Building up Billund

[mrsmickey]

Hello!

For a bit of context, prior to this trip I had been trying to find out lots of information about Billund, Legoland and so on but compared to a Disney trip, information seemed mysteriously thin (or in Danish) - despite the number of British visitors there. Net result, I thought it might be helpful for any others like me who love over planning and thinking their holidays and want a bit more info about Billund.

Billund is aiming to be a City for Children. The net result is that there's an awful lot for families to do in the area, and you can also get a childrens "be happy" pass which gives discounts for children to most local attractions including Lalandia, a teddy bear museum, viking museum and wow park. There is basically lots to do if you are looking for an alternative to Disney...

Background
This trip was originally booked for back in August 2020. At the time, we had planned a few days in Legoland and then a few nights at Lalandia, but Lalandia were a nightmare over getting refunds and it wasn't going to be possible to do a longer trip at Easter, so we settled on just Legoland for 4 nights. We had vouchers both from BA and legoland to use up.

It came about primarily as my husband, who is an Adult Fan of Lego (AFOL) had visited Billund when he was 10, and wanted to take our son there too. Things had changed a lot since then!

Day 1: travel and arrival
We had got a little unlucky over flights; we'd originally booked BA from Heathrow in 2020 as the flight times were much better than Ryanair from Stanstead. However, things have changed a bit now and so our flight out was at 6pm (which was ok) but the 9pm return was a bit taxing when you add on a 2 hour car trip home.

On the plus side, we arrived at Heathrow early, fearing the reports of horrendous queues, and went virtually straight through bag drop and security. Our flight out was busy, with nearly every seat taken, but thanks to some helpful winds took far less than the advertised 1hr50 minute flight.

Billund airport is relatively small (unsurprisingly) with just two people on passport control, so we were thankful to be one of the first rows off the plane. Thanks to its size we were also quite quickly through bag drop. We had planned on a taxi to Legoland; the taxi rank wasn't that well signposted but you go straight out the main door, across the first roadway and the taxi rank is then straight on the left hand side. The taxi was 150DKK (it's about 9 danish Krone: £1) and only took about 10 minutes.

Picking accomodation for Legoland Billund nearly rivals Disney. In their main hotel, there are 10 different room options; there is the newer Knight's Castle Hotel with 5 different room options, and there's then a motel and 4 cabin options. Be wary with the latter, as whilst much cheaper, they appear to be primarily designed for self catering and some have shared bathroom facilities. The legoland hotel is far bigger than the UK version.

We had picked a Ninjago room, as having done various trips to Windsor, my son has always wanted to stay in one but they have never been available. We paid a bit over £300 per night, which included breakfast and 2 days of park tickets.

It's controversial, but I do think Disney could do with having a look at the way Legoland do their rooms (there's a similar experience if you go to places like Alton Towers' CBeebies Hotel). As soon as you hit the Ninjago corridor, you are greeted with a giant Master Wu minifigure, with the carpet decorated with traps kids go round avoiding. The wallpaper had lots of hidden bad guys for children to spot. The rooms themselves were pretty special with some great touches, such as a dragon egg on a shelf that had an in-built motion sensor. Unlike the UK hotels, in Denmark they have bunk beds in the main room rather than a seperate kids room, and they don't have the treasure hunt; my son was a bit disappointed until he realised there were puzzles underneath the bunks and a spinning maze on the wall. For us, there was a giant King Size bed. The pillows were incredibly small, but housekeeping were happy to bring some more. The rooms had TV's which were set to a lego channel that played episodes of lego shows, with the same episode played in Danish then repeated in English. The only other English channel was CNN. There is free wifi throughout the hotel that was fast enough to support streaming. In the rooms were also a small fridge to use; an iron, kettle with tea and coffee, and there was a hairdryer in the bathroom. We did find the room was a little short on storage space but managed to find a way.

Day 2: Legoland
We woke up and went to our breakfast booking. Booking for breakfast is generally seen as essential, however throughout our trip we saw people who hadn't booked were being sent to a seperate restaurant that was just opened for breakfast.

The breakfast was excellent, with a range of hot and cold food available including most requirements for a full English, pancakes, cold meats, fruit and cereals. There was a seperate station for people with allergies including milks, yoghurts and breads. The absolute highlight for me was the breads and pastries, which were all freshly made in their bakery on site and were excellent every day.

Our son particularly enjoyed the kids zones in the hotel; there were 3, including one in the restaurant, which had 4 nintendo switches, big lego pits and table football. Most mornings the restaurant was visited by Ollie, the legoland dragon, along with a princess or jester.

We queued up to enter the park at 9:40, and were let in 10 minutes later. The hotel is split in two either side of the road, so if you're in the main building you just walk over the footbridge. Park view rooms really mean something here - if you have one, your room is looking straight into the middle of the park.

I'm not going to say too much about the park here, as there is more information online. Nonetheless, overall we felt it was much better suited for the pre-teen group than the UK version. There are 4 rollercoasters, a ghost house that has a genuinely scary edge, sky battles and ice pilots which are genuine thrill rides and the raft ride, which in the UK is incredibly tame, guarantees a good soaking. The biggest advantage over the UK park is the Lego Movie area; the rides are similar to Mythica in the UK, but the theming works so much better.

Food options were a bit tricky. There are a couple of bakeries, which serve good coffee and cake but no sandwiches, so lunch type options are pretty much hotdogs or a big meal. We ended up in the family buffet. Here, they had tried to genuinely do something a bit different with a range of interesting and more formal foods for adults, however most the adults really wanted the pizza and pasta on the kids buffet, so it ended up with huge queues for the kids area. Dessert was a bit disappointing - soft serve ice cream only. Whilst the food was all good quality, it didn't feel great value if you ended up just eating pizza and pasta (It worked out about £25 for adults and £15 for children).

