|
UNIVERSAL STUDIOS SINGAPORE
& Resorts World at Sentosa
Sentosa Island, Singapore
Genting International, Star Cruises, Universal Studios
 Resort News - (11/8/2024) Universal Studios Singapore will host “A Universal Christmas” from Nov. 29th through to Jan. 1st, 2025. As part of this steampunk-meets-Christmas themed event coming to the park, guests will also get to visit part of the Emerald City and the world of Wicked within the New York section of the park. This will include character appearances by Elphaba, Glinda and The Wizard, along with other characters from the film, along with the chance to visit a “makeover station” to change your appearance to look a bit more like Elphaba or Glinda.
Other features of the Christmas season event include Santa’a Magicial Mechanical World in the Hollywood area along with the Tinker Time Christmas show featuring the Sesame Street gang of characters. Also look for holiday themed character meet & greets with the characters from Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda, Shrek and more.
(3/31/2024) Harry Potter Visions of Magic Moving from Germany To Singapore
(11/7/2023) New Expansion Plans For Super Nintendo World Discovered (MORE...)
Halloween Horror Nights 2024 - (9/29/2024) Dejiki has posted a new complete photo report about Halloween Horror Nights 12 at Universal Studios Singapore, as well as a video tour of all the major attractions.
(8/30/2024) Halloween Horror Nights 12 is returning to Universal Studios Singapore this fall and will offer a collection of four haunted houses, three scare zones, three live shows and much more.
In addition to the previously mentioned Sweet Home haunt based on the Korean Netflix series, this year will also include a haunt called “Under the Castle” designed by K-pop star Jackson Wang (Got7), “Cursed Scrolls: Dynasty of Darkness” and “Singapore’s Most Haunted: The Killings”.
This year’s scare zones include The Lost Kampung full of vengeful spirits and cursed items, the dark streets of Vamprie Alley, and Nether-Land, aa twisted voodoo rave. Live performances will include Dark Dreams (where the Dream Reaper feeds off the nightmares of the innocent), Ocu.Lar’s Rave and Night Terrors. When wandering the streets, keep an eye out for a secret themed vampire lounge as well called the Viper Lounge.
(6/30/2024) Universal Studios Singapore has finally released some information about their Halloween Horror Nights plans for 2024. According to the announcement this year’s haunt will bring about another exciting collaboration with Netflix to bring the K-horror series, Sweet Home, to life.
Fall 2024 - Harry Potter Visions of Magic - (3/31/2024) Harry Potter fans in Germany who haven't had a chance to see the Harry Potter Vision of Magic attraction in Köln (Colegne) may want to hurry, as the attraction will only remain open through to June 2nd, 2024. After that, the attraction is being packed up and moved across the world where it will reopen in Singapore at Resorts World Sentosa in the Fall of 2024.
While the nearby Universal Studios Singapore theme park does not feature a Wizarding World of Harry Potter themed land or attractions, the addition of this new exhibit within the Resorts World Sentosa complex does help to fill that void and should prove to be a huge hit I would think.
Late 2024 - Minion Land - (10/13/2024) A new video posted a couple of days ago by Dejiki shows off the new Minions Silly Swirly flat ride being tested at Universal Studios Singapore, ahead of the opening of the new Minions Land. The video goes on to show off how the new Minions Land area looks when viewed from other areas of the park, plus a glimpse of the lights and sounds of the Buggie Boogie minion dance music carousel also being tested at the end.
Below that a new preview video about the land has been posted by the park as well. Look for the land to be ready to open in early 2025.
(7/6/2024) It has been awhile since we’ve seen an update from Universal Studios Singapore, but Dejiki is back with a new collection of images showing off the progress on the park’s Minion Land and more. This includes the transformation of the old carousel, a new Super Silly Funland flat ride, and of course the large new blue-sky painted building with Gru’s logo on it that will serve as home to the new Minion Mayhem simulator ride. Similar to the Hollywood and Florida parks, Gru’s house sits below and will serve as the entrance to the attraction.
