England March 2013- LEGOLAND Windsor Part Two

If there is one thing that every theme park needs, it's a corny pirate show. Legoland Windsor just might have the corniest pirate show of them all. However corny, it managed to keep our attention as we stood out in the rain to catch the first show of the season.

The first Pirate show of Legoland Windsor's 2013 season!

The good pirates danced, sang, did some flips and stunts...all while trying to evade the bad band of pirates. I felt sorry for them having to do the show in the rain, but I'm guessing that living in England, they're used to it. The whole show is performed around a pool of water, so there are many water effects and even a boat chase. I'm sure that in the summer, they take every opportunity to shower the audience. Mother nature was already taking care of that part.

If you must watching the Pirate of Skeleton Bay in the rain, the best tip I have to impart is to grab a warm cup of coffee first. Actually, if you visit Legoland Windsor on a cold or rainy day, a warm drink will be your best friend. It kept us sane. Prior to the pirate show, we stopped at a nearby restaurant for mini donuts and lattes.

It was a nice treat, too bad the restaurant was infested with spiders!

Legoland Windsor had so many creative touches. Here are some of the buildings close to the Pirate show and donut restaurant. I love the Lego bookstore!

One of first attractions of the day was the Laser Raiders, located in the Kingdom of the Pharaohs section if the park. Laser Raiders is an interactive dark ride, where each rider is given a laser gun to aim at targets for points. It has a massive queue layout (of course I took pictures) and it made us realize our good fortune to be visiting on a slow day. The Kingdom of the Pharaohs also includes a ride called Bouncing Scarabs, which is a very mild dropping platform ride. Dan's five year old daughter loved it and probably would have been happy to go on the Bouncing Scarabs all day long.

Also in the Egypt themed section was the Aero Nomad, a balloon flight themed ferris wheel.

One of my favorite former attractions at Disneyland was the Fantasyland Motor Boats. As a kid, the boats were definitely on my top-ten favorite attractions list. Legoland Windsor has their own version of the Motor Boat Cruise, but it's even a bit of a Motor boats-meets-Jungle Cruise hybrid. The theming is a bit off, as you encounter all sorts of animals in no particular order. Hey, why are those polar bears hanging out with a herd of elephants? No clue. Wacky theming aside, the kids really enjoyed steering their own boats and this attraction won for the most repeat rides of the day.

At the entrance to the Boating School attraction there was a shark to throw another animal into the muddled menagerie.

Park guests generally dread having to wait in a long queue. One solution Legoland had to keep guests occupied is to put Lego play stations in the queues.

Legoland also made a bold move that I've never noticed in any other theme park. I think that theme park management usually would like to know how they are doing and where they might make improvements, but posting a complaint hotline can potentially be a disaster. Legoland Windsor must be pretty confident in their ability to deliver a great family day out. I was impressed that they posted the sign where park guests tend to be the most disgruntled and irritable.

In addition to having a Boat School, Legoland has two different driving schools, split by age. Dan's kids were in the younger group and watching the kids learn to drive Lego cars was a really cute experience. Prior to letting the kids drive around a track, they have to go over car safety points, like always wearing their seat belts. Once they are finished with their class, they are told to sit still for their license photos (which is a mock picture taking experience). After the kids drive, an attendant gathers the group up to tell them that they have all passed their driving test and they are handed a drivers license.

The staff working at the Driving School are absolutely great with the kids, they exude enthusiasm and are quick to help the kids out when their cars get stuck or they don't understand something.

There are some attractions, like the Fire Academy, in which the adults have to do a bulk of the work. The Fire Academy is an interactive attraction, where kids and adults work together to propel a fire truck (adults moving the truck by pumping) and then jumping out of the truck and pumping water aimed at a burning building to put the fire out and save the day. This attraction takes a lot of muscle and team work. You will build up a sweat as you race to beat the other families that are your competition.

There was another balloon ride near the Fire Academy , this one had a pull rope to control the height of the balloon as it circled.

On this trip, I learned all about the local grocery stores. Waitrose is the clear winner and they earned my loyalty through their delicious ready-made sandwiches. Dan's parents packed a picnic for us and there is no way that we would have been able to buy a better lunch at Legoland. The salmon and cheese sandwich was so yummy. I can't think of a grocery store in America where I would even want to buy a pre-made sandwich. I also spent the entire vacation gobbling up these delicious cherry tomatoes that Dan's parents had at their home (and packed for our picnic). I've never eaten sweeter tomatoes. They were like candy.

I wish we had Waitrose and their pre-made sandwiches in America.

There were some cute Lego figures close to where we stopped to picnic.

After lunch, we walked towards the Atlantis attraction, stopping for me to have an obligatory flamingo picture. Damn flamingos plague me where ever I travel!

The Atlantis ride was very cool. It's an indoor submarine ride that mixes Lego sea creatures including mermaids, with real fish, even big sharks! I wasn't expecting to see real animals on the ride. Legoland caught me by surprise many times throughout the day. It's a much better theme park than I imagined it would be.

The day was starting to get late and we realized that there was a huge section of the park that we had not yet had a chance to explore. We rushed through the Pirate area and beyond a digger ride that was closed to get to the Land of the Vikings.

I'm not sure what spiders have to do with Pirates or Vikings, but between the two areas was a spider themed spinning tea cup style ride, the Spinning Spider.

