Return to a Sexy Island

by Neil Humphreys

  Beyond exhaustion, my sleep-starved brain had moved into a higher plane of giddy, giggly euphoria, thanks to that final burst of adrenaline which fuels aching limbs before everything shuts down entirely. I found myself climbing into the DeLorean simulator with a group of teenage girls and muttering, “Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need ... roads.”

  The girls stared at me.

  “Have you been on this ride before, girls?” I shouted over the ride’s narrator.

  They shook their heads.

  “It’s gonna be great. I hope we can get this baby up to 88 miles an hour.”

  I laughed. They didn’t.

  “Der, de de de de, de de de de!”

  I was singing the bloody theme tune. I was rocking from side to side and singing the Back to the Future theme tune. I had gone through the wall. I no longer needed sleep. I needed a sedative. The American girl beside me leant towards her friend.

  “Look at him,” she said. “What’s wrong with the old guy?”

  The old guy loved Universal Studios. Plucking the maudlin strings of a violin, Universal Studios was my babysitter growing up. After my parents divorced, my mother went to work and I was tasked with looking after my little sister with the help of The Incredible Hulk. Old Bill Bixby kept us company through the school holidays as he travelled through small-town America seeking to reverse the damage done by the gamma rays. He was also an extremely kaypoh busybody, second only to Angela Lansbury in Murder, She Wrote. David Banner, Bixby’s character, was always acutely aware that you wouldn’t like him if you made him angry. But did he head for a peace commune or a mountaintop monastery? No, he washed dishes in a Chinatown diner owned by Triads. He knew how to keep his head down did David Banner. And he never left Universal Studios. That was the best part. Every episode was filmed on Universal’s backlot. He travelled the entire country, but every diner was always the diner in Back to the Future, and the same diner where Robert Shaw met Robert Redford in The Sting. Every street led to the Hill Valley courthouse, where lightning struck the clock tower to send Marty McFly Back to the Future. These were also the same streets that Austin Powers danced along in the opening scenes of his first movie.

  So I revered Universal Studios. I was making a pilgrimage. It was a chance to express my gratitude for the childhood companionship. Being jet-lagged and having met Han Solo earlier in the morning only added to the day’s dreaminess. I just regret falling asleep in my French fries at the Jurassic Park cafe.

  Still, I hope you can appreciate my unadulterated joy when I lifted my daughter and posed in front of the iconic revolving planet logo of Universal Studios Singapore inside Resorts World Sentosa. If ever a small single structure symbolised new Singapore, it would have to be this one. The little red dot really is a centre of the universe. Its evolution as an entertainment destination in such a short period is beyond breathtaking when you consider what had been there before.

  More than 10 years earlier, we had taken my wife’s parents to the generously-titled Volcanoland, which was once situated not far from where I now stood with my daughter outside Universal Studios. Volcanoland was quaint. Some might say crap. Volcanoland promised visitors an “active” volcano with terrifying earth tremors, belligerent bursts of blistering air and horrifying hissing sounds shooting from its fissures.

  It was a fibreglass model that shook a bit.

  Young Singaporeans were employed to portray indigenous Mayan people, an image that confounded the senses to begin with, and their primary role was to scare the crowd by shouting, “Ooh, look it’s really shaking ... I think the plastic volcano is going to explode any second ... We better run for cover ... Wait! Pose for your photos first.”

  That’s what Sentosa offered visitors until Universal Studios turned its world around.

  We bought our theme park tickets and the race was on between my three-year-old daughter and me to see who could reach the delightfully tacky Hollywood main street first. I won, but only by a gentle pulling of her pigtails when she was distracted by the presence of Woody Woodpecker. While she ran off to join the queue for a photo with Woody, I noticed that the Universal Studios crowd was decidedly different to that of its Californian cousin. There were hardly any obese people. And anyone who thinks I’m taking an easy cheap shot here has obviously never been to Universal Studios or Disneyland in California. I’m not referring to regular folks carrying a bit of holiday weight. I’m taking about a rare group so large that they still wear flared trousers because they haven’t been able to reach below their waists since the 1970s. The morbidly obese do not go to weight-loss programmes in the United States. They are given motorised carts and sent to the nearest theme park with explicit instructions to ram the buggers into everyone’s ankles from behind with one hand whilst holding a bucket-sized soda in the other.