The theming looks fairly far along here, which falls in line with the latest estimates that Minion Land will be ready to open in Late 2024. As a build up to the opening, and to tie into the latest Despicable Me animated film, the park is also hosting “A Mega Despicable Summer” themed minion event from now to August 11th.
(11/14/2023) In a quarterly earnings report from Genting the company they mention that the new Minion Land coming to Universal Studios Singapore, as well as the new Singapore Oceanarium just outside the park won’t be ready to soft open until early 2025.
(2/4/2023) A reader just came back from Universal Studios Singapore and sent in a great image showing off construction and demolition taking place in the park at the same time. Zooming in you can see the demolition progress on the park’s former Madagascar dark flume ride that is being removed to make room for future additions. Meanwhile you can also see the white steel framework for a large new attraction building rising behind the Enchanted Airways family coaster, on the site cleared to the right of the Madagascar structure that should be for the new Minions Land and attraction.
I believe the actual site of the Madagascar ride building will likely be repurposed for the future Nintendo / MarioKart ride, expected to begin construction following the completion of the Minions attraction expansion. The addition of the two new areas should effectively transform this corner of the park going forward.
One more interesting thing of note… if you look at the Madagascar building demo picture, over on the right side of the building you’ll see a couple of holes high up on a second level of the structure, along with what looks like some crates attached to the side of the building. Based on the history of the attraction’s construction, this may be left over from the never seen second level of the attraction. Based on the construction history of the ride, many are not award that the Madagascar ride was build to have a lift hill and a flume drop at one point in the ride, that would have taken the boats up to a never-seen second-floor and other themed rooms. According to the tale, once the ride system was built and themeing was being installed, they began to test the flume and suffered a series of technically issues involving the second level. Add in a rumored small fire (which I think was caused by a welding spark) and ongoing troubles with the flume’s drop, and the hard choice was made to scrap the entire second level of the ride, and rework the course of the flume to only use the primary bottom floor of the building. So while I don’t know for sure, this could be our only peek at this rare bit of theme park legend.
(5/30/22) Dejiki is back with a new report from Universal Studios Singapore that includes a look at the park’s Groovy Summer experience added for the summer that also ties into the release of the Minions 2: The Rise of Gru film in June 2022. This includes a fun new Kung-Fu street show called the “Minion Fu Show”. The park has also temporarily converted their table-serice KT’s Grill restaurant to now have a Minion theme under the name, Groovy-licious Dinging as well as offering some new Minion themed snacks in the park.
They also give us our first look at the walled off construction area for the new Minions Land which has reportedly blocked off the main pathway between the former Madagascar area and the Hollywood zones. Guests can still access the King Julien themed carousel that is still open and the Far Far Away (Shrek themed) areas via a path along the central lagoon. The thought here is that eventually the King Julien themed carousel will close sometime later this year or early next year to undergo a makeover and get a new Minion theme. The carousel, the new Minion Mayhem attraction and a new unknown flat ride will all be launched together as the attractions for the new Minions Land in 2024.
What we may be looking at for the new flat ride isn’t entirely known. Dejiki believes it could be a Balloon Spinning style flat (I think they are referring to a Zamperla Samba Balloon ride), but meanwhile the new Universal park in Beijing installed your typical Dumbo style spinner called Super Swirly, with a Super Silly Funland character themed car design that is essentially a copy of the same Super Swirly ride installed at the Hollywood park. The later two installs however also went heavily with the Super Silly Funland theme, while the artwork so for the Singapore’s Minion Land seems to borrow the look of the Universal Japan’s Minion Park, where they installed a unique flat ride called the Freeze Ray Sliders. Until we know more, we’ll have to wait and see.
(5/29/22) While it was announced before the arrival of COVID, Universal Studios Singapore has finally broken ground on their new Minion Land expansion project. According to the reports Minion Land is expected to open in 2024 and will feature themed shops, restaurants as well as the arrival of a Despicable Me Minion Mayhem motion simulator attraction.