Sometimes zero wait times for rides can be a bad thing, such was the case when we went straight from the Spinning Spider to the Jolly Rocker, a Viking ship themed ride that lifts and dips while spinning. I felt motion sick almost immediately.

The only cure for motion sickness is to get lost in a hedge maze. Loki's Labyrinth was challenging enough without being frustrating. Years ago, I did the pineapple maze at the Dole plantation in Hawaii and that was three-hours of misery. Luckily we only wandered around Loki's for about ten minutes until we found the exit.

Dan took a panorama shot of the Labyrinth from the observation tower.

We saved the best for last and closed out our day in the Knights Kingdom. The medieval themed land has a huge, imposing castle and two dragon themed coasters. We started with the small coaster, The Dragon's Apprentice, first to see how the kids would handle it.

The kids loved the smaller coaster and wanted to try to big coaster in the castle. The castle was quite impressive and the ride was not only a decent coaster (I felt my stomach drop), but it also had a dark ride element with dragons, drunk knights and wizards. I think if the Excalibur Hotel in Las Vegas had a ride, this might be it.

We took the train up to the top of the hill. I love the Lego butterflies hovering over the train station.

Lastly, one of my favorite things at Legoland Windsor. In America it's a Press, but in England, it's a Mangle!

Thank You to Dan's parents for a wonderful day out in Legoland Windsor. I loved every minute of it!

England March 2013- LEGOLAND Windsor Part One

As a theme park fanatic, I was thrilled when Dan's parents treated us to a day at Legoland Windsor on our March trip. Next to visiting Historical landmarks, there is nothing that I love more than visiting a theme park. Although we live in Southern California, I've never visited Legoland in Carlsbad.

We went to Legoland on the opening day of their 2013 Season. It was cold, rainy and mercifully quiet. We didn't wait more than ten minutes for any attraction and most we were able to walk right on.

As one might expect, Legoland Windsor is located within view of Windsor Castle. I found this to be a bit of a marvel. Windsor Castle is such an iconic structure and it was hard to believe that it was so close to a theme park. I soaked in its view every time it came into sight.

Here is a picture of the castle that I took while driving through the town of Windsor.

The first sign that Legoland was near.

Is it still quicker if everyone opts to take the alternate route?

The long driveway up to Legoland was dotted with Lego creations welcoming us to the park.

We finally made to the park entrance and proceeded with our tickets that had been pre-purchased tickets. A huge THANK YOU to Dan's parents!

Quiet at the turnstiles for opening day 2013.

Naturally, as a complete theme park geek, I had to take pictures of the park map and digital wait time sign. I spent many, many years at Universal Studios Hollywood updating the digital wait time signs.

Legoland Windsor Digital Wait Time Directory (somewhere in an office, someone is updating this sign)

The park doesn't look like much when you first enter it, because the entrance is at the top of a hill and much like Universal Studios Hollywood, the rides are tucked away on different levels of the hill. The park is actually enormous. We visited on a slow day and although we did a lot, including multiple rides on favorites, we still couldn't manage to see the entire park. There is so much to do.

Here is the view of Windsor Castle from the top level of Legoland.

We headed straight down to the lower levels and as a consequence ran out of time before we could do the things at the top, such as this cool looking building.

Dan loves to take Panoramas and took this one from the top of the park. Looking out over the park, we still had no clue that Legoland was so huge. It was deceptive!

I love Disney, but visiting Legoland made me realize that Legoland is a vastly superior theme park experience for little kids. Our group included Dan's parents and Dan's two kids, ages three and five. The kids absolutely loved the park. I've visited Disneyland with various toddlers (kids of my friends) and there are many attractions, even in Fantasyland, that are just too scary. Practically all of the rides at Legoland are toddler friendly and even the most scary, like The Dragon coaster, are mild in comparison to Disney's offerings. This is an ideal first park for children.

One of the kid friendly touches were tunnel slides located next to the stairs on the hillside. It's much more fun to slide than it is to walk!

Also located on the hillside, just off the walk way.

Our first stop was Miniland. Miniland was my favorite part of the park. The land houses an amazing collection of famous landmarks recreated out of Lego. It became a running joke that now we don't need to travel anywhere, because we saw it at Miniland.

Although Miniland was mostly filled with recreations of European landmarks, one of the first things that we encountered was America's Mount Rushmore. Dan and I have been wanting to make a trip to South Dakota to see the real thing, but now that we have seen the Lego version, maybe we can skip it?

Dan and I at Lego Mount Rushmore. Been there, done that.

Dan took another one of his panorama shots. Like the rest of Legoland, Miniland is much larger than it appears.

This place is so big that it needs it own mayor!

Dan took a panorama of London.

On this, my first trip to England, it was too cloudy to see London when we flew into Heathrow. No worries, I still managed to take in all of the sights!

Next trip, I hope to visit the real Stonehenge.

I also want to visit the Minack Theatre. I had never heard of it prior to seeing the Lego version, but it looks like an utterly amazing place to experience live theater.

Sporting Events in Lego

Castles in Lego

Miniland had so many places in Europe in miniature, that it almost felt like going on a whirlwind tour of the World Showcase in EPCOT... except of just of Europe and Mount Rushmore.