It perhaps wasn’t the wisest thing to do on the first Saturday of the school summer holidays, but we made a spur of the moment decision this week to visit Legoland!  Alex has been so good recently that his overflowing reward marble jar called for a special day out – and combined with Sophie successfully potty training and some rather well-timed offers on annual passes – we thought our first trip to Legoland was in order.

It was immediately clear how focused on children the park was – we all loved the slides that ran alongside the long stairs into the park!  What a brilliant idea!

We’d arrived just as the park opened and were quite surprised at how quickly queues formed everywhere.  We made a bit of an error with our first ride of the day, and chose a very wet waterslide and got completely soaked.  The kids were okay, but Matt and I ended up spending most of the day in sodden jeans.  Yuck!

We stayed drier with our next ride,  the Longboat Invader in the Land of the Vikings – although had to queue for nearly 40 minutes for it!

After finding most rides had 45-60 minute waits, we instead explored the free performances – loving the live pirate show.  Sophie thought it was hilarious watching the pirates diving off the lighthouse tower into the lake.  Following the show, we grabbed some lunch – the kids enjoyed the large duplo station in the corner of the restaurant!

Having had an early lunch, we tried to hit as many rides as we could while most people were taking a break to eat.  With queueing down to only 30 minutes (!), we thoroughly enjoyed the lego boats (although Sophie wasn’t that good at steering but when Matt tried to take control, it resulted in each of them saying in turn “I’m in charge”, no “I’m in charge” all the way round!).

We braved the dino safari, speeding around a route and spying some amazing lego dinosaur creations (thankfully no steering required!)

Here’s Sophie spotting a huge pterodactyl!

Our favourite ride of the day for my resident BBC Octonauts fans was Lego Atlantis.  We loved it so much we went on it twice!  The submarine ride was fabulous – Alex and Sophie were so excited to see fish, rays and sharks swimming around through the glass base of the sub.  Alex kept reminding us not to open the windows!

The rides we did were excellent, although quite short – but the long queues meant we only actually did a handful over the day. But that didn’t really matter, as the park itself was excellent.  It was surprisingly beautiful, really green with pretty landscaping and sweeping views of Windsor Castle and London beyond.  There were lego surprises everywhere – little animals dotted around and lego scenes all over the place.

Sophie in particular was quite taken by this lego bunny where we stopped for ice cream:

Thank goodness the lego creations are well stuck as this bunny got quite an enthusiastic cuddle from this rabbit mad girl!

Alex’s favourite lego animal was, of course, the Great White Shark!

My favourite part of the park was Miniland – where there were incredibly intricate scenes of locations around the world.  It was incredible.  Thankfully the children loved spotting their familiar London landmarks, so we spent ages exploring.

 

We loved the Lloyds of London building, and of course Big Ben (where Alex thinks Matt works) and the BT Tower:

And our favourite buildings in London – Tower Bridge, St Paul’s Cathedral (where we got engaged at the top) and The Gherkin.

I love that there was lego Glastonbury, complete with someone who looked rather like Florence and The Machine on stage and check out the beautiful lego Montmartre!

And last but not least – Sophie and Alex loved lego Edinburgh.  Here they are spying on where we’ll be holidaying soon.  And they were fascinated by the tiny Highland Games!

Here’s one happy family in Miniland!

If Miniland was my favourite place, then the children’s highlight was the Splash Safari in Duplo Valley.  I’d thankfully read about this in advance, so was prepared with swimming kit.  It was the perfect way to run off some energy.  Next time, we’ll bring kit so we can take Alex and Sophie into the incredible looking Drench Towers next door.

We easily spent the entire day at Legoland – arriving at opening, and leaving after tea when the park closed around 7.3opm.  I’m so glad we have the annual passes as I think we have a much better sense of the park and the rides we’d like to try, so next time we can be a bit more organised about getting on things we want to when its quieter.  But, despite the lengthy queueing, we had a fabulous day and left with two very happy children!

They were asleep in minutes!