Changi Airport with kids: How to survive an 8-hour layover at Jewel. Photo / Tegan Forder
Changi Airport with kids: How to survive an 8-hour layover at Jewel. Photo / Tegan Forder
If you’re looking to kill eight hours at an airport with restless kids, Singapore’s Changi Airport has everything from cinemas to swimming pools, writes Tegan Forder.
Singapore’s Changi Airport has received multiple awards for its design, including the accolade of best airport in the world (thanks in no smallpart to the Jewel complex). But does it deliver when you’re managing a long wait with a tired child?
We had a yawning window of time to kill between checking out of our hotel and boarding our 2am flight from Singapore to Athens. Here’s an honest guide about spending eight hours at Changi Airport.
What is Jewel at Changi Airport?
Singapore's Changi Airport offers cinemas, swimming pools, and a nature-themed complex with the world's tallest indoor waterfall. Photo / Changi Airport Group
Essentially, a mega-hub of retail and entertainment, spanning 10 storeys and directly connected to Terminals 1, 2 and 3. This nature-themed complex is also home to the world’s tallest indoor waterfall and myriad dining options.
Getting rid of baggage
The last thing you need when traipsing around an airport is having to cart around your luggage with you. Luckily, we found the early check-in facility at the Jewel, where you can use the self-serve kiosks to print your boarding pass and drop your bags. Most airlines participate in the early check-in service, but they all differ on how early you can check in, so it’s best to check.
The Jewel complex features early check-in, Canopy Park with activities, and a basement cinema for entertainment. Photo / Changi Airport Group
My top suggestion to stretch your legs
While you can get your step count in visiting the 10 levels of shops within Jewel, we found a less overwhelming, cheaper and more family-friendly activity in Canopy Park.
If you take the lift right to the top of the Jewel, there is a wonderland of activities for children and adults alike, with a maze, slide, mirror park and the canopy walk. It can get a bit expensive if you do everything, so we just paid for my daughter and husband to go on the walk while I took a few moments to myself. My daughter loved being that high up, and it gave her a fun activity to do among all the waiting around.
If you really want to pack some more exercise in, there’s also an outdoor pay-per-use pool in the Level 3 Departure Transit Hall near the D gates, and a rock-climbing wall in Terminal 3.
Where can you keep your child entertained safely while you catch a sneaky snooze? The basement cinema complex in The Jewel is where. Shaw Theatres Jewel houses 11 screens, including Imax. We were very relieved when we discovered it, and with opening hours that run late into the night, it’s the perfect way to kill some time. We quickly found a kid-appropriate movie that was also in English, grabbed some popcorn and settled back for a few hours in the dark. The movie theatre we were in also had a play area for younger kids with energy still to burn.
For other restful activities, our daughter was mesmerised by the giant Rain Vortex waterfall that falls in the centre of the Jewel, and you can also take a train around it to get a real bird’s-eye view from up high.
The avoidable mistake we made when it came to having dinner
With more than 100 restaurants and cafes to choose from within the Jewel, let alone the options available in the terminals themselves, it can get overwhelming – especially when everyone’s a bit tired. Unfortunately, we hadn’t researched what was available beforehand, so we wasted a lot of time and energy trying to search online for where to eat, only to find they weren’t open or had moved location.
In the end, we opted for a Vietnamese chain we had already visited during our stay in Singapore, but by then our daughter was overtired and didn’t eat much. With so many options scattered throughout the airport, it’s definitely a good idea to do some research and decide where you want to go before you get there.
What we wished we’d known about having a nap at the airport
Rock climbing in Terminal 3. Photo / Tegan Forder
Thinking we were organised, we booked a room at a hotel for four hours so we could grab a nap and a shower. Unfortunately, we realised the day before that the hotel was “airside” – through immigration. As all the attractions we needed were all “landside”, it would have been a waste. Booking another hotel in the right spot was going to cost too much, so instead we decided to wing it and head to the public terminal lounge if necessary.
By about 9pm our energy levels were flagging, so we booked into the lounge for a three-hour stint, which cost about NZ$230. It’s not as fancy as an airline lounge, but my daughter managed to get some sleep on the small couches, while I read my book and had a glass of wine and my partner freshened up with a shower. It gave us somewhere to rest up, charge our phones and refuel before heading to our gate.
With the Jewel at its centre, there is plenty to keep a family occupied at Changi Airport, even if it is worth doing a bit of planning before you arrive to avoid getting overwhelmed. But even in the middle of the night, when we were all tired, it was easy to see why Changi Airport continues to rank so high on everyone’s list of the world’s best airports.