With the weather a bit cold, dark and drizzly all day, a lot of people stayed away meaning that queues were less than 15 minutes on all rides all day, with some (including Ninjago and rollercoasters) walk ons. By lunchtime, we had clocked up 11 rides and had done everything in the park, including some several times over by 6pm when it closes.

Day 2: Lego House

Again, the weather wasn't great so it was a good day to be indoors. Lots of people had thought the same as it was fully booked and whilst it was busy in the House, it was manageable.

We had lots of problems booking online, so had e-mailed and they had booked us directly. As we were going for two days, we were given an annual pass. They encourage you to drop bags off in lockers, so you can wonder freely, and there are plenty of coathangers as well as lockers.

Lego House has really embraced technology. I will try not to ruin things too much but in essence, you are given a wristband that controls a huge amount of what you do in the day. You use it to scan in at activities, and then can scan to take photos. Throughout the day you can check in on what you've done at various points and what you've got to do. Afterwards, you can download all your pictures (and videos) for free from the website.

The whole house is about creativity. There are some incredible models, and you get to make all sorts of things. We thought we'd struggle to fill two days here but it was very much the opposite!

For lunch we grabbed a sandwich and coffee at Brickaccino, the in house coffee, which was excellent. Dinner was Mini Chef, the more formal restaurant. Again, booking is essential here; and I'm also not going to ruin the surprise here - the food is interesting and a little different, but the experience is definitely worthwhile.

It's very easy to walk to the Lego House from the hotel; it's about a 10 minute walk. The week before, Lego had opened their new campus site, which is fun to walk by - especially if you try to follow the lines! It also features the world's largest minifigure, just in case you forget which company it is...

Day 3: Legoland again

We had a bit of a calmer day in Legoland the second time around. It was much warmer - rising to about 15 degrees late afternoon, and with the weather nicer, and it being a Saturday, much busier. However, queues for most rides still hovered about the 10-20 minute mark. Being quite a long and narrow park, I can imagine in the summer peak crowds it might not cope that well, but it's worth noting that Danish children go back to school in early August so after then the park apparently does go quieter.

If you do like ride photos, it's worth noting that for DKK250, you can purchase 4 ride photos in a photo case or a keyring and magnet, as well as digital downloads.

We treated ourselves to an ice-cream wasn't quite brave enough for licorice ice-cream, but our son definitely enjoyed his mix of caramel ice cream, soft ice and popping candy.

After the park, we tried the hotel buffet. Again, there had been a real effort here, with a whole variety of interesting foods (and more great breads). It was good to get to experience some genuine Danish food as well. However, desserts were again a bit of a let down - a lemon mousse pot, a lego cake which looked cool but was really just strawberry blamange, and a strawberry marzipan cake. With soft drinks it worked out at £100 for the three of us.

Day 4: Lego House again and departure

In the morning we checked out of the hotel, which has a large luggage storage room. We ordered a taxi to collect us later in the day, which the hotel were easily able to do online for us.

It was another lovely spring day for the walk. The Lego House had a couple of spring special activities, including the building being decorated with tons of lego daffodils you could make yourself, as well as building your own lego egg and decorating with dots:

We had lunch in mini brick again, as well as more excellent coffee from the cafe. Even by the time we left at 5pm, we could still have happily spent more time there.

We walked back to the hotel and got a taxi again to the airport. Again, it was a very efficient experience. There were a large number of duty free bargains that were worth looking out for. We were also delighted to find a branch of Ole and Steen, a Danish Chain who are branching out in the UK was in the airport (as well as an obligatory Lego store which is the only place to buy the Billund airport set; you get a 20% saving if you spend over DKK500, which was leading to people walking off with giant sets that would have been interesting to get on a plane...)

The gate process was a bit chaotic; an announcement was made that we had to wear masks, which sent everyone into a panic as to where to find a mask. Get on the plane to find that no, we don't need to wear masks! We landed a fraction earlier than the 9:50pm scheduled time and were quickly through Heathrow.

I realise I haven't mentioned much about shopping. There is a huge lego store in the theme park (which is apparently the biggest in the world until the Leicester Square expansion). The hotel also has a large store which is open 24 hours. Both stores have the theme park exclusive sets, which are available in all lego theme parks. However, the biggest draw is the lego house store, which has 3 sets only available in lego house as well as a design your own minifigure machine.

Anyway, I hope that's useful for anyone thinking about it... if you have any questions, let me know!

[lovemickey]

Sounds an amazing trip! As massive Lego fans in our house I know a trip there would be loved by the young and old boys here! Off to have a bit more of a look!

[Mel49]

Looks like you all enjoyed your trip and interesting to read. My boys would have loved this when they were younger but at 18 and 26 while they still love building Lego they're maybe a bit too old now

[MHM]

Thanks for the detailed report! I went to Legoland Billund via the overnight ferry as a small child and then I was back there a few years ago for a conference where we were supposed to have a private tour of the park when it was closed but there was a blizzard. I’ve been planning to take my girls there and to visit the Lego House since but it hasn’t quite worked out…. I also have a BA voucher to use up, so I’m going to look now!

[mrsmickey]

Glad you all enjoyed it! One thing I forgot to add was that there is no language barrier. The standard of English is absolutely phenomenal. My big kid husband enjoyed it so age isn’t necessarily a barrier

[James&Gemma]

This thread couldn't of come at a more perfect time!

I know you mentioned about Danish children going back to school early August. We were just curious if anyone had been the end of August and whether it was crazy busy like Legoland Windsor can be?

Thanks