The world’s best airport gets a major makeover, with an incredible 40-foot digital waterfall and a robot bartender serving free cocktails

The best airport in the world has upped its game.

Singapore’s Changi Airport ruled over more than 550 airports at the ‘Oscars of Aviation’ earlier this year – and has now undergone a major makeover.

The aviation hub, which not only won the title of the best airport in the world overall, but also the best airport restaurants and the best airport leisure facilities. Skytrax World Airport Prices 2023, has ‘renewed and expanded’ its Terminal 2.

With this expansion, Changi can now accommodate an additional five million passengers per year, bringing the airport’s total handling capacity to 90 million passengers per year.

Notable new features at the terminal include a 14-metre high digital waterfall, an ‘enchanting’ garden with more than 20,000 plants, a dining area with panoramic views of the airport and a robot bartender serving a complimentary cocktail at the terminal. passengers.

The “signature feature,” a statement notes, is the aforementioned “Wonderfall” digital waterfall – a giant screen showing images of flowing water.

Located in the center of a vertical garden in the heart of the departure lounge, it is said to offer passengers a “soothing sensory experience with a seemingly endless flow of water” as they wait for their flight.

Passengers can get their free cocktail from Toni, the robot bartender, in the ‘luxurious’ new two-storey Lotte Duty Free Wines & Spirits store.

Inside the store is a “huge” LED ring that plays “calming scenes of the moon reflected in a lake,” the airport reveals.

Upstairs, there’s a bar-lounge area called ‘Forest of Li Bai’, complete with a wall of 18 whiskeys and a digital selfie mirror that allows you to take photos with K-pop stars in the frame.

Elsewhere in the terminal is the brand new Dreamscape garden, which is said to ‘enchant with its enchanting array of plants’. It sits under a “digital sky” that changes color depending on the time of day, the airport explains.

A statement said: ‘The garden features more than 20,000 plants, selected from around 100 species, from ferns to shrubs. Throughout the garden, the tropical sounds of Singapore can be heard through more than a hundred calls from birds, insects and other local creatures.”

Passengers can also enjoy “breathtaking panoramic views of the airport” from the terminal’s new Gourmet Garden dining room, which is decorated with “lush foliage cascading from above.”

While there, guests can try cocktail fusions at The Satay Club by Harry’s, chicken rice at Wee Nam Kee Chicken Rice restaurant, or fresh pastries and ‘Kopi Gu You Hainan’ (butter coffee) at The Hainan Story bakery.

A statement reads: ‘The Gourmet Garden is not only a culinary hotspot, it is also a place for plane spotters.

‘As many as 16 different aircraft are visible through the floor-to-ceiling windows, giving passengers the opportunity to experience the hustle and bustle on the ground.’

The ‘2 Bears Hideout’ offers families a space to play and entertain their children while they wait for their flight. There, young people can “nest in a beehive, bounce on a honeycomb or let their imaginations run wild,” according to a statement.

The renovated and expanded T2 has added more than 21,000 square feet to the terminal building, meaning more space for new systems and retail spaces, the airport says.

An example of this is the Fast and Seamless Travel (FAST) zone, now with almost double the number automated check-in kiosks and bag drop machines.

It is the airport’s first terminal with automated special assistance lanes for young children and passengers with disabilities, upon arrival and departure at immigration.

It also benefits from a new and fully automated ‘early baggage storage system’ that can handle up to 2,400 pieces of luggage.

The terminal has fully reopened ‘ahead of schedule’ after the three-and-a-half-year expansion project.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the T2 expansion last week, Teo Chee Hean, Senior Minister and Coordinating Minister of National Security, said: “The T2 expansion project began in January 2020, two months before Singapore closed its borders due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“But Changi Airport Group (CAG) pressed ahead with the expansion of T2, driven by the belief that our Changi air hub would not only recover from the pandemic, but emerge stronger.”