  Such people were hard to find. Instead, we were surrounded by tour parties from China. On these overseas collectives, the tour guides must be under incalculable pressure not to lose anyone on their watch so the tourists are usually labelled to make identification easier, perhaps with a discreet sticker on the chest. Not the mainland Chinese tour parties. They took no chances. They covered themselves in luminous yellow T-shirts that made the retina recoil. And the laughably loud shirts were topped off by matching yellow baseball caps. The group looked like they’d all been showered in vomit. No tour guide could mislay these guys. How do you lose 25 giant corn on the cobs?

  Like most visitors, we turned left at Hollywood and made our way around the park in a clockwise fashion towards Madagascar, the second of seven themed zones. We joined the queue for Madagascar: A Crate Adventure, based on the animated movie by DreamWorks. We lined up for no more than 15 minutes under a covered queuing area complete with fans and water coolers. At most theme parks, water coolers require a compass and a seasoned cartographer to track them down. They are everywhere at Universal Studios Singapore. My daughter adored the riverboat adventure, pointing and waving at the animatronic characters, waterfalls and jet sprays. The ride lasted 10 minutes. My daughter sang “I Like to Move It, Move It” for the next 10 days.

  We next joined a queue for the hairiest, scariest attraction in any theme park—the queue for a photo with a cartoon character. If there is one thing that fatherhood has taught me, it is never mess with a parent lining up to get a photo with a cartoon character. Something happens in the brain; a chemical imbalance occurs and a parental instinct kicks in to shield, protect and enhance one’s offspring. We once strolled through an Australian wildlife reserve in Tower Hill, Victoria, and stumbled across some emu chicks crossing the footpath. Then we encountered the mother bringing up the rear. She looked down at me. I’m 1.93 metres tall and she looked down at me. Then she peered at her exposed chicks, examined the distance between us and determined that we were too close. She gave chase. I took off like I’d sat on a spike. Her fixed maternal gaze sent an unequivocal message between the species: do not come between me and my babies. I hadn’t since seen such a steely-eyed desire to protect at any cost until I joined that photo-taking queue. The message was the same: do not come between me and my babies’ chance to take a photo with Gloria the Hippo or I will fucking kill you.

  Women grabbed their children and jostled for space while fathers primed their cameras, taking photos of random kids with Gloria just to calculate the correct lens and focus (at least I hope that’s what they were doing). Anyone who accidentally joined the queue from the wrong end (invariably one of the corn on the cobs from mainland China) was picked up by the baseball cap and thrown out by irate mothers. Oblivious passers-by who wandered across the shot just as the camera clicked were swiftly chased away to avoid a public lynching. And throughout all of this, the young, exasperated theme park guides tried to usher impatient parents into a single line only to be told, “Bollocks! I’ve paid over $70 for this ticket so you’re gonna let me get a cute shot with Gloria and my little girl or I’m going to kick you in the nuts.”

  And that was just my wife.
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br />   Honestly, we loved chasing after the men and women in suits. Camp, kitschy and cheesy have always entertained and titillated more than the refined and sophisticated. I happily pursued Marilyn Monroe past the marvellous New York Library facade and insisted on a photo in front of a sidewalk stoop, or front door steps, complete with fake steam coming through the pavement grate. I cannot get enough of the celluloid Americana. Is it artificial and cynically manufactured for corporate gain? Does it reflect the reality of life in New York? Who cares? I didn’t grow up in New York. I grew up in small-screen New York, as presented to me by Universal Studios. I was in heaven. Dashing from one cinematic hero to another, however, I did spot one unusual trend. There were a number of young men queuing up to have their photos taken with Woody Woodpecker, Alex the Lion from Madagascar and other cartoon characters. Now it’s one thing to line up beside the lovely Marilyn or even Betty Boop, but seeing a single man putting his arm around another man dressed as Woody Woodpecker and beaming like a lottery winner was unsettling. Should these men be allowed in public places unsupervised?

