Legoland
We got to Legoland about a half hour before park opening. This was the only park on our trip that opened at 10 am. All other parks were 9 am or earlier. It showed. There were a LOT of people waiting for the gates to open.
We weren’t entirely certain what to expect with this park, but were pleasantly surprised. The place is a mixture of decent rides (geared for smaller kids) and
Lego exhibits. The kids had a terrific time. First we dashed over to the Knight’s Tournament. This is a pair of seats on robotic arms that twist and turn you around. You can choose an intensity level of 1 through 5. Of course, DH and I wanted Level 5, but since they were less than 55 inches tall, the most the kids could do was Level 2, so that’s what we experienced. In the end, the ride was a bit jerky, so it’s probably just as well.
We moved over to the Dragon Coaster, and enjoyed the combination of Lego sculptures and coaster. We then moved back down to the Lands of Adventure ride, and found it to be packed. Ugh. Our time of walk on rides was over. Still, we felt good getting two major rides in right away. The Kingdom of Adventure ride was Indiana Jones themed, and had guns you could shoot at targets to earn points, and was very popular.
Best of all, Lego actually understood how hard it is for little kids to stand in line! They had an outdoor Lego play area
in the line! We dropped the kids off and they played at the tables until we were almost at the front. Ingenious!
We moved on down to the Technics coaster, and this ended up being our longest line of the day. This coaster was immensely popular, and we lined up for nearly 40 minutes. We enjoyed it, but didn’t think it was worth the wait. Fortunately, by now, we had done all of the headliner rides in the park, so we knew we wouldn’t be lining up much for anything else. We went across the way to the Bionicle Blaster ride (like the teacups at
Disneyland) and enjoyed that attraction, before going to the Aquazone ride next door.
This ride is essentially a bunch of jet skis in a circle that you can move around in a limited way. It was during this time that there was an earthquake in Southern California. It was supposedly felt in San Diego (south of us) up through LA (north of us) but we didn’t notice it. Perhaps we just got extra splashing on the ride! But no one at the park appeared to have noticed anything unusual, and we had no idea there had even been an earthquake until hours later. Interestingly enough, the next day at DL, people told us that the park there had been evacuated and shut down for 2 hours because of the earthquake. It was really felt there and they wanted to make sure the rides were okay.
We decided to go over the to older part of the park and to get there we walked through Miniland USA, which holds Lego re-creations of a number of (mostly American) landmarks. Particularly impressive were the White House and Capitol building, as well as a re-creation of the Las Vegas Strip, from the Luxor all the way up to the Stratosphere!
We meandered over to Fun Town, where the kids went to the Volvo Driving School. Legoland has some kind of association with Volvo (even though Volvo is Swedish and Lego is Danish). This ride is like bumper cars, except that there are traffic signs and lights and the kids
aren’t supposed to bump each other. They are also supposed to drive on the correct side of the road. They had a mini-version for kids 5 and under, but we convinced DS to say he was 6, since 5 years and 8 months rounded up is 6. This allowed him to go on the bigger kids’ version. Both kids really enjoyed this one.
Once we had experienced the Volvo Driving School, we went to the Fun Town Fire Brigade. The entire family got into a fire truck, drove over to a fire, then got out, put out the fire, and drove back to the start. The ‘driving’ consists of two people pumping levers up and down and is very physical. There were 4 fire trucks competing and needless to say, with DH’s competitive spirit we won our ‘round’. The kids were very impressed that we won.
The fire trucks were right next to the Lego Factory Tour, so we went in. Unfortunately, this tour was something of a disappointment, as this wasn’t a real factory, and half of the exhibits were not working. But we received our souvenir Lego brick at the end and the kids enjoyed the play tables.
We walked through the Adventurer's Club, which was another Indiana Jones style exhibit where we went into a jungle and an Egyptian-style tomb, which housed treasure. DS loved this, as it allowed him to pretend that he was Indiana Jones.
We saw that the line at the Skipper School (another bumper car-style ride, but in boats) wasn’t too long, so we joined it. There were more Lego tables for the kids to play with while we were in line, so the kids didn’t mind the wait.
I got stuck in a traffic jam at the end of the route, and DD and I had to have our boat fished out. Needless to say, DH and DS were much amused.
Across the way, Captain Cranky’s Challenge had a short line, so we joined it. This ride consists of a big pirate ship going in circles. The kids liked it, but it wasn’t so impressive for DH and myself.
By this time, DH and I were getting hungry, but we didn’t want to have lunch, since we knew we had a dinner reservation at Disneyland. So instead we stopped for a serving of Legoland’s famous ‘Apple Fries’. They were delicious!
While we ate, the kids played in Hideaways, which is a giant castle play area. They had a blast. They enjoyed it so much that we took them to the Pharaoh's Revenge play area in Lands of Adventure, where they got to shoot tennis-style balls at other kids. They really got into this one.
By this time we were getting tired, so we decided to finish up after a ride on the Miniland boats. We toured a number of world monuments built to scale out of Lego, including the Sydney Opera House. The kids were especially impressed with this one, as they recognized it from our Australia trip in January.
We were heading out when DH and DD decided to try out Build and Test, where they made a Lego car and then got to race it against cars others made. DS wasn’t as interested so I took him back for one more round in the Adventurer's Club. We got back in time to see DD impressing all of the boys with her car.
We were getting tired, so we headed for the exit. DH stopped at the first aid station to collect some bandaids for blisters on his feet, while the kids enjoyed playing with Lego Star Wars characters.
We made a quick trip through the gift shop, and then headed back to the car. We were tickled to notice the elite ‘Volvo parking’ in the lot.
In Summary: We were there at opening and left by about 3:30 pm. We did pretty much everything
we were interested in, but there was a bunch of stuff we skipped. We bypassed the toddler rides (our kids are 5 and 7 and weren't so interested in these) and some of the other rides that didn't look so exciting (like the pedaling rides). We also skipped much of the water play in Pirate Shores because it was a cool day and we didn't want to get wet (even though we had all worn bathing suits under our clothes and were prepared for it). If you really want to see
everything at Legoland, I would go for the 2 day ticket deals that they offer, or spend a FULL day there (opening until closing).
The ride into Anaheim and the Paradise Pier Hotel took us a little over an hour. I was checking into the Paradise Pier by 4:45 pm.