Legoland

[mrsmickey]

Hello,

Thought I would post here on a positive note. My husband had booked our son a surprise trip to legoland on Thursday and Friday, with a hotel stay. We’ve been several times before and never been that overwhelmed; whilst the park offers lots of good rides for young kids, I’ve just found the park management (queueing, cleaning etc) pretty average, staff nonplussed and food very average to poor. I was also extremely worried by Twitter, which is absolutely slating the place at present.

My experience couldn’t have been more different to the point where (dare I say it….) it nearly rivalled Disney. On the Thursday, we arrive about 30 mins after park opening. We did the big new ride in Mythica, flight of the skylion, which is just like soarin. A 90 minute queue time was actually just under 60 which on the big new ride isn’t too bad. The mythica area is done really well with some brilliant AR touches, We spent most of the day doing big rides so inevitably were in for some reasonably long waits but towards the end of the day (5pm-7pm queues were much shorter across the park and we walked on a couple.

My husband had forgotten to prebook breakfast and dinner, but they found us space in the restaurant at exactly the time we wanted.

On the Friday we had the standard reserve and ride passes. This seems to work a little bit like how Genie + will work, and worked really well (except on driving school which was having problems all day with overcapacity). We went on 14 rides, including most of the big rides, and left with an hour and a half still to go.

Staff were superb. My son got really upset as my husband’s stark industries baseball hat (which my son gave him as a birthday present) fell off on a ride , a staff member saw he was upset and got him a free ice cream. When we were leaving the hotel my son was sad again as the model building competition hadn’t yet been judged, so the staff just suddenly produced a small bag of sweets and some “special” stickers for him.

The quality of food in the bricks restaurant definitely seems better; we had special themes cupcakes in heartlake cafe and special themed donuts in mythica. The hungry troll meals in mythica are also pretty good value for theme park food too.

I appreciate there are some people that won’t have had the same experience and had frustrations. I also fully appreciate there are people who will have had major issues and justified complaints.

If I can give some tips for some things that we’ve found really helped:

It seems they use the queue times on the app to manage the queue capacity a bit not just to indicate queue times. If a really popular ride suddenly drops to 15-20 minutes queue and hasn’t just broken down, it’s because they’re trying to entice people on to it when the queue may actually be longer. In contrast, when we joined queues listed as 60 minutes or more they were always far shorter.

Rides like spinning spider and merlins apprentice are actually great fun and generally have less than 20 minute queues throughout the day. My son really enjoyed the Lego planet building activity near the entrance, and there’s usually a couple of other building activities around the park kids really enjoy.

The ride and reserve scanners don’t always wipe out your pass for the ride… in theory you might get a free re-ride

A lot of people watch shows around lunchtime then go for food. Not only are the big ride queues the shortest at that time, but as with most parks going to lunch either about midday or after 1:30 is hugely helpful. Don’t join a food queue in heartlake city area just after a show has finished! Skylion was a 15 minute queue at 1pm…

If you want to do the Viking river during the day and feeling lazy, take the hill train up and walk down. It’s usually dead on the hill train during the day

The problems on the driving school seem to be because they’ve changed it from age base (7+) to height, meaning far more children can go on it. It had the longest queues all day both days so if you’re child will be desperate to do it, then do it at rope drop. Otherwise you’re looking at 75-90 minutes all day and even with reserve and ride you could be looking at a 30 minute wait.

[alkel2730]

I just got back today! We were there Thursday and Friday too! We absolutely loved it and said in the U.K. it is the nearest you’d come to disney. The theming was so good. Atmospheric Music everywhere, on the way in the music was so disney, I swear they were even pumping sweet smells in. We did the Sky lion and I was close to tears... if Soarin and fop had a baby that liked to play with Lego - this was it. We loved the sky lion it was so Soarin. Ninjago reminded us of TSM, the staff were lovely and the whole place was clean and well run. We even got to meet characters! The staff had the safety and off load/on load down to a fine art, very slick. You can tell there is clearly a strong USA influence there. Hands down the best U.K. theme park. It blew AT out of the water IMO.

Ohhhh the driving school - have they changed it? ! My 5 year old went on it and I felt he was too young to go in unaided. He fell on the way in and couldn’t do his seatbelt and got very upset. I said to my husband they need a 7+ age on this for unaided. He was too young IMO.
It was the first time we’d been and we stayed at the premier Heathrow on bath road with a runway view and it was exactly the mini theme park did we needed. Can’t wait to go back!

[alkel2730]

Also, we had the ride access pass, we are convinced this is what genie + will be like!

[mrsbenny]

😂 we were there too. Stayed in legoland hotel Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday night we loved it. Best theme park I’ve been to in UK. Loved flight of the sky lion.

[SLTh]

We were there too - living reasonably close means we go a couple of times a year. It really does seem so much fresher and we LOVED the new area. We are also really pleased they have changed their policy regarding disabled children having to prove they can walk to go on some of the rides. They now say that they can have support from a carer to get on and off the ride which is so much better and meant we didn't have tears from my daughter when she couldn't ride before. Staff were all brilliant and the pirate show was amazing as always.

[Clarey101]

We loved Legoland when the boys were younger - they're both teenagers now. We had around five weekend breaks there (from Yorkshire) over the years. We were just saying recently how it's the best UK theme park apart from Disney.

[Andy C]

We were there on Friday as well!
Theming was excellent, and Miniland seems to have expanded since the last time we were there.
Agree that Flight of the Skylion is a cross between Soarin’ and FoP plus lego (perfect description, alkel2730!)
Had a great day out.

[Mark1994]

This is great! We're going in a couple of weeks as a surprise for my daughter. We're just staying in a hotel nearby, we're driving down after school on Friday, then coming back on Sunday evening. Really excited after reading this.

[Joosebug1987]

Hello,
We are considering popping in for an afternoon while in the area especially after reading this thread (4 adults) - is there enough for adults to do if no children? Also anyone able to state if the new ride is plus size friendly? (20 top, 22 bottom for reference *blush*)x

[alkel2730]

Originally Posted by Joosebug1987

Hello,
We are considering popping in for an afternoon while in the area especially after reading this thread (4 adults) - is there enough for adults to do if no children? Also anyone able to state if the new ride is plus size friendly? (20 top, 22 bottom for reference *blush*)x

See more...

I’d say yes there is enough for adults to do! It is kid friendly but still loads for adults. Mini land is fab.

You will 100% be ok on the new ride! It’s exactly like Soarin seat wise, pull out seat belt and clips into side. The whole park is very accommodating, trust me I worry about this too! xx