Opening Day Tickets SOLD OUT

RWS’ website was brought down to its knees today when the whole swamp of Singaporeans logged on to its website to snag opening day tickets to Universal Studios Singapore. As of 8pm today, all tickets to the opening day on March 18 are sold out. Tickets for the first opening weekend are selling out fast as we speak.

We wished the RWS team would have better anticipated the response and demand that it was going to get when they announced that they are going to release the tickets today. But they were quick enough to communicate with the public via Facebook status updates and also setting up other channels for the purchasing of tickets. Visitors experiencing difficulty buying online can send their reservations to reservations@rwsentosa.com or call the hotline at +65 65778888. The team will try their very best to respond within 48 hours upon receipt. Alternatively, visitors may also wish to purchase the tickets directly at the box office.

One interesting thing to note is that during the soft opening phase, the park will only open from 9am to 6pm, instead of the 9am to 9pm indicated on the website. Also, out of the 24 rides, only 18 will be opened on Day 1. We’re not too sure the rational behind the shortened operating hours and also how the fireworks show we are all hearing about is going to fit in. Nonetheless, stay with us as we get more updates of the park’s opening.

Universal Studios Singapore Opens March 18, 8.28am

The date is set, and Universal Studios Singapore will finally open its doors to the public on March 18 2010, 8.28am (supposedly an auspicious timing to do so).

Tickets will go on sale on March 10.

More as we get details from everywhere we can find. Read the official Press Release from RWS here. (PDF File)

Also released are Ticket prices and Annual Passes prices for your reference at http://www.rwsentosa.com/language/en-US/Attractions/UniversalStudiosSingapore/Tickets

Universal Studios Singapore Opening Date Rumours

While the park was open from Feb 14 to 21 during the Chinese New Year week for a sneak preview, nothing has been said or announced by Resorts World Sentosa about when the park will open for real.

We’ve heard of some tips coming in to us a few days back saying that some local companies are being offered tickets thru corporate discounts for the early March period, but that has since been postponed to somewhere in mid-April.

We do not know if that means the park will not open until April, or will it even open by the end of March (which by the way is the last month of The First Quarter of 2010 mentioned in many of their press releases)

We also have reports coming in telling us that Journey to Madagascar will not be able to make it in time for the parks opening in the ‘first quarter of 2010’ and it will probably only open in June or July.

USSi Exclusive: Universal Studios Singapore photo report

We know you all have been waiting with bated breath to have a look at the latest and only major theme park to open this year around the world. The USSi team was lucky enough to snag the sold-out tickets for the sneak preview of the 2nd Universal Studios theme park to open in Asia, and the only one in the South East Asia region.

We visited the park on Friday, February 19 and we were very amazed at every thing this theme park has turned out to be. We snapped more than a thousand photos of the park, which explains why we took so long to upload! And we’re excited to present to you this exclusive photo report!

With the obsessive amount of photos we have taken, the USSi team have decided to make this a week-long report. Beginning today with this post, we will give you a general snapshot report of the theme park, followed by detailed photo reports of every zone in the theme park. Here’s what you can expect in the coming week -

Saturday - General overview of the park (Selection of photos from different zones)
Sunday - Hollywood
Monday - New York
Tuesday - Sci Fi
Wednesday - The Lost World
Thursday - Egypt
Friday - Far Far Away
Saturday - Madagascar
Sunday - Universal Studios Singapore in the dark.

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The Universal globe at the entrance.

The entrance archway designed by architect Michael Graves.

Preview Tickets were all sold out. Only 3000 tickets were released per day for the preview period between Feb 14 to Feb 21. They were sold at $10 each and each person can only buy a maximum of 6. The ticket can be used to exchange for a combo meal inside ANY of the F&B outlets. (We thought this was an excellent deal, and we’re essentially not paying anything for the admission to this preview) Tickets were so in demand that some preview tickets turned up on eBay with 5 times the ticket price.

Hollywood Boulevard, the first zone once you step in at the entrance. This whole area is sheltered by a ETFE canopy, which is the same ones used at the Beijing Water Cube. We were disappointed at first that the Universal Creative team decided to install canopies around the park as they were simply just unsightly, but when it rained on us during our visit, we were so thankful that these canopies were there to shelter us. Given Singapore’s unpredictable weather, what with the tropical climate and the monsoon seasons, these canopies are actually essential for the park.

While we were walking through the street, we noticed something strange about what we were experiencing. While it was a little hot and humid before we stepped into USS, we realised that the temperature around Hollywood zone is much cooler than outside. To our surprise, we noticed that there were cooling machines installed and concealed within the buildings of Hollywood that lowers the temperature around the area. These ‘green cooling solutions’ are part of the park’s effort to make guests feel more comfortable under Singapore’s sweltering hot sun we think this is definitely something every guest will appreciate. We are impressed already.

Universal Studio Store sells most of the items you can find around the park. We don’t actually remember seeing Universal Studios Japan having so many merchandise and souvenirs available. We would like to commend that the park’s service staff and cast members were excellent, always smiling, waving to you and ready to help.

The lagoon, with other parts of the park in view, from the Hollywood standpoint.

The lagoon wasn’t as big as we thought it would be. If you want to compare it to USJ’s lagoon, which by the way is huge, the one we have here is like a pond. Still, it’s impressive that they can squeeze the lagoon in given the small amount of space that they were given to build this park.

We’re not too sure if a staging of fireworks or water show is possible, but we hope to see USS surprise us with at least something on the lagoon.

Egypt, Sci Fi City

Shrek’s castle from the lagoon.

