Singapore trip. I'm going to list them out so that it's easier to read and stuff. Here goes:

1. Try to visit USS Singapore on Christmas Eve because the theme park is open from 10 am until 10pm. In short, you get to play all rides and possibly with no waiting time longer than 5-10 minutes for 12 freaking hours! There's no need for that Express Pass because there's literally like NO queue!

2. There was a Maybankcard discount if you buy online (for year end promotion starting in Nov - Dec) but I found a couple of awesome agents who offered great deals at a super cheap price - even after currency exchange. So that's a bargain.

3. Most people are not aware of this : You can ENTER and RE-ENTER USS multiple times throughout the day. Upon exiting, just inform the USS guys that you would like to re-enter later on and they'll stamp you an invisible stamp on your hand. The next time you want to re-enter, simply show your ticket and they'll scan with a blue light for your stamp on the hand. You get what I mean. The whole purpose of going out of USS is to get cheaper meals outside (within the Sentosa Island vicinity) and also possibly explore around the island too!

4. For food on the budget, don't bother eating inside of USS. Instead,  simply get out of USS and just on the right of the USS entrance, you'll see the Malaysian Food Street. The price is cheaper and you can have good meals. For Halal customers, there is one halal stall selling nasi lemak with chicken and roti canai. Since we had a $10 meal voucher and we already splurged a little at the Oasis Spice Cafe (Halal) which is located at USS Ancient Egypt, so we had snacks instead at Malaysian street : cendol and a kopi o beng (iced coffee) for like $5 total!

An average meal inside USS cafes or restaurant is like SGD10 minimum. The delicious North Indian meal I had at Oasis Spice Cafe with a mineral water and dessert cost me around $16. Meals at Malaysian Street Food for the halal Nasi Lemak with chicken is around $6. Other options around Sentosa Island which is within walking distance from USS entrance, you can go to McD or KFC (both are Halal) for prices ranging from $3-$10.

5. Initially, I was pretty disappointed that Battlestar Galactica roller coaster ride was not in service (this trip was made on 24 Dec 2013) because it's like the main highlight of Universal Studio Singapore but then again, I was thankful the ride was out. Right after Ancient Egypt ride, I got really dizzy and couldn't walk straight for a little while. Plus the weather was unusually hot and I started getting a headache from right after lunch until the evening. If I would have gone up Battlestar Galactice, I will absolutely puke along the way and it'll be a bad day.

6. I wasn't in the mood for taking photos with any mascots because it's like so kiddy stuffs, haha, and I'm just not interested in such things, so we decided to have 3 rounds of SKYLINE LUGE Sentosa for $20 . A single trip of the luge is only $12. To get to Skyline Luge, we took the Sentosa Express train and exit at Beach Station. All transportation in Sentosa Island is free so do make the most out of it.

7. We were tempted with iFly Singapore - an indoor skydiving at Beach Station but you have to spend a little more time there for training and then the skydive. Probably, we can give it a shot for next time. It's like once in a lifetime kind of thing, so yeah, this is a KIV for future trips.

8. By the time we were done with the Luge, it was almost 6 pm and we rushed back to re-enter USS for the Christmas street celebration. There were fake snow coming down from the sky and it was actually some soap bubbles and some of them got into my mouth and that was gross! Haha. It was really nothing like Christmas because we were really sticky and hot and there were too many people on the street taking selfies and we joined the selfie bandwagon too just for the heck of it. :)

9. For the rest of the evening, we continued on with other rides and shows that we missed. We finally finished up the USS tour around 9pm with our last ride on a junior roller coaster of Far Far Away. I must say, it was pretty scary to ride a roller coaster in the dark with your bag wedged in between your legs and you had to sit on the most front. It was a nice jolt of adrenaline to end the night in USS.

10. We ended the night with a quick dinner at McD (check map for location) because we were getting cranky, hungry and the halal nasi lemak just only finished. The McD dinner pretty much broke my NO McD pledge for almost a year. I was McD free for about a year until the one I had at Sentosa. For some reason, the burger actually tasted better than the McD I used to have in Malaysia. For that reason alone, I guess it wasn't a bad choice to have that burger anyway. That will be the last McD for me too, insya Allah.

