Singapore Night Tour: Open-Top Bus or on the Water?

Once it is dark, Singapore sells two kinds of guided evening: one on a road and one on the water. They are priced very differently, they rate differently, and they are not competing for the same three hours – which is why the price comparison that looks decisive is not.

The two products

The road version. The Big Bus night tour by open-top bus with a live guide is from €44.37, listed at 3 hours, 4.4 stars from 1,215 reviews.

The water version. Several, all clustered around the same price. The Starry Night Cruise with Spectra and Garden Rhapsody is from €23.21 at 3.5 to 4.5 hours, 4.5 stars from 1,712 reviews. A river cruise with Garden Rhapsody and Spectra carries 4.8 stars from 1,697 reviews at €23.89 over four hours. A nocturnal river cruise with both shows is 4.7 from 843 reviews, also €23.89.

So: the bus is roughly twice the price, rates lowest of the four, and lists the shortest duration. On the numbers it loses badly.

Read the itinerary before you believe the duration

Here is the correction, and it cuts against the cheaper option.

A four-hour evening cruise is not four hours on a boat. The Singapore River Cruise itself is listed by its operator at 40 minutes. The rest of a four-hour package is getting between places, waiting, and standing at two light shows that are free to watch and run to a published timetable – Garden Rhapsody at 7:45 pm and 8:45 pm, Spectra at 8 pm and 9 pm with a third show at 10 pm on Fridays and Saturdays.

That is not a criticism. Somebody solving the transport and the timing between three fixed events on opposite sides of a bay is doing real work, and for a first evening in an unfamiliar city it is worth money. But you should know what you are buying: a well-organised evening built around forty minutes afloat, not a four-hour voyage.

The bus’s three hours, by contrast, are three hours of bus.

They overlap more than the price suggests

This is where reading the itinerary matters most, because the two are not the opposites they look like.

The boat can only go where the water goes. The Singapore River and Marina Bay. That is a spectacular strip – the quays, the bridges, the financial district, the hotel, the Supertrees – and it is perhaps two square kilometres of a country that has considerably more than that.

The bus stays close to the same water. Big Bus runs the night tour from Suntec City to Marina Barrage, then to Lau Pa Sat for satay, then to Gardens by the Bay for Garden Rhapsody, and finishes with a drive past Clarke Quay and Orchard Road. Every fixed stop is on or beside Marina Bay. It does not go to Chinatown, Little India or Kampong Glam, and it does not get off the bus on Orchard Road.

So both products end their evening at the same show, under the same Supertrees. What the bus adds that no boat has is Marina Barrage – the dam at the mouth of the bay, which is where you look back at the skyline from the outside rather than from inside it – and a hawker centre stop with food in your hand rather than a commentary about food. What the cruise adds is Spectra, which the bus tour does not include, and forty minutes actually on the water.

If you want the ethnic quarters, neither of these is the ticket. That is a daytime question, and the answer is at the end of this article.

Where the money actually goes

The bus is more expensive because you are paying for a vehicle and a guide for three hours. The cruise packages are cheaper because two of the three things in them – Garden Rhapsody and Spectra – cost nothing to watch. What you pay for there is the seat on the boat and someone making the connections.

Which means there is a third option that nobody sells: do the free half yourself. Spectra at 8 pm on the Event Plaza, walk round to the Supertree Grove for Garden Rhapsody at 8:45 pm, and book nothing. Add the plain Singapore River Cruise at €17.41 for the forty minutes on the water and you have the substance of a €23 package for less, at the cost of managing it yourself. We set that evening out in Singapore after dark.

Rain is a bigger problem for the bus

The Meteorological Service records thunderstorms as most common in the afternoon and evening, with November to January the wettest months. An open upper deck is the least sheltered thing in this article. Operators usually have covered seating below, but the reason you booked the open-top bus is the open top.

The boat is covered. The light shows are not, and outdoor attractions here stop when lightning is nearby – so a wet evening damages the cruise package too, just further down the itinerary.

Which one

• First evening, want the famous view, want it organised – a cruise package with both shows.
• Second or third evening, already seen the bay – the bus, for Marina Barrage and the satay stop. Both of those are things the boat cannot give you, and both are why people rate it as highly as they do despite the price.
• You want a guide talking, not a soundtrack – the bus. That is what the extra €20 buys.
• Travelling with children and an early bedtime – neither of the long packages. The plain 40-minute river cruise, then home.
• Budget matters most – free shows plus the plain cruise, arranged yourself.
• You want the hour before all this – see sunset: viewpoint or river cruise.

And the answer to the quarters, promised above: neither night product reaches them, but the same operator’s hop-on hop-off daytime ticket, at €45.73 with 3,926 reviews, runs two routes – and the Heritage one is the one that goes through Chinatown, Little India and Kampong Glam, with the freedom to get off in them. If the point is the districts rather than the dark, that is the ticket, and it is a daytime ticket.

Next

For the view from above rather than from street level, see Singapore’s viewpoints compared or the head-to-head on the Flyer against the SkyPark.

All the evening departures are on our Singapore night tours page, the water ones on the river cruise page, and the daytime routes on the city tours page.

Durations, prices and review counts are from our inventory on the date above. Show times come from the operators and shift around public holidays; itineraries differ between listings that carry similar names, so read the one you are booking.