Lego Land

We ended up spending the best part of two days at Lego Land, using their 2-day park pass. The weather was wonderful for the time of year. No huge crowds like you get at Disney Land. More easy parking. The plan was just to take it easy. There was only a couple things that I wanted to do (yes, I'm just a big kid at times). The rest of the time, Duncan could pick whatever he wanted and we'd tag along.

We'd been here before when Duncan was about 3. Since then they've improved the park with more new rides and attractions. He's also tall enough now to go on all the rides. We'd heard that the resort might be closing due to Lego losing money on it. As they are currently building another large ride there (with lots of large earth moving equipment continually on the go), this seems unlikely. They are being heavily sponsored by folks like Volvo, Coca Cola and Kodak though. When you get in the park, don't expect everything you want to do to be already included in the price. We found we had to pay extra for attractions such as the Mini golf which was slightly annoying.

Nice to finally see a park this week with no animals anywhere, apart from the ones made of Lego (including flamingoes). Lego models are everywhere and of everything you can possibly think of. You can even go to the Model Shop and see the professional modellers at work as they put together their next creations.

Duncan was now old enough to be able to go on one of the bigger Lego cars at the Volvo-sponsored driving school. The road layout is a mini version of real roads, complete with traffic lights, stop signs etc. You are supposed to obey the rules of the road. To me it looked very much like real life driving in downtown L.A. Lots of illegal U-turns, driving on the wrong side of the road and California stops.

You can also get your own "driving licence" made there, which was a big hit.

Some of the rides and attractions were starting to get long lines by the middle of the day. What's really nice is that as you wait in line, younger kids can easy go off to special tables where they can build things, so they don't get so bored or irritated. Now if they could just put a bar or a Starbucks in along side the lines for the adults, we'd be all set.

There are many exciting things to do if you are a young child. You can build-your-own racer, which you then got to race off against those of your fellow builders. You can dig up a dinosaur or pan for gold. There was a roller-coaster that Duncan could go on all by himself which was wonderful for both him and his parents. There is a whole Miniland USA with Lego models of all the major attractions. New to us (this time) was Cape Canaveral and the NASA Shuttle launch. There was a full size Lego model of the Mars Exploration Rover. Also another 4D Lego Racers film (with a tactile emphasis on cold winds and auditory emphasis on rocks disintegrating very loudly.)

There are several places on the grounds where you can sit down and build things. Huge tubs of Lego bricks to work with. There is also a Lego Club House which will sell you Lego bricks by the pound. You choose which bricks you want to buy. Both Duncan and I did this. He went for the extraordinary color variety. I went for getting a load of cheap Technics parts. Not all types of Lego brick are available though, which was unfortunate.

I was also disappointed to see that they weren't showing prototypes of the new Mindstorms NXT. In fact The Big Shop (and the other stores) had absolutely no Mindstorms kits or accessories for sale which was annoying. I guess they have ramped down on production of the existing kit in preparation for the new one, but seeing as this isn't supposed to be hitting the stores until about August, this seems less than ideal.

These last two days were the best part of the vacation. Mum and Dad got to relax most of the time, and you could see that Duncan was just loving every moment of it.

[Technorati Tag: Vacation]

[Technorati Tag: Lego Land]

[Technorati Tag: California]

( Mar 07 2006, 09:00:01 AM PST ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [1]