What is Universal's most popular theme park? If you said Universal Studios Florida or Islands of Adventure, you're wrong. While Universal Orlando might be the headquarters of Universal Parks and Resorts and Universal Creative, the chain's most-visited theme park lies half a world away, in Osaka, Japan.
While Universal Studios Japan welcomed 14.5 million visitors last year, making it the world's fourth-most-visited theme park, Universal Studios Singapore attracted the fewest number of visitors in the Universal chain, with "just" 4.1 million visitors. Singapore is also Universal's smallest park, physically, sitting on just 49 acres in the Resorts World Sentosa development.
But that doesn't mean Singapore's Universal park lacks attractions. It offers what might be Universal's best installation of Revenge of the Mummy, as well as the original Transformers ride and entire lands devoted to Shrek and Madagascar. Yet the Osaka park counters with a Wizarding World of Harry Potter and a Jaws ride, just to drive Universal Orlando fans deeper into jealousy.
I don't think you can go wrong with either of these parks, but I'm still going to make you choose. We invite you to read more about these parks on their Theme Park Insider listing pages. As always, your ratings and reviews of these parks' attractions on their listing pages are encouraged and welcomed. Register here to be able to leave written reviews for each ride, in addition to the ratings that are open to everyone.
Which park would you most want to visit? Time to vote!
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It's not easy to vote for "best" here. I love the Singapore park for its unique attractions like Battlestar Galactica (not a great pair of coasters but I love the theming) and the Madagascar Crate Adventure boat dark ride, the always-warm climate, a version of Pteranodon Flyers that anyone can ride without a kid, and a Din Tai Fung (my absolute favorite Taiwanese restaurant chain) right outside the gates. And I got to ride Transformers there before it came to North America. Unfortunately Sesame Street Spaghetti Space Chase debuted shortly after my visit. On the other hand, I love the unique attractions at Osaka like Space Fantasy, which is amazing, and they have the only JAWS attraction left in the world. I like Hollywood Dream/Backdrop and Flying Dinosaur, but they're not particularly unique among B&M-built coasters. Osaka is definitely a bigger, full-day park and has more to do, but most of its offerings can be found at the Universal Parks in North America. It's really hard to say which is "best", but thinking about the long queues in Osaka, I'm going to give the edge to Singapore.
Universal Singapore is a licensed park, owned and operated by Malaysia-based Genting. Comcast does not hold an ownership interest in it, as it does in the Six other Universal parks (Hollywood, USF, IOA, Volacano Bay, Osaka, and Beijing).
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Singapore looks more unique so I went with that.