  Having cornered Beetlejuice in New York, I spotted a park guide beckoning me towards a show called Lights, Camera, Action! The lame title almost dissuaded me but I picked up my daughter and joined the pleasingly short queue. (In fact, we didn’t line up for more than 15 minutes for any attraction the entire day. Hint: Follow the theme park rules and go on a Tuesday or a Wednesday during the low season and avoid weekends.) Well, the special effects show was just wonderful. Hosted by Steven Spielberg, Lights, Camera, Action! supposedly gave kids a basic insight into how sound effects and sound stages work but, really, this one was for the kids inside the grown-ups. The opening montage of classic Universal Studios movies, everything from Back to the Future to Jaws, E.T. and Backdraft, was worth the admission fee alone. Like the MINT Museum, I was taken back to my Dagenham living room when I was a wide-eyed, open-mouthed, cross-legged kid trying to focus on Marty getting up to 88 miles an hour and ignoring my sister’s pleas to play Grease again.

  After the sequence of film clips, Spielberg ushered the group onto the main sound stage, modelled on the interior of an NYC boathouse, and that’s all I’m going to say. I prefer to keep the man behind the curtain and focus on the wizard. Besides, I came out rather relieved that the special effects show wasn’t a fully interactive show. When we visited Warner Bros. Movie World in 1997, the studio tour host pulled me out of the audience to play Superman on the grounds that I made a decent Clark Kent: bespectacled, tall, dark and drippy. To the merriment of the masses, they stretched me out on a plank, wearing an ill-fitting Superman costume in front of a cheap back projection screen. I thought I was a passable Man of Steel until we shuffled out later and I overheard an elderly Australian chap mutter to his wife, “That’s the first time I’ve seen Superman played by a skinny Pommy bastard.”

  When we lined up for the brilliant Battlestar Galactica duelling roller coasters, we attracted some uncomfortable glares from a group of fidgeting teenagers. We had played our child swap card. For the benefit of those who do not have children, the child swap system allows couples to both go on an adult-only ride without queuing twice. The first parent lines up as normal while the other minds the children, refraining from leaving them outside Lost Property, and then they swap over at a designated location. My wife waited at the Battlestar Galactica entrance for me to return, then she hurried down the express lane (a separate line for VIPs wishing to pay a small fortune to avoid lengthy queues). When she jogged past the impatient teenagers waiting in the regular queue, they tutted and shook their heads with that familiar combination of adolescent aggression and world weariness. If any of those guys happen to read this and believe we were somehow cutting the queue that day, I can only say that I would happily and unreservedly grant you our places in the express lane. But in return, you would have to spend a day carrying around a sweaty, jiggling child constantly poking you in the face and shouting, “I want to play with Woody’s pecker. I want to play with Woody’s pecker.” That’s only fair.

  Unknowingly, we saved the best to last. After the carousel, Shrek in 4D, the interactive Donkey dancing and the 15-year-old WaterWorld stunt show (come on guys, I watched the same performance in California more than a decade ago and the plane worked in that one), we took full advantage of the child swap system for the Revenge of the Mummy roller coaster. The ride was everything a theme park attraction should be: thrilling, relevant, interactive and fully immersive. Like Terminator 2: 3D in California’s Universal Studios, Revenge of the Mummy has a clear narrative that complements its source material. It’s not just a roller coaster with a couple of dusty bandage-covered mannequins beside the track but an entire movie experience that begins the moment guests join the queue inside an enormous Egyptian tomb. We were ushered into mine cars and swiftly sent hurtling through the tomb’s darkness in every conceivable direction, with flames licking the ceiling and scarab beetles scurrying across the walls. In movie-related theme parks, the most memorable attraction always pays clear homage to its cinematic origins to engage not only the thrill-seeker, but also the film buff. Revenge of the Mummy achieved both with aplomb. Direct film references were plentiful and I shit myself. It is quite possibly the perfect theme park ride.

