Friday, April 11, 2008

All Aboard the Singapore Flyer!!

As promised in this post here *which has pictures too*, this post is all about our ride up the Singapore Flyer. It was my grandmother's 78th birthday so the family decided to ride the flyer together with her in honour of her special day and then follow on with a family dinner within the building itself.

Cost for doing something like this for the family.. nearly $2K just for an evening with tickets plus Birthday dinner. Insane!! Sim Tia!! Aiyoh!! But overall I enjoyed it. Its a little over hyped but at least I can now say, I rode the flyer. Even though there was nothing really fantastic about it. Would I ride it again if I had to pay for it myself? Unfortunately, no.

So us early birds and part of the family met up earlier to purchase tickets for all riding the flyer. And took a group shot in the meantime while waiting for the tickets and the rest of the gang to arrive. Eekk! Looking through these pictures I realise that pre-menstrual bloating really makes my face puff up alot lah! *pffftt!! so round!*
BTW, if you have never been there before and ask someone to "meet you at the ticketing counter". Don't assume like I did, that there is only 1 ticketing counter. Almost every where you turn, there is one blardy ticketing counter. From the foyer where the multi-storey carpark is has one, and when you walk over to the main building there's another and another and another!!... CJ arrived earlier so I buzzed him and said "meet us at the ticketing counter" and when he didn't show up in a couple of minutes, I called to ask where he was.
Pam: "Eh! Where are you?"
CJ: "At the ticketing counter lah!"
Pam: "Me too leh! I don't see u" *looking around*
CJ: "I'm standing right in front of it lor!"
Pam: "Dun have lahhhhh!!!!"
Then I looked across the building and realised. Fuck. So many ticketing counters.... -.-'' and I walked over and met up with a really pissed off CJ... *uh oh.. bad news....never get this man pissed off lor! ....* Sorry Sorry!!... bad assumption...Eeeekkkks!!! So NEVER Assume = making an ASS out of U and Me*

With tickets in hand, we set off to explore the main building. No prizes for guessing who sponsored the main atrium garden. Obviously it's Yakult. Hhaha I was surprised I didn't see a stream of Yakult or Yakult figurines strewn around the garden. Or maybe free Yakult samples when we finished walking around the place.. hahaha... Don't have ley... *cheh*

There was a walkway in this area that led you through this little "rainforest" and we stopped periodically to take pictures.. just like tourists! As it was situated right below the capsules, you can look up and see the capsules return from their flight.

And much to my delight, Popeyes had made its way there with it's second outlet! Whoohooo!! I LOVE LOVE Popeyes.. I love their chicken.. I love their coleslaw... and I love their biscuits!! Ok.. so no biscuits now that I'm carb free but I can eat the rest! Whooohooo!!!

And Robert's Coffee... hahha CJ's english name is Robert so we got to tease him a little.... "eh you opened a cafe here meh?" *nudge nudge CJ* Hahaha.

There are other shops on each level of the building.. Kenko which has those little fishes that eat the dead skin off your feet. *I want! I want!* and the Teddy Bear Workshop too... there were several shops to explore... u can find out more about the retail & service outlets here.

So we went to the arrival area which was cordoned off just like the airport, complete with television guides about the flyer, x-ray machine where we had to put our valuables in and of course the metal detector frame which we had to walk through... *what? you mean there's no body frisking to check for hidden items on the body? Hahaha, I was looking forward to having the security frisk CJ and "accidentally" molest him hahahhhahha*

After going through security, we "beeped" our barcode cards on the barcode reader and entered the gates.
But not before CJ decided to have some fun with the tickets by sticking them all over his sweaty head..... -.-''
"Lao gong ah... wait u spoil the ticket barcode lah cannot go in, my dad will *bish* u" and he still continued to stick it over his face and posed with them... wah lau.

And while waiting in que, we took a group picture with the kids. That girl in the middle is my cousin, Steffie. She's the same age as Eirian.

We were then ushered into a room where we were all made to pose under frames and we all realised Ahh... a simulation of the capsule frame! And Uh oh... commercial picture shot... they're going to ask us to pay for this group picture but we obliged anyway and smiled so that we could get it over with and enter the boarding area. *Mumbling* we're definitely not paying for the photo. Sure daylight robbery lor!

Inside the capsule was very steady, so we took the chance to take photographs while the capsule ascended. Recently my dad appointed himself as the official family gathering photographer and comes complete with his Canon camera and tupperware like diffuser flash. I'm so eyeing it when he buys another camera and wants to relinquish this one.. I want a DSLR!!!!! *whine & pout* So here we are, my D, my baby sister Alex and me.

And the various views from the flyer... I've put the pictures out in a clockwise rotation so look at it from the top left onwards and you can get a general view of what we saw from the capsule. Including what it looks like when you look down. That circular thing on the building is the adjascent multi story carpark.

And the guest of honour aka the birthday girl. My mama!! :) She sportingly smiled for this shot and after I took it. She went "aiyah! Now a days ah, everywhere you go you carry camera ah?". *ahem* Errr... yep!... *blush & skip away*
My grandma has not changed the way she says things for as long as I remember. She still calls coins as shillings. Clothes as baju and when she's angry... "I'll give you a tight slap I tell you!!" was her threat to all the grandchildren when we got out of hand. Phew!~

So while still amusing ourselves in the capsule, we realised that the capsule had blue downlights so we had some fun posing under them and pretend to be smurfs. This one is Alex with her blue smurf look...

And of course, whats a ride without another group picture with the kids!! Say Cheese!!

I looked up and saw this side right above the door. "No Exit?" Then how to get out?? I'm sure no one at that point in time of flight was considering exiting the capsule. Unless they were seriously suicidal. CJ asked "would you pay SGD$29.50 just to jump down?"... I said "why not? If I really wanted to jump, whats $29.50?" Jeez!!... I hope the SG flyer has enough safety measures to avoid that kind of forthcoming issues... becuase you never know. Some depressed person may come along and try it one day. *Eeek*

So the 30 minute ride was over and all of us went "that's it?" hahah and hopped unsteadily out of the capsule.. which never stops moving btw.. u literally hop out one by one out of the moving "vehicle". We were then all ushered to the gift area which is pretty much tourist suicide. As expected, they tried to sell us our group photograph. I non-chalantly whipped out my camera and tried to take the screenshot of our picture but was immediately stopped by staff who went "Mdm! Mdm! No personal pictures here!".... cheh.... *pout*
We strolled the area and checked out all the SG flyer merchandise... did we buy any? NO. -.-''
So another stroll down and we passed by a private lounge which had transluscent glass walls and being the kaypos *busy bodies* we all were, we peeked in each time there was clear glass. Heh heh! Wah!! VIP lounge and Bar leyy.... *gag - so suaku (country bumpkin) can??*Wah lau.
So it was soon dinner time and we headed down to the restaurant which was on the ground floor. As we entered, we all went "ooooohhh food, great! I'm hungry!" and we turned into a glass corridor to our privately booked dining room.
Ohhh!! I like these kinds of corridors! Like so glam! And what did I do right after I stepped into it? Take a picture of my reflection of course! Hahahahha.....

So it was an expensive 9 course dinner plus a Chocz chocolate ganache cake which my aunt brought along. Yumm!!! Click on the image to enlarge to see whats available if you want.

When you enter the place and you're greeted by a wall of fish! I love these fish tanks at restaurants. They're great children distractors when they get restless and make a great bribe offer. "Finish your food and later you can go see the fishies!" hahahahaa.. gets them all the time. *chomp chomp chomp*

And to end this day's experience off and this post.. a picture with my mama and me in our first Singapore Flyer flight together.

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