Legoland was a big hit with our trio. First there were lots of fantastic Lego sculptures. Then there were age appropriate rides. And, of course, there were Legos you could purchase and take home.
Legoland is in Winter Haven which is about two hours from Mark's parents' home in Venice. We had to get B, J, & V up quite early to be there when the park opened at 10AM. The children were excited to go, so they were good about getting up. We took our iPads in the car so they were entertained and relatively quiet.
We arrived just before Legoland opened. We had purchased online tickets, so we got to skip the ticket queue and head right in. We went straight to Lego Kingdoms to ride The Dragon. It's the most popular ride in the park. It was one of our trio's top picks at day's end. The Dragon is a roller coaster, but not a super fast or scary one which made it perfect for us. I don't think any of the children had been on a roller coaster before, so I was little anxious about how they would react. They loved it. The first half of the ride goes through a tunnel lined with super cool Lego wizards, dragons, and even a cat. Then the ride goes outside and does a hill and a few loops. It's not a very long ride which is good for young children.
Next the children did the Royal Joust. You can see from the pictures that they thought it was pretty cool.
Our third ride was Lost Kingdom Adventure. It's a dark ride (meaning it's indoors and poorly lit). Everyone gets a laser gun to shoot at targets. We didn't know enough about how that worked to tell Bentley what he was shooting at. I never even figured out where the score board was until after the ride finished and the board was already rezeroed. Since we didn't sit with B, we couldn't coach him during the ride. He told me he was disappointed with this ride. He thought it would be more fun. With some coaching, I think he'd like this ride more.
We did a quick stop at Beetle Bounce which was Viva's top pick of what to do. Jake opted out at the last minute and I wished I had when they started taking us up. I should have had more faith. We were in Legoland, not Universal Studios or Busch Gardens. We weren't taken up that high. V & B enjoyed the ride.
We tried out another roller coaster, Coastersaurus. It's an old wooden coaster and made the most frightful racket. Viva did not at all like it. She tried to bury her head in my side. I tried to cover her ears. She told me emphatically that she did not like it. Yet later in the day when she said she wanted to do the roller coaster again and we took her to The Dragon, she told me it was the wrong one. Was she just being contrary? Did she really want to go again on Coastersaurus?
The next event was Junior Driving School. It's for 3-5 year olds, but we let B sneak in since he's only been 6 for less than two weeks. All the kids thought this event was great fun. Viva said she wanted to do it again, so when we took B over to try out Driving School (for 6-12 year olds) and had to wait for ten minutes in line, I left and took V & J back for another drive while B learned the rules of the road before trying out the bigger vehicles. He did well at keeping on the road and obeying traffic lights, but stop signs were not on his radar.
Rescue Academy was the eighth stop. It had four fire engines that competed against each other to put the fire out first. Mark and Viva were a team on one engine and the boys and I were on another engine. We had a few problems getting started because I didn't listen to Bentley. Eventually we got to the fire and tried to put it out. One of our fire hoses was inoperable which meant Jake never got to throw water at the fire. Bummer. He wanted to go back to Rescue Academy a second time, but we never made it there.
After this things are a little blurry in my mind. I'm not sure of the exact order. We went to boating school. We were pretty bad drivers, but at least we didn't get ourselves turned around like another boat did. Jake, Viva, and I passed Mark and Bentley. Mark tried blaming that on Bentley, but that's just sour grapes. I had two junior drivers ramming my boat into the rails and we still managed to keep going forward at a goodly pace. To his credit Bentley kept them out of the spraying water and Viva placed us in it.
Somewhere during the many rides, we stopped at the Imagination Zone, but it wasn't open because school children were using it. Mark did the Kid Power Tower three times, once with each kid. Our chicklets are too small to power it on their own. Likewise later in the day when we tried out the Technicycles, the children were too short to reach the pedals even though they met the minimum height requirement. I think they enjoyed the Tower, but the Technicycles were kind of a dud. We could have repeated the Rescue Academy instead.
We visited Pharaoh's Revenge which was a two story structure with foam cannons in it. B was very excited to try it out, but Mark sent them in on their own and larger kids were cannon hogs. Even when the children finally got a cannon, some older kid took it over. Viva mastered the maze portion of the structure very quickly while Bentley asked me later, how did she get down there?!
The children rode on the two story Grand Carousel. Since we were at the start of the line, we were able to go on the top story. They seemed to enjoy it, but a carousel is pretty tame in a park with roller coasters. Likewise for Merlin's Challenge which was a train that went around in a very small circle on a hilly track.
There were activities other than rides, but we only took in one of them. We attended a 4-D movie with the trio. At first we had complaints from Viva and Bentley about wearing the 3-D glasses. They were good sports though and gave them a try. Viva wore hers the entire movie and stayed attentively watching. Jake and Bentley took theirs off when it got too scary. I talked Jake into putting his back on, but Bentley opted out. During the movie we had rain fall on us and snow, too. The children were rather baffled by that and asked if it was real. I think they really liked the movie. I will definitely look for 4-D movies at Disney World.
A big hit with the boys was Miniland, a outdoors area of the park filled with Lego buildings and boats. The buildings are modeled after famous places around the USA--the New York City skyline, Las Vegas hotels, Cape Canaveral, Daytona Speedway, etc. The boys favorite scene was San Francisco with boats in the water.
