Sorry for the delay...we are home now, and I've got my pictures more or less organized. Will try to finish up before the rest of the details fade.
Friday...Legoland.
(This is probably the longest and most photo-heavy day of the report, because I know a lot of people haven't been here, and it was our first time too. It's definitely a place to take a lot of photos.)
We dithered about whether to put off this day, because they were calling for some rain and thunderstorms, and if they closed things down, we woulnd't get another chance. But the closer we got, the less serious the prospect of storms. It was calling for slightly cooler temps and some cloud cover, so we decided to go for it.
Of course we didn't get off as early as planned, and to make matters worse 10 minutes out we realized I had forgotten my ID and credit card, AND we were at an unmanned toll booth with zero change, so we turned around to pick up the stuff we needed.
The deal with the pup in the house is that she has to be either kenneled or in the garage when we leave her in the house. The garage doesn't have a/c, so we have to leave the door open and somehow bar her in. There's a pressure-mounted baby gate, and we bought a sheet of corrugated plastic as well, to bar the door. Because we knew it would be a long day, we chose the garage for Friday. We set up the baby gate, with the coroplast layered against it and duct-taped into place. Then we put a heavy coffee table in front of it so she couldn't pull it out. Yeah. So we were back at the house in 20 minutes after we set that up--and she was in the foyer wagging her tail when we went back in, as if to say "look! Look how smart I am! I've been out for 10 minutes now!"
So she ended up in the kennel all day.
And we arrived at Legoland around 10:00, a half hour after opening. It was an easy drive from Kissimmee, and easy to find once we knew the general direction. Parking wasn't bad, a bit of a walk in the sun, but not bad. I had purchased tickets on line and had printed tickets that were supposed to be turnstile-scannable. They weren't, and after lining up for the turnstile we were sent to line up for customer service, but the lines weren't that long.
Now I had made a plan based on the Legoland Photos recommendation.
http://www.legolandphotos.com/board/thread.php?Thread=5555 And I kept saying to the kids "focus!" ANd my son kept saying "I can't!" and cracking up. He is such a
Lego nerd, and he was so excited to see all the cool models. But we made our way fairly directly to the back, to the Knights' Kingdom area and the dragon coaster. There was no line, and it was a fun little coaster to start the day. The kids really enjoyed the models inside the castle, and the coaster was...kind of like Goofy's coaster, or maybe the Hippogriff ride. The other attractions in that area were more geared to kids under 8, so we moved on to the new Chima area.
The new ride in the Chima area is a water ride, 8 to a boat, with 8 crank-powered water guns, to shoot the bad guys and any unsuspecting passers-by in the queue area. The theming was pretty good, I recognized some of the elements from the sets, though ds is not a huge Chima fan, so I know it less well than other themes. The water ride itself was pretty tame, but the shooting and being shot by other people was actually way more fun than you'd figure. It was just--kind of fun, to "play" with strangers that way. Maybe not such a good idea to start the day with a ride that leaves you pretty wet, though--we really didn't know what we were getting ourselves into. Honestly, it was probably my favourite, though. It was just fun.
The new Chima area also had a water playground, with pop-jets. Again, very much geared to under-8's, and that is clearly what the target demographic is. From there we walked over to Coastersaurus, which is an old-fashioned wooden coaster. The line wasn't bad, maybe 10 minutes. The carriages seemed TINY, just fitting my 13 yo ds and I--there was no way he could get his hands in to do up his seat belt. (And we are neither of us slim, but we don't break a combined weight of 300 lbs either.) It was really fun, actually, I think something about it being "real" made it more exciting.
By now what we are noticing most about Legoland is that it is HOT. I was warned that this park seems hotter than you'd expect for the weather. It wasn't that bad on Friday, but LL was *brutal*. It was also our longest day, as a one-shot for the park, so we had an urgency to tick things off our list. We also did a bit more criss-crossing than we needed to, because no one was willing to let Mom sit down and look at a map and make a plan.
We headed for the Imagination Zone to sign up for the Mindstorms classes. We booked around 11 for classes at 12, and there was plenty of space left in most of the day's classes. They had 3 classes, from simple for the younger kids, to advanced for the oldest kids. My ds is a Lego fanatic, but hasn't taken to Mindstorms, so he didn't want to do the hardest level. He and I signed up for the medium level, which was built around "medical" missions. Dh really wanted to get his hands on them too, so signed up for the advanced class with dd, 10, as his ticket in.