On a sidenote, they say that the new Minion Land should be entirely powered by renewable energy, which may be a first for an attraction in Singapore. Following the opening of Minion Land, it is still the plan to build a Super Nintendo World expansion at the park, which should be more on part with the size and scale of the version under construction at Universal Studios Hollywood.
(2/18/22) Resorts World Sentosa sent out a press released with a few more details about their expansion and improvement plans for the resort, known as RWS 2.0. The overall goal is to add exciting new attractions, new entertainment and new lifestyle offerings to the entire Resorts World Sentosa resort, including the Universal Studios Singapore theme park. Construction on most projects not already under way will begin by Q2 2022 with a S$400 million project investment.
While I’ve already mentioned their plans to expand the S.E.A. Aquarium into the new Singapore Oceanarium in a previous update, we finally have news about Universal Studios Singapore. The good news is that they are finally moving forward on the previously announced Minion Land. Based on the new description, they say the new Minion Land will feature ‘multiple rides including a world’s first original ride exclusive to Universal Studios Singapore, and Despicable Me Minion Mayhem, an immersive motion-simulator 3D ride featuring a hyper-realistic project system. Themed shops as well as restaurants in this new zone will appeal to multi-generational guests.”
So in this case, I don’t know if the ‘multiple rides’ simply means the two they mention, or if there is anything else planned. For example the closest thing to this so far we’ve seen at a Universal theme park would be Minion Park, which took over the former Back to the Future plaza, converting the old attraction into a Despicable Me Minion Mayhem ride, with tons of merchandise and food options nearby, but they also added a Despicable Me / Minion themed flat ride called the Freeze Ray Sliders. So I am curious if they might get a copy of that ride as well as the new unique ride to USS. No estimated opening date was listed for the new Minion Land however, though if construction is only starting this year, I would guess it would be sometime between mid-2023 to late-2024 before it may be ready to open.
In addition to these projects Resorts World Sentosa will refurbish three of their hotels: Hard Rock Hotel Singapore, Hotel Michael and Festival Hotel, which combined offer 1,200 rooms. Look for the refurbishment to take place in phases from Q2 2022 through to 2023. An upgrade is also planned for the Resorts World Convention Center.
(10/30/21) While I’m not sure if any signs of future construction has appeared, but I’ve been told that the planned Minion Park project to replace the Madagascar area in Universal Studios Singapore is still moving forward. As of late Summer 2020, the park was re-evaluating their the expansion plans they announced for Minions and Nintendo themed attractions, and at the time it sounded as if the plan for Minions was to replace the Madagascar flume ride with a copy of the Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem simulator attraction and possibly bring a few other minion themed additions to the park with it.
Currently the Madagascar ride is still open, so we’ll know more if and when the park decides to close it. As I understand it, Resorts World Sentosa is currently under strict COVID-19 safety protocols from the Singapore government which restricts visits to the park to groups of only two, strictly limits parks capacity to just 30%, and only those who are fully vaccinated, aged 12 or below, or who have a valid and recent negative test result may enter.
With that in mind, any plans to add major new attractions to the park may simply have to wait until the park can return to full capacity operations once again.
Late 2024 - Singapore Oceanarium - (1/15/22) Resorts World Singapore has announced that the new Singapore Oceanarium attraction will be completed by the end of 2024. The project is a “rebranding” and expansion of the former S.E.A. Aquarium, making it over three times the size of the previous attraction and introducing numerous new exhibits and cutting edge technology to also explore the concepts of “prehistoric life and deep-sea creatures”.
As a reminder, the current S.E.A. Aquarium attraction is still open for visitation however, and will likely remain open throughout the construction of the expansion.
???? - Super Nintendo World - (11/7/2023) Based on some plans posted to Twitter, we now have a better idea of Universal Studios Singapore’s future plans, including exactly how they will expand to include their own version of Super Nintendo World. As previously mentioned, the Minions themed land that is already under construction is going to take up the space between the former Madagascar flume ride and the Shrek themed kingdom area. The future Super Nintendo World is now slated to not only take over the site of the large Madagascar ride building, but it will cross the the Sentosa Monorail tracks to also take over a section of land previously outside of the park boundary near the waterfront. In general, it looks like this waterfront area between Universal and the Singapore Oceanarium will undergo some heavy renovations as well along with other nearby areas.