  But for the kiasu types, that’s still not enough. The Revenge of the Mummy ride was budgeted at more than US$20 million and Singaporeans have lamented that the queue is too long. Universal Studios Singapore is the only theme park of its kind in Southeast Asia, its owners promising not to build another in the region for the next 30 years. Some Singaporeans say there are not enough rides. Aware of the energy-sapping humidity and unpredictable monsoonal weather patterns, Universal Studios Singapore maximises every square inch of its layout. All seven themed zones are connected around a central lake. Most of the streets are sheltered from both the sun and the rain and fans are provided in most queuing areas to minimise discomfort. Some Singaporeans say the theme park is too small. Universal Studios Singapore is smaller than its American counterpart, but it’s also slightly cheaper. Some Singaporeans say, “Wah, still so expensive.” These are the same Singaporeans, incidentally, who once laughed sarcastically when I informed them of weekend plans to visit Sentosa. To them, the island was a perennial source of national embarrassment, with a creaking monorail, dilapidated attractions and a decaying infrastructure. Sentosa served only regional tourists and ang mohs who didn’t know any better. Singaporeans knew better.

  As I sat in Mel’s Drive-in, based loosely on American Graffiti (one of my favourite movies from the 1970s), I thought, Sod the cynics. Just be grateful that the theme park overcame the economic downturn and is actually here. Universal Studios Dubailand broke ground in July 2008. Universal Studios Singapore also broke ground in 2008. Dubailand was supposed to open in 2010 but became a direct victim of the global financial crisis. The money ran out and the project was put on hold. Apart from a gate bearing the Universal Studios logo, no work has been carried out in Dubai since 2009. Singapore welcomed more than two million visitors through its Universal Studios gate within nine months of opening in 2010. I know where I’d rather be, sitting in Mel’s Drive-in, slurping shakes and watching my daughter dance along to Mel’s Dinettes singing “It’s My Party (and I’ll Cry if I Want to)”.

  Resorts World Sentosa won the bid to build Singapore’s second integrated resort shortly after I left in 2006 because the consortium promised to deliver Universal Studios. Unlike Marina Bay Sands’ emphasis on high-end retail, conferences and museums, Resorts World Sentosa’s focus was family entertainment. It had to do it for the kids. Speaking as the biggest of them, I can only say that Universal Studios Singapore is an unqualified success. I hope they keep the kids in and the kiasu out for many years to come. Besides, the kiasu have already got their theme park next door.

  And so, with a heavy heart, I kissed my family goodbye and trudged towards the casino.

  Apparently, this is the place for proper grown-ups.

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  AROUND the middle of 2008, some Australian friends and I were sitting in my house and lampooning the latest farcical fallout from the unfinished local swimming pool. The Leisurelink Aquatic & Recreation Centre, to give the pool its full mouthful, was going to be the jewel in Geelong’s municipal crown. The town planners of my former Victorian home promised a 50-metre pool to go with a learn-to-swim pool, spa, toddlers’ pool, hydro pool, gymnasium and a couple of water slides for the kids. My daughter was due in June 2008. The aquatic complex was also due to be delivered in 2008. The swimming serendipity appropriately synchronised. However, there was a delay. There were many delays, with the deadline constantly pushed back by increasingly castigated councillors. So with my friends sitting comfortably in my living room, I regaled them with the Singapore story. No, not that Singapore story. The shorter one, the one about the even smaller island.

  I explained that there was an island off the southern coast of Singapore called Sentosa. A former military garrison turned tourist destination, the green isle was an escape from the encroaching urban sprawl on the other side, so much so that most Singaporeans had forgotten about it. Sentosa had gone stale. An entire makeover was needed to resurrect the faded funhouse, pull visitors away from Hong Kong and Macau and bring the roar back to the Merlion. So around the time that the City of Greater Geelong unveiled the blueprints for an all-under-one-roof aquatic complex, the island’s radical transformation began under the stewardship of the Sentosa Development Corporation and Resorts World Sentosa.

  And that night I made the boldest—and daftest—of bets. In many respects, I was the first person in the world to place a bet on the Sentosa casino. I had a friendly wager with those present in my living room that Resorts World Sentosa would be topped off and opened before the public swimming pool in Geelong.