Best things to do in Sentosa

Sentosa is a recreation island just south of Singapore and it should be a MUST on your Singapore itinerary. Its the home to luxury accommodation, theme parks, white sandy beaches, shows, monorail, cable car and lush rainforests. Most people stay in Singapore and do day trips to the island but I would strongly recommend staying here to explore the island to the fullest. We stayed for 2 nights on the island and I thought even 3 would be good.

1. S.E.A Aquarium

S.E.A aquarium is a delight to the lovers of underwater world. We visited in the first half of the day to avoid Singapore heat. We had booked a flight that landed early in the morning so that we could make maximum use of the day. We reached our hotel Siloso beach resort ( read the review here). This property is at Siloso beach which is also the last station of monorail. You can take either shuttle bus or monorail to most of the attractions on the island. Most hotels give check in at 3.00 pm so we kept the bags at the concierge, freshened up a bit and left for SEA aquarium. The monorail station closest to the Aquarium is – Resort world station. We are a bunch of enthusiastic moms who even bought aquarium themed tshirts for all kids for the outing. LOL

The sea aquarium is really huge and you need to set aside atleast 3-4 hours for the same. There are smaller habitats alongwith a sea tunnel and massive ocean habitat. We had fun seeing the shark habitat with some hammerheads swimming about.

There are many smaller habitats along the way to the ocean habitat. We saw different species of fishes, blue frogs and much more. I would actually prefer to spend time at the smaller habitats.

After aquarium we went back to the hotel. The best part of Sentosa Island is that once on island you can travel for FREE within the island with the Sentosa Express monorail, Sentosa Bus and Beach Tram!

2. Luge

Luge Sentosa is a fun filled activity for both adults and kids. You can choose from various combo packages. They even have a separate skyride ticket only. This ticket gives you a relaxed chairlift ride up the hill and back without driving the luge downhill. However for the outgoing ones luge is a MUST do. We went for the ride in late afternoon after visiting the SEA aquarium. The luge ride tickets have one way skyride included as you go up the hill via chairift skyride and come downhill on the luge. We bought 2 rides combo tickets. I had experienced luge with the same company in Queenstown, New Zealand so I knew that once is never enough( tagline of Skyline company).

ALSO READ: 10 exciting things to do in Queenstown, New Zealand

The Singapore luge has 2 tracks – Jungle trail and Dragons trail. We did both the tracks as we went for 2 rides. They have added 2 more new tracks recently. Its super fun to go downhill on hairpin corners and tunnels.

A bunch of excited kids and me got ready to leave. We got excited to see minimal crowd near the chairlift but once we reached the top and got in the queue for luge we realized it was a serpentine queue and it took us 1 hour until got our luge! Phew.

Once we came down we didn’t go for the second ride. Its not compulsory to use it at the same time. The tickets have full day validity so we decided to come back later. We headed for the hotel to relax for a bit in the awesome pool. You should check the reviews of Siloso beach resort here. The next attraction that we were visiting were wings of time show. Wings of time and luge are close to each other. After we finished the show we ran towards luge as 9.30 is the last ride up. We were lucky to just make it in time for the second ride. We were the only ones and had funtime with the entire premises to us on private.

The tracks are illuminated with different colored lights which makes it more fun and since there we were the last ones we stopped midway to click pics!

I would suggest to do one ride in the day and one after the wings of time the same as we did. This way you will get the feel of both night and day rides and it was perfectly comfortable for us as we were staying in a hotel just 10 min away on foot 🙂

3. Wings of Time show

Wings of time is a spectacular night show on Sentosa island in the open with a backdrop of the sea. There are 2 shows 7.40 and 8.40 that you can choose with a premium seating and regular seating. There is no need for premier seating in my opinion. The difference between premium and proper is that in premium ticket you get proper seats vs benches in regular ticket. You can just go early and take one of the middle spots on the benches. All seats have good views. The show uses laser lights, fireworks and water jets to create magical visual effects all interwtwined in a story of a bird, boy and girl. The story comes out brilliantly in the artistic interpretations of Savannas, Pyramids, Underwater world and much more.

4. Universal studios

Universal Studios Singapore is Southeast Asia’s Only Hollywood Movie Theme Park. It had many shows and rides divided into 7 themes zones. Some of the most popular attractions are Transformers 3D battle ride, Spaceship Galactica, Mummy returns and Jurassic park raft ride attraction. You can excpect long queues in holiday season and weekends. There are many other attractions besides these super thrilling rides.