(8/9/20) According to a post from Theme Park Insider, Resorts World is looking to either push back or possibly re-evaluate their future expansion plans for the Universal Studios Singapore theme park. Previously the group had announced extended future planning that would see a Minions Park land take over the current Madagascar themed area to be followed up by their own version of a Super Nintendo World themed land.
Due to losses caused by the pandemic, this isn’t surprising as the global situation has caused ever major theme park resort to take a moment to pause and re-evalaute what their future needs may actually be going forward from this point. It is just good business sense to do so, simply because the world as we know it will be changed for quite some time, especially in terms of how people vacation and spend their leisure time.
(4/20/20) I’m told that the version of Super Nintendo World coming to Universal Studios Sinagpore will be a copy of the version coming to the Hollywood park. This will include a more compact themed land than what we will see open in Japan and Orlando. In addition to the themed land with interactive features the only “ride” will be the MarioKart ride, alongside a themed restaurant experience and gift shops.
(4/6/19) With the announcement of two new lands (Minion Park & Super Nintendo World) coming to Universal Studios Singapore, the question of where they will put them has now come up. Disney & More put together some graphics to show off the park, which due to very limited expansion space, will have to remove attractions to make room for these new areas. We already know Minion Park will take over the former Madagascar attraction area, which if you follow the previous link, you will see that area of the park is quite large, with the attraction building itself taking up a lot of land, plus lots of outdoor jungle themed area around it.
While the Disney & More guess for the location of Super Nintendo World is to take over the site of the Waterworld show area, I have to disagree. While I’ve never been to USS myself, I’ve always heard that the Shrek themed land of Far Far Away just was not that popular with the guests as they would have hoped, and was lacking in attractions. Add in that it is right next to Madagascar, which is confirmed to get the axe, then it would be possible to use some of that excess property in Madagascar with the Far Far Away site.
Repurposing Far Far Away has one big advantage going for it… it already has a fully built castle structure on site, and we know from the concept artwork for Super Nintendo World that one of the main buildings will be Princess Peach’s castle, so from a cost savings point of view, it would make sense to repurpose this if possible. Plus I believe it is home to the indoor Magic Potion Spin mini carousel, which could also be given a new Nintendo themed make-over to fit in. Other attractions in the area are the Enchanted Airways family coaster (also easy to slap on a new theme) and then there is the Puss in Boots Giant Journey coaster.
With a little work, I do have to wonder if this unique slow-moving suspended coaster with an onboard audio could be rethemed, changing the medieval castle infrastructure to look more like jungle temple ruins, making it fit the Donkey Kong Country coaster theme instead. Just an idea… after all, while they said they were getting Super Nintendo World, no one said it would be exactly the same as the one they were building now in Japan, so anything is possible at this point. That said, I would still assume they would build a new Mario Kart attraction somewhere here as well.
(4/4/19) Big news from Universal Studios Singapore this week as it was announced that two new themed areas would soon be coming to the park.
First, the current Madagascar themed area and dark ride will be replaced by Minion Park, with a park-like area similar to the one that opened at Universal Studios Japan and anchored by the Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem simulator attraction.
Sometime after that the park will add a Super Nintendo World themed area, which I imagine will be similar to what is now under construction at Universal Studios Japan. Since we still dont’ know the details of exactly what will be included in the Japanese version, no further details were made here either other than that we can expect to see it finished by 2025.
???? - Future Resort Expansion Rumor - (10/20/2023) While Universal Studios Singapore is essentially land-locked within the heavily developed tourist resort of Resorts World Sentosa, I’m hearing some early rumblings that a possible new maser plan to expand the theme park may rely on taking over some of the property next door used by one of the two golf courses on the island.
Consider this a long term growth strategy that has a lot of hurdles to pass before any kind of expansion would be allowed to happen, including the end of the gift couses’s government lease on the property, which isn’t expected to be up for renewal until at least 2030.
|
|
