The holidays have begun!

The June holidays have started. Instead of being cooped up in the house, we've been taking the opportunity to go out quite a bit!

Universal Studios Singapore

 First stop was definitely the Transformers ride. It was only a 15 minutes wait and so it was good! We did the ride again at the end of the day, and gosh, I can't believe that we actually waited 90 minutes then! The boys were good. They really wanted to do the ride again and so they were quite patient in waiting out the 1.5 hours!

Kieran was brave enough to go up the Jurassic Park ride this time (without whining). Kiefer originally whined about going up the ride, however, at the entrance, he somehow didn't make the height requirement (which we were really puzzled) and then he got upset because he couldn't go on the ride. :{

It was also the first time that we got to go on the Madagascar ride. Very much like It's a Small World at Disneyland. Pretty alright. We went on it twice and the boys enjoyed it.

Hubby went on the Human Cylon (the dangly legs one) on his own while we waited. I didn't get to watch my favourite Shrek 4D though cos the boys somehow didn't want to do it that day. :{

It was overall a really fun day. We stayed till about 7pm? before we left the park. It would have been nicer if it were a little cooler tho'. We got pretty tanned even after slathering on sunblock and I think we suffered from a little heat stroke the next day!


Singapore Science Center

We haven't been to the Science Center in a long time. And since hubby is at work, I thought I would bring the kids. It's the easiest place to get to and there's free parking! Kieran remembered some of the exhibits that he saw when he came to the Science Center on a school excursion. Once we entered, he immediately brought Kiefer to the optical illusion setup where it looked as though their heads were served on a platter of fruits.

We managed to catch the Tesla coil demo. That has always been my favourite demonstration at the Science Center. It's just pure wonder how electricity could be generated. It both amazing and frightening at the same time!


There were also some Discover-it-Yourself stations set up and the boys could set up simple experiments to discover magnetism and static electricity. Fun!

Kieran wanted to watch an IMAX movie and so we bought tickets to Macgillvray Freeman's Coral Reef Adventure. Kiefer, however, was tired out by then (the movie was at 1pm) and fell asleep halfway through the movie. Kinda waste money eh.

I guess the highlight of the entire outing was probably the MacD's lunch we had after. We were so hungry after the show that we ate so much! Between the 3 of us, we ate 8 nuggets, 1 cheeseburger, a pack of fries, 4 McWings and an apple pie! Yum Yum! :P

We got home at only about 4pm. It was a day well-spent.


Science Center Mall Exhibition - X-ploring Dinosaurs!



































I found out that there was a dinosaur exhibit at Plaza Singapura. It was a Mall Exhibition by the Science Center as well. There were a few life-sized dinosaur models on display, and for $20, each kid could go through 4 stations to either dig up some dino bones or to create some dino crafts. The 4 stations take about 1.5h to complete. And what do the parents do? Just wait around.

Universal Studios Singapore

SIL booked 2 hotel rooms for themselves and ILs at Resorts World Sentosa, and the rooms came with USS tickets. And if ILs were to go, there'll be no one to take care of the kiddos. I don't feel comfortable with them bringing the kiddos out to a theme park like that on there own and thus both Hubb and I applied for leave and joined them at USS for the day.

We left at 9 in the morning, and surprising, it does feel like we were on some holiday. The same excitement, as though we were going on a road trip. :) I had a bag packed with extra clothes, water and snacks, and we brought along our trusty Peg Perego. This stroller hasn't seen the light of day for eons!! :P

I would think the $66 price tag on the tickets was a little too steep. The park was small. We went in at about 1030am and we were done by 4pm. And that was including lunch and dilly-dallying. And it was rather disappointing that service wasn't fantastic there. The first bummer of the day was that our e-tickets were rejected at the entrance and there was this whole commotion about the hotel already printing the tickets out for us and so on. (Nothing on our booking told us that we needed to pick the tickets up from the hotel, and who would wait till check-in time at 3pm to go into USS?) Blah.. anyway, I'm sure that had that happening a lot cos people behind in the queue also had the same problem. And if that were the case, shouldn't they already have rectified the issue? And while we were waiting for the Guest Relations to settle the issue, and while the queue was building up, this other staff member came up, trying to alleviate the problem but did a real lousy job. He saw me standing in front of the counter waiting for the solution, and yet asked what my problem was. Well he got a "so do you really want me to repeat the entire thing?" and then he backed off!! :P He was simply bad at customer service and got a couple of scathing remarks from people in the queue.