New York

Marilyn Monroe on the streets of NY.

Sci Fi City. We’re actually disappointed with how this area turned out to be.

Battlestar Galactica Dueling Coaster - World’s tallest dueling roller coaster. Not to be confused as the world’s tallest coaster, as this is far from it. Both trains launch out of the station at the same time instead of the conventional chain lift system.

Accelerator

The Lost World

Jurassic Park Rapids Adventure.

Dino-Soarin’ for the kids.

Egypt - We were totally impressed with the re-creation of the Egypt area. We’ve never been to Egypt, but we totally felt like we stepped into the country when we walked through this space. The sculptures are very detailed and the theming around this area is very well done. What’s even more special is the fact that Universal Studios Singapore is the only Universal Studios with a whole land dedicated to Egypt.

Next to Egypt, is Far Far Away, another area created exclusively for Universal Studios Singapore. It’s a faithful re-creation of Far Far Away in the Dreamworks animated feature - Shrek. And again we are very impressed with this area’s theming. Put in a horse carriage, crowds in medieval clothing and we can imagine ourselves in the Shrek movies.

We remember seeing this billboard of Fairy Godmother in Shrek!

The Shrek 4D attraction housed in the only Shrek’s castle ever built.

The castle looks amazingly detailed.

Moving on, we are now at the Madagascar area, another area created exclusively for USS.

The characters on King Julien’s Beach Party-go-around are so hilarious, we actually feel like riding this carousel.

The characters of Madgascar.

The container ship housing Madagascar - A Crate Adventure. The vessel is HUGE in size, almost like a life-size replica of a container ship.

And we end our first part of our photo report with the tree featured in Madagascar movies.

Although the rides aren’t operational during the Preview week, we are thoroughly impressed after the visit. The park may look small from the outside but it is surprisingly bigger than we think it is. You can actually feel that the park is very compact (like they are squeezing as much as they can) but they did a very good job at distinguishing the different zones apart. The theming on every area is very well done, and we are VERY excited to visit the park again when it officially opens with the rides.

Look out tomorrow for our more in-depth photo report of the Hollywood zone!

Universal Studios Singapore park brochures and map

We promised you earlier on that we will post up images of the brochures Resorts World at Sentosa have been giving out to guests arriving at the resort. While we don’t have the scanner to scan in these brochures, we tried our best to take some photos of it to let you guys have a look at them.

Click on the pictures for a bigger version. (opens in new window)

The brochure on the left is the promotional brochure given out at tourist information counters, hotels, travel agencies and such and gives a general overview of the theme park. The one on the right is the brochure for Resorts World at Sentosa as a whole. It doesn’t say much about USS, so we’ll just skip that.

They gave out a Studio Guide together with our preview ticket purchases, which we believe is what they will be giving out to guests as studio maps when the theme park officially opens. Here’s two stitched photos of the studio guide (they were too long).

Click for a hi-res version. (They are about 4MB each)

USSi takes a first look at Universal Studios Singapore

The USSi team was at the Universal Studios Singapore preview tickets sale today and here are some of the photos we took -

Sneak peek at the entrance

That’s A Wrap - A Universal Studios Store outside the park. We managed to snag some park souvenirs and pins from the store. Scroll down below for the pictures of what we got.

The tickets were sold out a short while after we bought ours.

The archway building designed by Michael Graves himself.

We believe this is the smallest Universal Studios archway entrance building, but still it looks stunning.

Hershey’s Chocolate World store outside the theme park.

Woody Woodpecker was one of the character greeters that came out to entertain guests.

Frankenstein

Po from Kungfu Panda

We are all avid pin collectors here at USSi and we couldn’t resist getting us some pins, a keychain, and a logo pen. We have to say that these souvenirs from the park are very affordable! Pins and keychains start at prices of $5.90 to $9.90 Singapore Dollars! We saw some tees going at $29.90 as well. We don’t remember paying less than $10 to get such pretty pins at any of the theme parks we have been to.

Our preview tickets. We hope they replace it with Universal Studios Singapore designs when the park opens.

Well that is all we have for this update. Check out our blog for more reports coming soon!

Universal Studios Singapore Preview Tickets Sold Out!

We’ve got news from Resorts World at Sentosa’s Facebook page that the preview tickets have all been sold out. USSi was lucky enough to manage to snag a pair of tickets to the preview. While the USSi team have work commitments and CNY visiting to do during this period, we can only go for the preview this coming Friday. So keep a look out for USSi’s report of the theme park this next week.

RWS announces opening date for Casino and USS Preview

While we hear a collective sigh across all eager Universal Studios Singapore fans who have been following the development of this theme park, Resorts World Sentosa just announced the opening of the casino first and the theme park opening next. This is contrary to all the reports that have been swirling around that the theme park will open before Chinese New Year/Valentine’s Day on the 14th of February.

This is still true for the least as the theme park will be opened for public preview from 14th Feb onwards. The gist is, you just have to pay $10 (which is fair enough), and you get to have a look at the theme park, which has yet to be opened to the public’s eye. The rides will not be operating, and you will not be able to go on any of them. There will be shops and restaurants in the theme park that will be opened and that is just about it. We think that being able to just get into the theme park and see how it is to be like before it opens to the crowd is good enough already. The park will only operate from 5pm onwards until 9pm.

Preview tours will take place from 14 Feb to 21 Feb, and you can only buy tickets at the ticketing booths outside Universal Studios Singapore. You might also want to take note that you can only buy tickets for tomorrow’s tour, which means to say you can’t get to purchase same-day tickets at the ticketing booths.

Read More at Straits Times