the first garden : Ride the Movies... Yes We Did !

Last Friday was a magical day… it was magical because wifey and I visited Universal Studio.

As mentioned in my earlier post, USS is a beautiful place and it makes one happy just by entering into its compound.

Even though we have visited the place previously for their Hollywood After Hours, this time round is a much different experience. The mascots were out in full force and roaming the area all ready to pose with you for a shot, the whole place and rides were accessible to us and everybody was just buzzing with excitement.

Really thankful we can get cheaper tickets at just $48 instead of the usual price which is about $70 ;o) ( thanksgiving point 1)

We left our house early on that day about 830am and went for our favourite breakfast at Ya Kun at Harbourfront. Wifey had a kaya toast set while I had a packet of nasi lemak. At Ya Kun, we were also fiddling with the Canon DSLR camera which Mike has very kindly lent to us (thanksgiving point 2) . Because of this camera, the pictures we took are of really good quality as can be seen this post.

After breakfast, we proceeded to take the tram into Sentosa…whoa... excitement builds up ;o)

Once we reach the entrance of USS, we just have to take the below shot

And saw our first mascot PO!

Awesomeness

We first went to Madagascar and tried "A Crate Adventure" its a simple boat ride through a river where the characters will take turns to light up when the boat went past them. One thing good about this trip is that we did not really need to queue for very long for all the rides (Thanksgiving Point 3) After the ride, we went out and managed to catch some Madagascar characters to take pictures with. They were so colourful and cute and really makes the photos so cheery.

We walked on and then it’s into the Shrek 4D movie at Far Far Away Land. As we sat and watched, our chairs shooked, we were tickled by some hairy monster in the leg and got squirt by water according to the story unfolding in the big screen

The next place we went in was to catch the Donkey LIVE show.

This is more for kiddos as we were asked to do some silly dance inside and the whole thing was over in a while.

Next up was one of my personal favourite! WATERWORLD. I have always wanted to watch this performance so I am really thrilled that we finally managed to be amongst the audience. Waterworld is a spectacular pyrotechnics and explosive show with lots of waterplay . Those sitting at the front has a high possibility of getting wet. Wifey was shocked by some of the explosions. Oops

Next, we walked over to the Lost World. We decided to forgo Dino-soaring because it is too common and more for kids. Sky canopy was crowded, so we went to queue for rapid river. Halfway through, the staff announced that the ride was closed until further notice, so we left the queue and headed towards Sci Fi City . The sky started to drizzle at this point in time. I was quite worried that the rain will turn into a storm and spoil our excursion but thankfully it was a passing rain which cleared up in less than 20mins (Thanksgiving point 4)

Over at Sci Fi, we started off with the Accelerator which is quite a common ride. Something like those swirling teacups we see at Uncle Ringgo funfair… hehe. Once we tried the accelerator, we moved on to the highlight of USS which is the Transformer Ride. I expected to queue for a long time for this ride but somehow there was no queue at all and we managed to walk all the way in and into the carriage in minutes.

The transformer Ride really lived up to its billing as USS’s star attraction and it was really fun being rocked, sucked into a vacuum , shredded by razors etc…by Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and Megatron.

We were to come back again later for this ride …

Lunch time! And it was at Louis that we had this couple meal consisting of 2 slices of Pizza ( I chose Hawaiian and Pepperoni) , some drumlets, minestrone soup of the day an elmo muffin (cute!) and a tall draft sprite costing $38.

Initially I thought we may have difficulty finishing up the food but my worries are unfounded as we polished up everything on the table..

After lunch, we stepped out and straight into the sesame street performance! These classic characters are really colourful .. some pictures we took with them

Following that, we decided to move on to take the rides which we did not managed to take earlier on . Spaghetti Chase was first… Along the way we bumped into more mascots

Ok now this Sky canopy ride nearly made wifey faint… once the carriage starts moving she murmured “ Oh dear, I am getting scared…” and as it moved faster and faster she kept repeating to herself “ I think I'm gonna faint , I think I'm gonna faint …. “ yup that’s my wife . The ride was over in 53 secs. That must be the longest 53 sec in wifey’s life and no, she did not faint.

After putting our heart back where it was supposed to be, we went for the rapid river. The one thing I dislike is that we have to put our stuffs in the locker which cost a whopping $4/Hr… but because of the precious camera , we couldn't afford to take the risk…

The ride itself was not as scary as we expected other than the last part where the door opened to a steep downward slope … the lady in front of us was soaked but we were relatively dry.

We moved on and wifey encouraged me to try the MUMMY which I did. This was by far the most scary ride and I am glad I tried it.

Next we took the treasure vehicle. After the thrill of the Mummy , this ride was at the other spectrum of excitement level.

We moved on and took the Transformer Ride again. To round up the fun filled day, we watch Lights, Camera, Actions directed by Steven Spielberg. This is like the small scale waterworld and it shows how they created a hurricane effect in just minutes. As we were standing in the very first row. We were a bit wet.

Our last couple of mascot of the day was fittingly Bumblebee and Prime which nicely summed up a very memorable day for me and I believe, wifey.

Autobots...roll out!

Final Thanksgiving point: The simple fact that I get to visit this beautiful place with my dearest wifey; something which doesn't seem very possible a few years back.