Today we decided to spend the day at Sentosa Island. Sentosa is about 5 square kilometers and is basically like a big theme park. To get to Sentosa you can take a skylift from Singapore’s mainland or catch a train - obviously we decided to take the skylift!
There was a bit of a queue, but it was worth it.
Once we arrived on Sentosa Island we had a quick look through the skylift museum and headed out into the main area to purchase tickets. We got what they call a “Noon pass” which allows you to choose any 4 of the 15 attractions for $42.90 Singapore Dollars from about 2:30pm to 7:00pm.
This gave us some time to kill so we headed over to Underwater World.
Underwater World is an aquarium just like any other, but the few things that stand out are underwater tunnel and the “Pink Dolphin” show.
As soon as we got through the line to get our tickets, we rushed over to the Dolphin show and it was packed! We ended up standing behind all the seats on one of the stands and even though we were a bit far back, the view was still quite good.
The Pink Dolphins are fairly rare and have some red pigment in their skin.
The aquarium staff have trained the dolphins to do tricks like jumping through hoops, balancing basketballs on their noses, dancing, spinning hoops on their noses and tricks like carrying an eski to the trainer to get some more food.
The show also had Sea Lions, which were pretty cool. They remind me of trained dogs and were pretty good at doing tricks too like dancing and catching hoops.
After the show we walked through the various sections of the aquarium and saw things like a giant crab, fluorescent Jellyfish and microscopic organisms.
Eventually got to the underwater tunnel. This was pretty cool, there were huge sharks swimming at arms reach and you could see all the detail of their skin and teeth really clearly as the conveyor belt slowly pulls you through.
We got out of the aquarium and headed to our first attraction as part of our “Noon Pass” - The Tiger Skytower. It isn’t exactly a thrill seekers ride, but it does provide a nice 360 degree view of Sentosa.
It is a revolving observation deck that starts on ground level and slowly moves up a large tower. There is also a pre-recorded voice explaining what everything is.
Next stop was The Luge. The luge carts have handlebars that you use to steer and pulling back on them is the brake. Once you finally get through the line, you jump in a cart, do a couple of brake tests and start going down the hill.
It was pretty fun, but once you get going you soon reach the end of the track and it feels like you were only out for about 2 minutes, especially if you like to go quick!
At the bottom of the track is a beach, so we took a look around and then headed back to the luge area to catch a chair lift back up to where we started.
The chairlift was pretty cool, it goes fairly high above some nice greenery and it carries the luge carts up with them too.
From here we went to the 3D Extreme Log Ride Adventure - which is a pretty impressive name for a short 3D movie with sets of moving chairs. It was a lot bigger than we were expecting, the room had about 9 carts which seat 6 people each, you put on your 3D glasses and away you go.
Last but not least was the Segway experience. We picked this because none of us had ever ridden a Segway before. When we arrived at the counter, they warned us that there would be a 45 minute wait, but we agreed anyway, signed the disclaimer, put on the compulsory helmet, knee guards and elbows pads and jumped in line.
Once you get through the first half of the line you reach the training area where a staff members shows you how to control them. We all started off really wobby and naturally just rocked back and forth, but after a couple of minutes it becomes quite natural. Once the staff see that we can move forward, turn and stop, we jump off and get in the second half of the line to get to the track.
By the time we got past training it had already been more that 45 minutes and we had already bought tickets to a show called “Sounds of the Sea”, so we ditched the queue and headed for the beach.
The Sounds of the Sea set was a bunch of huts over the shore of the beach, with stadium like seating on the beach. The show’s story line was a very cheesy, Disney-like plot but the effects were pretty impressive. There was another flat blade of water that they projected images and lasers onto, huge water jets and flame throwers from the huts and the beach where we were sitting, a laser show from the huts and a fireworks finale.
The fireworks were quite big and because the wind was heading towards us, by the end of the show all the smoke from the fireworks covered the entire seating area and we couldn’t see more than 2 meters in front of us, but it made us laugh and it looked really cool to see silhouettes of people appear out of nowhere.
When this finished we headed back to the Segway track to finish what we had started, but this time there was practically no queue, so we did the training again and headed out to the track.
The track was outdoors and had random potholes and hills to make things a little more difficult but with barely any experience we all managed to get through quite easily.
After we all finished, we agreed that the Segways were cool and it left us all wanting one for everyday use.
At this stage my foot was still really sore from the day before and so getting off the Segway to walk again was… painful, lol.
From here we started to make our way back to the cable car but took a detour via the giant Merlion as that was one of the attractions we didn’t get to do. Unfortunetly is was closed, but we got to see it pretty close up and there was a nice walkway leading up to it and then out to the cable car station.
As we were walking to the cable car station, a bunch of fireworks started going off as if to say goodbye to us, so we hung around to watch those and headed off.
The cable car station that we needed wasn’t very far, but as we bought the cable car pass, we were entitled to a full lap so we decided to go up to the other end of the line - Mt. Faber.
We didn’t really do much here, there was a fancy restaurant were we kind of went in to take photos, but we didn’t order anything, had a toilet break and jumped back on the cable car to head home.
Sentosa was pretty cool, the fact they packed in so many attractions into one fairly small island is impressive and we didn’t see half of it. Not only were there a lot of other attractions, but there is also a lot of forest areas, beaches, hotels and Universal Studios. Getting around is quite easy because they have a number of bus lines that go between everything and the fare is included with the pass.
We finally got home (a bit late) and ended up going to the same restaurant in the Arab Quarter as we did last time to get a meal and go to bed. Apart from my foot giving me a lot of pain, it was a really good day.