We also ran into this guy outside, and ds loved it. I think it's Stormer (Hero Factory), and ds' shirt has a Hero Factory logo--that's his fav current theme.
There was also a "build" area for Hero Factory (and a bunch of other build areas)--ds really enjoyed that; for a Lego freak, the chance to play with unlimited pieces is going to be very attractive.
Couldn't help stopping in Miniland, as we kept criss-crossing it. Great stuff, from the Vegas theme, Kennedy Space Centre (my fav) and Star Wars (everyone else's fav). The Star Wars scenes were often animated, with
moving parts and puffs of battle smoke, which was cool. The big figures--Darth Maul and Vader and R2D2--are static builds, not characters. They were fabulous.
The Mindstorms class was kind of cool and I'm glad we did it. We were led by an older guy, probably otherwise retired, who was very keen on what he was doing. There were only two kids, one about 10 who "knew it all" and had a bunch of Mindstorms at home. He was a good kid, but it wasn't new for him. I thought the tutorial was very accessible, and ds had success with it, and thought it was cool.
Dd didn't enjoy it as much I think, because it was harder, and Daddy wanted to do it more than she did.
But she was glad she did it, too.
At that point I believe we tried to get lunch. The pizza and pasta place had been recommended, and it seemed like a good deal. But when we got there at 1, it was full and there was a wait for inside seating. We decided we didn't want to wait, and we went off. I think this is when we did some more Miniland stuff. We came back about 20 minutes later and the line up was *worse* . They still had seating outside, we were hungry, hot and grumpy, so we were willing to give "shaded tables" a try. There was plenty of seating outside, and it was cooler on the terrace in the shade. Lunch was $12 13+ and $9 12 and under. It was ok. Basic kind of salad bar. The pizza crust was somewhat better than the average buffet pizza, but the toppings were kind of boring and uninspired. Lots of cheese. Pasta was two kinds of tomato sauce with meat and two kinds of noodles. I think our favourite part was the free drink refills--we were HOT and THIRSTY.
Lunch accomplished, I think that's when we headed over to the Lost Kingdom area. There's a dark ride/shoot em up with a vaguely pharonic theme. That area also has the Beetle Bounce, and I believe a play area. And a camel.
For my 10 and 13 yo, there was a lot of stuff that was skippable. We still filled the day, but the playground areas and a lot of the kiddie rides were not of interest. I would say if your kids are 3-8, they'd have a blast all day.
Next we wanted to try the driving school. There was a line up for that, something we didn't encounter often. Again, it was YOUNG. (This isn't the "junior" driving school, but the "regular" driving school.) 13 is the
cut off. And my 13 yo looked ridiculous.
I wanted to do it because I'd heard they got a driver's licence out of it, and I thought that would make a cool souvie, but the photo ID cost $13, and I'm cheap, remember!), so my two got the little printed piece of cardboard with a fill in the blank.
I think they still enjoyed it, though maybe not as much as the littler ones!
I think we went to Cypress Gardens next. I wish we hadn't been so hot and exhausted. It was a real little jewel.
Sadly, we were the only ones there. I'm glad Legoland preserved what it did, but honestly, other than a sense of obligation, there's nothing in the business model that would prompt them to keep it open.
After that we planned to do the movie theatre, but when we got there, something had just started and we weren't waiting an hour for the next show. So, we stopped at Granny's Apple Fries, and ended up enjoying the beverages most. (Did I mention it was HOT??) The apple fries were good, but we were too tired to enjoy them I think.
Finally, we let the kids shop. Really, I think that's why ds most wanted to go--he's a covetous little collector! We peeked into some of the shops as we went about, but we told them we'd shop at the end of the day. The "last chance" bargain shop didn't really have much that rated a bargain, though we did get some fun keychains there. (Dumbledore--we don't have him as a minifig!) Dd liked the Lego Friends shop, and it had a good range of products, though the product line is small. A few cutesy t-shirts and small souvies in addition to the Friends stuff. The prices are standard, no discount but maybe a few promotions. Ds got a "master builder" set at The Factory Shop that I hadn't seen elsewhere, and my boys both enjoyed the pick-a-brick, which is different from the one at DTD. You could tell a lot of the staff are fans, a lot of sweet geeky young men--my boy could totally be happy working there in 5-10 years.
It was a long, hot day. We were very glad to get into our car, crank up the AC and head home.