The Country's Premiere Amusement Park

World-class attractions characterize Star City’s vision to provide the Filipino family, students, and professionals the amusement they rightfully deserve. Star City is the home of the country’s first 360-degree Zyklon Loop, the two-tiered French Grand Carousel, the -15°C of snow in Snow World, the life-like dinosaur robots of Dino Island, the country's first and only inverted roller coaster: The Star Flyer.

To the average Filipino, Star City is the family entertainment center where shopping, food, rides, and walk-through amusement halls hold center stage.

Star City is the longest-running, free-standing amusement park within the metropolis.

Unlike the itinerant “country fairs” that pop up for a week or two during a district or town “fiesta” and the flea markets with rides that come alive only during the Christmas season, Star City has become a year-round, weekday and weekend affair.

Star City sprawls, in typically unplanned Filipino fashion, over 35,000 square meters, about one-fourth the size of HK Disneyland and with as many rides (21 in all).

In addition, there is the obligatory House of Horrors (“Gabi ng Lagim” or “Night of Evil” in Pilipino) and five other arcades, five more game stations (including a set of stationary rides for the little ones), and two theaters.

On their own, the “Star” and “Aliw” (amusement) theaters would be enough reason to drop in.

They have hosted foreign singers like Dionne Warwick, Stephen Bishop, Sergio Mendez, and Toto to audiences of 3,000 at a time. Most times, the playbill rotates ballet, circus acts and magic shows.

Star City certainly has room for growth as it is located within what is familiarly known as the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP, the local opera house) reclamation complex, a huge tract of land reclaimed starting in the late 1960s.

The reclamation eventually grew to take up half the famed Manila Bay frontage of the metropolis, spanning the cities of Manila and Pasay but occupied by fewer than two dozen buildings all told.

Aside from the CCP, there is the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC), a Product Design and Development Center, the Folk Arts Theater, Philippine Center for International Trade and Exhibitions (PHILCITE), the Sofitel Philippine Plaza hotel, Manila Film Center, the World Trade Center, the Philippine Senate and the Mall of Asia, third largest in the world.

Unlike Singapore’s Marina Bay reclamation, the entire area has vast expanses of grassy areas to welcome a marathoner and a grid of roads that could take a Formula One race with room to spare.

For now, it is already a distinct achievement that Star City has remained viable since breaking away 17 years ago, in 1991, from the annual Toys and Gifts Fair.

In the beginning, people flocked to Star City mainly to do their Christmas shopping and along the way, give there children some holiday fun.

The rest of the year, Star City basically hibernated. But when a private group took over, imported a handful of interesting rides and professionalized marketing, Star City came into its own.

The various possibilities for adventure, fun, thrills and fantasy ensure that local residents look forward to the next “excursion” out to the bay for family or groups of friends. For visitors who fly in, it helps that the entire complex fronts Roxas Boulevard, a direct route from the domestic and international airports.