In order to enjoy rides without spending queuing time for more than 10- 20 minutes, you should be able to do this :

Arrive early at the entrance just after 9 am. In between that you can take photos of that globe and look around for maps. By 9.30 am, you can start queuing at the Universal Studio Singapore entrance. At 10 am, the park is open and we rushed (like a typical Singaporean..hehe) to be the first to ride TRANSFORMERS: The Ride. We waited for like 10 minutes or so, it wasn't that long and Transformers was so much fun! If not for my headache, I would have done it again during that night because there was no queue at all.

Right after finishing Transformers, we didn't linger around that long at the gift shop and continued on our next ride: REVENGE OF THE MUMMY at the Ancient Egypt. We spotted the same guys who were queuing with us at the entrance and the Transformers and they were rushing the rides like us too. Some people are just crazy...we were too! Haha. Thanks to them they directed us towards available empty lockers for our bags and after another 10 minutes queue we got onto the ride. Upon exiting, we saw our faces on the screen, it was HILARIOUS. All of us got our eyes closed and mouth opened. Needless to say, nobody wanted to buy 'ugly' shots like that. Haha.

By the time we were done with these 2 rides, it was 11 am. Since we had a 6.30 am breakfast, so we had an early lunch which was a perfect timing because the restaurants are just opened and pretty much empty. How great is that! Still no queue.

After lunch we went for the our 3rd ride : Jurassic Park Rapids Adventure along with our bags. For some unknown reason, we didn't have to queue long again. For the bag situation, you can bring them along but they will advise that you will get wet. However the trick to not get soaking wet is to bring from home a raincoat/poncho or since the queue is not long at all, we could have just used the free 30 minutes locker at Ancient Egypt, but we didn't. The locker at Jurassic Park is not free and a poncho cost like $4 which can buy you an ala carte McD Double Cheese Burger inclusive of tax. Haha. So my awesome partner already eyed which side of the boat ride is going to make a person soaking wet, so we sat on the opposite side hoping that we didn't get drenched since she didn't have any poncho on. True enough, we only had our lower part of the trousers slightly wet and maybe one foot got a little wet too. That's all. It's not that much fun if you don't want to get wet but you still want to ride this rapid adventure because you are suppose to get wet. That's where the fun is. Haha. But we still had fun anyway by trying to duck our way, putting our feet up from the water. That for us is pretty much the 'adventure' element in this ride. Hehe.

The weather was really hot and don't bother to get on that dry pod thing because like everything else in USS, it will cost you money. You'll be walking in the hot sun like all the time and without you even know it, you will be dry. My jeans got dried pretty quickly.

Next was the Waterworld Show. This is a must watch show. Again, if you don't want to get wet, please proceed to the most top seating, thank you very much. :)

We completed other rides like Accelerator - Teacups, Madagascar : Crate Adventure Ride, Shrek 4D Adventure, Light! Camera! Action! and Enchanted Airways during the night with not much queue again. There are a couple more rides that we missed which was mainly the 'kiddy' rides ones and I think we didn't missed much at all.

For your bags:

You can bring them around to most rides even for Transformers. The only time you need to put them in the locker is for the Revenge Of the Mummy Ride. The locker here is FREE for the first 30 minutes and you can put them in again if you want to play the Jurassic Park Rapids Adventure ride. All in all, there is no pay to put your stuffs in the locker and one locker can fit around 2 average size bag pack if you squeeze them. ;)

For musolla :

There is one behind the lockers of Revenge of The Mummy. It's right next to the closed Battlestar ride. The musolla is clean with attached wudhu area and also with solat timetable. It's pretty proper. To enjoy your solat without the crowd is of course to solat on time. Be there for Zuhr right around 1 ish pm and the musolla will not be full of people, insya Allah. I suppose there is another musolla next to the Guest Serive for Annual Pass ticketing. I didn't get to check that one out.

For cheap USS ticket from an authorized dealer (online payment and ticket will be emailed to you):

Email to sis : lan_ieza@yahoo.com
The offer for Christmas eve last year was only RM 145 for adult. The online ticket from Resort World after the Maybank discount was about RM 160+ (exchange rate in Dec 2013 1SGD = MYR 2.60)