Anyway, the entire park is just full of bad, bad English. When I say bad English, it is not just the usual slips of grammar, it is just bad-sounding English blaring at you all the time. While we were at the Special Effects sound stage, this uncle enthusiastically introduced Steven Spielbert to us and welcomed us to Universe Studios and to proceed to the next Special (effects) Soundstage. urgh.. !! While queuing up for Shrek 4D, we kept hearing this lady staff yelling and people to move in. Yelling. And, I think the seats were either busted during the show, or someone cranked the effects such that the seats moved asynchronously with the show. Not just the seats we were sitting on, when I looked across, there were sections of seats that were not moving. And no, they were not the stationary seats that were meant for the elderly/ disabled people.

The USS staff were seemingly not trained in politeness. You hardly hear them say please or greet. I even overheard this guy tell 2 kids to "'sit down!" as they were boarding the rollercoaster, in a tone that I would usually reserve for the boys when they run about during dinner!! There was no "please" or "thank you" either. At that moment, I was thinking, "if that guy used that tone with me when I get on, he's going to get an earful from me!!"

Before I went USS, I read/ hear people raving about how great Mel's Drive In was. Even in LA, Mel's Drive In was ok.. the great thing there was that we always had the food band so we could grab whatever we liked. The burger was not fantastic there but good enough. Over at USS, the burger patty at Mel's was so darn dry and rubbery. The cheese on the cheeseburger? It was dried up till it looked translucent!! Ok, Hubb said that the chilli dog was not bad tho'.

So what's the fun at USS? I guess that's just cos we were there with our boys. Kieran got on the Rapids ride with the 3-storey drop at Jurassic Park and Kiefer rode on his first rollercoaster at Shrek! :)

Despite the cloud cover, it was still really hot to be out the entire day. By the time we were done, we were really all tired out. I couldn't even keep my eyes open after eating dinner. I fell right asleep while the boys were watching The Mummy that night! The next morning, it was as though we were jet-lagged. Kiefer woke up at 5ish (am) and proclaimed that he has "finished sleeping"! and Kieran woke up at 630am and said that "it is sunny already"!! Hubby and I were so tired out that we simply turned on Playhouse Disney and we both fell right back asleep!! So the boys were on their own till 9+ when we next woke cos the kiddos wanted their milk. After that, again Kiefer was getting tired, so in the midst of putting him down for a nap at 10+, I too, went back to sleep with him till noon when Kieran started asking me for lunch!! :P Thus, had to wake up to get lunch for him. I was so glad that I had freezer meals ready so I could get his lunch ready in 30min. :D Gosh.. the one day at USS really knocked us out for two days!!!
This was the "Shrek's Castle" that the boys were bugging us to bring them to, ever since they saw it while we crossed the causeway into Sentosa last August.


Kieran went up on the Rapids Adventure ride with the 3-storey drop at Jpark with the 2 of us!! Bravo! Kiefer couldn't make the height limit. :( 

 
























Only the carousel was open at Madagascar. :(

Kiefer's 1st real rollercoaster. He barely made the height limit, he may actually have missed the height limit by 1cm. This was the Enchanted Airways (we call it the Dragoncoaster:P) at Far Far Away. It was really quite fast for a kiddy ride! And he loved it and wanted to go on it again, but we didn't think we should cos it was really quite a task to hold on to him cos he was so tiny on the ride and I could feel him swinging about in his seat even though I clutched onto him tight!!