How Mummy Took Her Revenge

I visited Universal Studios with my family last Saturday. (Universal Studios Singapore opened its doors on 18 Mar 2010.)

Having survived the Giant Drop and the Tower of Terror at the turn of the last century, I was looking forward to riding the Battlestar Galactica. However, I was deeply disappointed that it remained closed for safety inspection and review.

We headed straight for the Waterworld as the first show was scheduled to start at 11.30 am.

There we witnessed some explosive action and got to experience first hand what terrorist attacks would feel like.

You see, besides the loud explosions, you might also get terrorised by having water splashed over you if you chose to sit in the blue seats in front. No need to go to Thailand for Songkran Water Festival... and risk another explosion over there.

After the show at the Waterworld, we proceeded to the next most exciting ride after the Battlestar Galactica, i.e. the Revenge of the Mummy.

Somehow this ride reminded me of the Ghost Train I used to sit in the old New World Amusement Park of the 1960s. It has similar scary sights and ghostly figures to scare the wits out of you. Only this time, the advanced electronic effects are 10 times as realistic and hence 10 times as scary. (No such thing as silly coconut husk for the hair of the mummy.) The train car can take about 10 times as many passengers, i.e. 20 people compared to only 2 in the past. It also moves 10 times as fast and effectively costs 10 times more to ride. Finally, the screams are 10 times as loud and I am not joking.

But I was definitely joking when I told my two boys after the ride that no wonder the scary ride was called the Revenge of the Mummy - it's because mummy was wise enough not to join us for the ride. She thus took her revenge by leaving us to suffer and scream all by ourselves. :-)

Omigosh, after the scary ride, this man looked like the friendly guy next door:

And did we travel so fast that we entered a time warp to before 1962 when Marilyn Monroe was still the reigning screen idol?

After experiencing almost the whole gamut of human emotions, we felt hunger pangs, naturally. So we entered this fast food joint called Mel's Drive-In. Parked outside were several old beauties which my friend would certainly love to use for his quizes.

It was crowded inside and all tables were occupied. I joined the queue at the cashier to place my order. I could not believe my ears when a while later, a female staff approached the queue to announce that our orders would take one-and-a-half hours to fulfill! Wow! Mel sure gives a whole new meaning to the term "fast food". While he is at it, he might as well change the name of his outlet to Mel's Crawl-In instead of Drive-In. ;)

In the end, we settled for a $6.90 chicken pie each from this stall. Half of my money probably went to pay for the stall owner's monthly installments for the expensive-looking vehicle prop.

Obviously still hungry, we later had pizza and honey chicken wings at Loui's Pizza and then finished off with desserts at KT's Grill.

Despite the small glitches, overall it was still an enjoyable experience for the whole family. Highly recommended but you should go on a weekday instead. Why? Because you have to wait up to 80 minutes for some of the rides on weekends. With only 9 hours available (Universal Studios is open from 9 am to 6 pm daily), how many such rides can you take in a day? It doesn't take a Maths genius to work out the answer. Even mummy can.