If you give Marina Bay one evening, this is the sequence the desk hands out. It needs no bookings beyond the wheel itself, it flows in one direction, and it ends the way evenings here are supposed to end — at a plastic table, eating well.
The sequence
First, the rim at dusk. Board the wheel roughly half an hour before sunset. You rise in daylight, top out in gold, and come down as the city's lights take over — one revolution, two completely different cities. From the base, the promenade leads west along the water; take it slowly. The skyline on the far shore is doing its evening performance the whole way.
Then, the show. The light-and-water performance on the bay front runs nightly, free, on a fixed evening schedule — two shows most nights, more at weekends. The promenade directly opposite is the classic vantage, but the steps nearer the water on the same side are less crowded and the towers behind you become part of the set. Fifteen minutes, and genuinely good.
Finally, dinner. Walk the rest of the loop back towards the old downtown, where the evening street kitchen fires its satay grills under the towers, or ride one MRT stop to a proper hawker centre and order in rounds — satay, noodles, sugarcane juice, something sweet. The meal costs less than the taxi ride here.
On weekend evenings the bay front packs tight before the show. Arrive twenty minutes early, claim a step, and let the crowd form behind you — the sound of a few thousand people watching water and light is part of it.