Of course as well as seeing the giant pandas at River Wonders, I also saw the rest of the zoo! River Wonders is based at Mandai Wildlife East, next door to both Singapore Zoo and Night Safari – more on those coming soon. River Wonders is open 10AM-7PM daily, and you can either buy a single-park ticket (S$43 adult, S$31 child) or a multi-park ticket (3 options to choose from) – I opted for the 4-park ticket (S$110) and visited all 4 locations over 2 days. This is a great option over buying the individual tickets, and I purchased this online in advance so had the QR codes saved to my phone to enter. Here the big attraction is obviously the giant pandas, but there’s plenty more to see.
I did think it felt quite small, I did spend most time at the pandas but did look around everything else River Wonders has to offer as well. This is just my opinion, but if the pandas weren’t here, then I wouldn’t have visited as there’s not a lot else that you’re *guaranteed* to see – however if you really like fish, and some obscure species at that, then this is the place for you! Without the pandas, I think 1-2 hours would be ample time to visit, for me with pandas a whole day was required.
River Wonders is set on two sides of the reservoir and really works as a loop. The first half up to the pandas focuses on a number of different famous rivers from across the world and showcases a huge range of fish (but also birds) from each of the parts in their respective sections. I saw some crazy looking unique fish and also some humungous ones! I’m not the biggest fish fan, so for me it was a relatively brief stop at the different tanks. I did think the theming of each section was very good, plus there were great signs everywhere so you could try to identify all the different species you were seeing.
In the panda pavilion there are also red pandas living, sadly I didn’t get any particularly good photos of these guys, but I got good viewing of them and really liked their dense spaces in the pavilion – with different foliage and vibes to the panda yards immediately after them.
The second side of the water was more my thing with some mammals. Firstly there is the Once Upon A River animal presentation – this is shown three times a day and you need to reserve a free ticket on the app 2-hours in advance. I wanted to go to this, but sadly the 2:30PM show sold out super quick and I missed it (had to leave before the 4:30PM show, and was wanting to use the AM to see the pandas). Most of the rest of the mammals can then only be seen by taking the Amazon River Quest boat ride – it was a nice ride and I did enjoy it, but I didn’t see a lot (just sleeping bums of the anteater, jaguars and tapirs!) because of course it’s a ride and doesn’t stop so you can stay a while to watch. As someone who will stand for hours waiting to see a panda, I have good patience and will wait at a sleeping animal in case it might wake up if I want to see it, so not being able to do that, especially with the jaguars as I would have loved to see them for a bit longer, wasn’t great. I did get decent views of some of the monkeys though. I then did the small Amazonia Encounters walkthrough, and while it was also sleeping, I did get to see a capybara – I just didn’t stay long because there were free-flying large birds in here and they were pooping all over the place (being pooped on is high up on my fears list haha). This was a cute experience and you really do get to see the animals close up. The final section was the Amazon Flooded Forest and I really enjoyed this because the manatees lived here! I love seeing manatees so this was perfect for me. I spent lots of time at the underwater viewing sections (there were a few different ones, including a huge cinema-screen sized window) and then you could also view from the top at water-level. It was quite hard to get pictures but they had lots of manatees, and when I went later in the afternoon as I was leaving they were enjoying snack time with lots of lettuce and greens^
Getting to the Mandai Wildlife Reserve
A taxi is the fastest way to get to the Mandai Wildlife Reserve, however public transport is also a great option and I used it both days to and from the reserve. From my hotel I walked around 5-10 minutes to the metro stop on the North-South line and took it all the way to Khatib, which took around 25 minutes but will depend where you start from. The last 10 minutes or so of the ride are above ground so it’s nice to see some more of Singapore on the journey. At the Khatib station the Mandai-Khatib Shuttle runs, ferrying you from the metro all the way to the reserve for just S$2.50, so it’s very affordable. I believe it’s card only payment and I had no problem using my VISA credit card for this. There is excellent signage pointing you off the metro straight to the bus stop, just follow the large paw prints on the ground! And the stop itself has a clear sign and the times/route indicated. The shuttle takes around 20 minutes, depending on traffic, and first makes a stop at Wildlife West, where Bird Paradise and Rainforest Wild ASIA (not open yet on my trip) are, then continues on to Wildlife East where Singapore Zoo, River Wonders and Night Safari are. You can also use the shuttle to transfer between the East and West hubs for free, just tell the driver when you get on at East that you are going to Bird Paradise and you don’t need to pay.
Despite the large number of visitors on the weekend, I never had to wait long for a bus. I did have to stand a couple of times, but it wasn’t a problem for me. The bus runs frequently, and even after visiting Night Safari and leaving late at night, the bus still runs so you’re able to easily get home via public transport, which is fantastic.
At the main East and West hubs everything is very well signposted and there are several food and shopping options at each where you don’t need a ticket to access, this is great. At the hubs there are also toilet facilities, and at East there are luggage lockers – I had planned to use these on my second day as I was leaving after my visit, however I wasn’t sure how secure they looked in a public area, so opted to just go store my luggage at my hotel and go back there before going to the airport.