The children asked to play at Forestmen's Hideout which was a playground with a large two story fort structure. They raced around like they had too much energy which was a a little hard to believe since we'd been keeping them busy for four or five hours at that point in time.
In Legoland there is a tradition of swapping minifigures with the staff. If you have one and ask them, they will swap with you. I wasn't sure if the children would do it. Viva wouldn't. She said she wanted to keep the one I brought for her to swap. Jake and Bentley had fun. Bentley swapped twice and Jake three times. If they'd started swapping earlier, I think they would have done it more. I think they'll do well with pin swapping in Disney World.
Towards the end of the day we visited the Minifigure Market where you can make your own minifigures. Quite frankly, I was very disappointed with the selection. Lego makes 300 different minifigures a year, yet there were very few styles and colors of torsos and legs to chose from. They could do much, much better. The children each made one and picked out a key chain. Jake chose a fireman, Bentley a ninja guy, and Viva found a princess, although she says it's not a princess because the mini figure didn't have a crown. I think I recognize her. She was a Lego Kingdoms princess.
We stopped at the Lego Factory store. At the front is a small room showing how Legos are made. We didn't stop there very long because we decided to race over to see the 4-D movie and when we came back to spend more time at the pick-a-brick wall, we were short on time. The pick-a-brick wall was like the minifigure building station--given how many different awesome bricks Lgeo makes, the selection wasn't big enough. I wanted more. I wanted pink bricks. i wanted purple bricks. i wanted 2x8, 2x12--the longer ones. When I first check out the wall, I was so peeved, I wasn't going to buy anything there. However, the boys really wanted some orange flames which they claim their dad doesn't have. I don't think that's true, but we let them pick some out.
Then Viva chose some flowers. Mark picked out a few bricks he liked. I settled on some light green, light blue (only two styles available!!), and pretty orange bricks. I threw in some translucent pieces because I love translucent plastic. Everyone picked a few of this and a couple of that. They were little pieces because that's all there were on the wall. The wall was $9/quarter pound. We purchased $13. It's a nice souvenir, but hardly the best available price on Legos.
That was problem with their main Lego shop, too. First off, I didn't even clue in that The Big Shop was the place to find Lego sets. Somehow in my research on Legoland I missed that fact. I thought the Minifigure Mart and the Lego Factory were the two Lego stores in the park. I was totally underwhelmed by them. They weren't very large and there was only a few Lego sets for sale there. I was rather baffled by the minuscule selection, but that didn't clue me in that I missed the main store. In fact the only reason I went into the Big Shop was that I was looking for a drink on our way out of the park. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled on a huge inventory of Lego sets.
Unfortunately this was at 5:30PM and the children were done for day. We had to drag them into the store to take a short look. The boys found a couple of small sets they liked, but Viva didn't. She wanted a larger Lego Friends set. We weren't buying larger sets because Lego sets on amazon.com are cheaper, we don't have to pay sales tax, and we don't have to carry them home.
So what did the children choose as their Legoland souvenir? If you know our trio, it will come as no surprise that they chose.....swords and shields. I tried to talk them into the awesome pirate props.
They modeled them for us, but insisted on purchasing the swords and shields. Even Viva wanted one because there was a pretty pink jeweled shield and sword. When B, J, & V first saw the swords and shields in Lego Kingdoms, I told them to wait and look around at other stuff, but they still wanted them at the end of the day. Of course, we had already put the nix on large Lego sets and we didn't visit a lot of other gift shops. Bentley was enticed by the super large (and rather awesome) dragons at the carnival game booths, but we knew we weren't capable of winning them, so we told him no.
How did the trio like Legoland? Jake spent a lot of the day with a big grin on his face. He was our go-to guy for great photos. Bentley was eager to do everything and in a good mood, too. Viva said she liked a lot of the rides. She's not one to give extravagant compliments. She doesn't waste smiles, either, but I think she enjoyed our time at Legoland. Until about 4:45PM when she sat down on the pavement and said she couldn't walk any more because her feet hurt. She insisted I carry her.
That wasn't going to happen. This was day one of five days in amusement parks. We can't carry three children. Or two. Or even one. So I had to wait her out. It took ten minutes or longer for her to decide I really wasn't going to carry her. She refused to stand up--she's very good at doing noodle legs. Mark took the boys to do Beetle Bounce once last time. Jake wanted to give it a try. Viva had requested we return there, too. She missed Beetle Bounce. She finally got up and walked her way out of the park. We visited Walmart today and purchased two cheap umbrella strollers. Legoland was a small amusement park. It was very compactly laid out. Disney World is not small or compactly laid out. Viva is only four and half. It's not unreasonable for her to want a break from walking for seven hours.
It's pretty amazing that they lasted as long as they did. The park opened at 10AM and closed at 5PM (except for the stores which stay open until paying customers leave!). I didn't really know how the trio would do as the day wore on. They did fantastic. I give all three top marks for endurance.
Once we got back to the car and settled in, I gave the children some food for dinner. Within fifteen minutes Bentley fell asleep over the bag of crackers and stayed out the rest of the drive back to Venice. Jake and Viva eventually followed suit.
It was a long, event filled day. But not so long that the children didn't rally when we got back to urompa's house. The boys did their Lego sets and we all went out to the pool. It was awesome. Nearly as awesome as some of the Lego structures at Legoland. Check them out below. (The car, too, is made from Legos.)
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