My (Failed) F1 Pit Lane Experience

F1 fever is in Singapore! I managed to get a pair of tickets to the F1 pit lane experience on Thursday, so I invited Raymond along too!

The pit lane pass granted us access to the F1 village in zone one, which was a like a carnival with games, food and performances. For the first time ever, Singaporeans also get to walk on the pit lane and catch a glimpse of the pit garages at the pit building. In past races, only the VIPs and famous people get to visit the pit lane, so I was prettttyyy excited! Actually that's not entirely why I was excited for the event. I knew it's going to be a night event, so I wanted to try out the night mode on my new Panasonic LX7. 

The queue at the entrance was quite long, I didn't know so many people managed to get tickets as well. All along I thought it was an exclusive event-.- 

With my lovely colleagues!

We didn't have to wait for long though, the staff were very efficient! I think it only took us about 10min  to reach the gate and collect all our goodie bags. The bag itself was nothing impressive, just some brochures, a mineral water, chips and cheap collaterals lol.

Immediately after we left the goodie bag tent, we were greeted by a couple of stilt walkers near the entrance. That was the only sort of outdoor 'street' performance at the carnival. I was expecting more of those because that would've kept the crowd excited as we walked around the carnival.

The first thing that caught my attention was the big red tent. The 3 main attractions in the tent were the race simulator, the photo-taking corner and a spray-on tattoo booth. All of them had extremely longggg queues. We didn't bother queueing because we wanted to explore more of the carnival and didn't want to spend so much time waiting in line.

This was in the red tent as well and it's sooo pretty! They projected the galaxy on the ceiling, and it was changing colours and moving around the whole time. Totally don't mind having this in my room.

Then there was a galore of F1 merchandizers as well. I suppose this is where they suck the moolah out of you. Hahaha, TAKE ALL MY MONEY!

For all beer lovers, there was a beer booth selling Irish beer if I'm not wrong.

The village stage! The performances we saw were okay, but not captivating enough I guess. 

There were also a couple of food stores (mainly selling over-priced food). We were absolutely famished because we went straight down to F1 after work, but we weren't too keen on the offering.

It was only around 750pm, close to 8pm when we finished walking around the carnival. We also found out that the actual pit walk starts at 9pm. That means we have got an hour to spare, and an empty tummy to fill :(

The Marina Bay Circuit is extremely ulu, and we figured by the time we manage to get something to eat and rush back, we might not even be allowed into the circuit (they will stop all entry by 9pm).

In the end, we thought, heck it, we're going to eat Tai Hwa Bak Chor Mee and forget about the pit lane. Unfortunately, the mee was sold out, and we ended up having western-.- Double fail.

This was the last thing we saw at F1. 

And that was my (failed) pit lane experience. Took us about 40min to complete the entire carnival- shortest carnival experience EVER. I think there were a couple of interesting attractions, but it's not quite substantial. Also, because of the lack of variety, there were extremely longggg queues at the handful of attractions. Other than that, most people seem like they were just wondering around, waiting for 9pm to come by.

I think they should've let us know the schedule earlier (i.e write it down on the tickets!)because the pit walk is really the main point right! That way, people like us could have their dinner elsewhere before going for the carnival. It's really such a pity to miss the pit lane walk, but we were really too hungry and bored. If we weren't so hungry, I think I might join in the queue at the race simulator and the photo-taking corner! In all honesty, I'm not a big fan of cars and races, so maybe I don't know how to appreciate all the F1 goodness. The above is just my own opinion, I'm sure there are F1 fanatics out there who thoroughly enjoyed the event!

P.S I'm so tempted to blog about my new coral lipstick from Sleek (which I bought tgt with Rimmel's Big Bang), but I didn't want to spam my blog with just lippies, lippies and lippies.