Besides the rides you can visit stores for some shopping or just stroll around in the various themed zones. Minion mart particularly attracted my kids. There was also a cute popcorn cart outside the store where they sold popcorn in minion buckets. I was super excited to buy it myself leave alone the kids. LOL

The day we had planned to go to Universal studios it was raining cats and dogs. Generally its a open ticket so we all contemplated to cancel and go the next day. But then with a lot of positivity we just headed to the park. Since it was raining the park wasn’t too crowded and to our delight the rains also stopped in a while! Well it was blessing in disguise and we got to go on Transformers ride twice. Now that is no crowd at all!!

5. Sentosa Merlion

Merlion is synonymous to Singapore. There are 2 merlions one of which is near Singapore CBD and the other one is in Sentosa. Sentosa Merlion can be visited by Imbiah monorail station or you can walk. There are huge queues for monorails so we decided to walk. The walk between resorts world and merlion is about 15 minutes. After visiting the Universal studios we just ambled across walking past restaurants, shops to reach the Merlion.

It was almost dark so we got to see this mythical creature in different colors. It is said that the Merlion with the head of a lion and body of a fish protects Singapore from adversity. We saw the Merlion again in daylight on the next day when we took the cable car from Merlion station.

6. Megazip

Singapore’s Megazip is a zipline about 450 metres long just next to Siloso beach. It is one of the activities of a company called Mega adventure who offers 4 activities – zip, climb, jump, bounce. The nearest stop is Siloso beach point. You can take the monorail to beach station and take the tram from there or walk. Its about 10 minutes walk. We chose to the megazip as it was an exhilarating ride across forest and water to a small island. We did this early in the morning on day 3 of our stay on Sentosa to avoid crowds and heat.

7. Singapore Cable car

The Singapore Cable Car has two lines – Mount Faber Line( Mount Faber – Harbourfront – Sentosa )that runs between Mainland Singapore and Sentosa Island. Sentosa Line( Merlion – Imbiah lookout – Siloso point) that runs within Sentosa Island is about 20 min. After the zipline rush in our blood it was time for some leisure before we left the island to go to mainland Singapore. We checked out of the hotel, left bags at concierge and went for cable car ride. We had bought roundtrip tickets which covered both the lines.
We boarded the cable car from Merlion station and took the cable car towards Mount Faber. We got down at Imbiah Lookout Station to get on the Mount Faber Line. From here we walked towards the Sentosa station. The Imbiah Lookout Station is located 5 minutes on foot from the Sentosa Station. Once on the cable car we flew high over the harbour to reach Singapore mainland. This route provides spectacular views of Singapore and harbour. We enjoyed the beautiful views of Central Business District and Keppel Harbour towards the harbourfront station.

From Harbourfront station the cable car then crosses the city areas towards Mount Faber.

From Mount Faber station we took a turn and returned back to Sentosa island and got down at Sentosa station. We got birds eye view of Sentosa express running on the tracks below against the backdrop of docks. On the route from Mount Faber back to Sentosa you will see the Singapore cruise terminal, adventure cove waterpark and universal studios.

Then we walked back to Imbiah lookout station. Fom the Imbiah Lookout Station, you can go to either Merlion Station or Siloso Point Station. We took the Sentosa line towards Siloso point station. On the way to Merlion station from Imbiah station, you will see skyline luge’s tracks, skylift and the beach. From Imbiah station to Siloso point station you will see Mount Imbiah’s jungle, Megazip adventure park, Fort Siloso and Siloso beach. Once we got down at Siloso point station we got down to enjoy at the Siloso beach and walked back to our hotel which was 5 minutes on foot.

8. Siloso beach

Siloso, is one of Singapore’s hippest beach that has cool bars and restaurants. This beach was just across from our hotel Siloso beach resort and we enjoyed calm morning walks here sans the crowd. It generally gets crowded during evenings. There is fort at the end of the beach stretch where you can go for a walk too. Besides Siloso, Palawan beach is one more option on Sentosa. You can visit this via beach tram.

One more attraction at Siloso beach is an ice cream shop. Don’t forget to enjoy the delicious coconut ice creams here.The Co + Nut + Ink ice cream shop specializes in coconut ice creams and they serve it in a very unique way. Coconut ice cream in coconut shell with coconut water.. Just Wow! They first break the coconut in front of you and remove the coconut water in a glass. They then put a scoop of the ice cream you have chosen inside half of the broken coconut shell with the pulp intact. You can even customize the ice cream with nuts or syrup of your choice. They give the coconut water complimentary with the ice cream. We stumbled upon this shop again near the Merlion park in Singapore city. Coconutilicious!!!

Well this was my trip to Sentosa island. Besides these attractions there are few more you can enjoy if you stay for some more time. You can check the Sentosa resorts world website for more attractions. But alas! there is always a time crunch and it becomes impossible to cover everything in one trip and second trip to the same destination is a rare for me as its a BIG BIG world out there! Fingers crossed for Sentosa though 🙂