We all grew up with it, the world-famous colored building blocks with the little yellow figures. Perhaps the most known toy that’s in production for years. I’m talking about Lego. At the moment our daughter is still in the Duplo phase, but it won’t probably be long before she will switch to the smaller scale. Something I’m looking forward to, because I always liked to built things with Lego when I was a younger girl. Would be fun to create amazing buildings together.
But what I never knew is that Lego goes beyond building with blocks in the living room, computer games and movies. There is, and apparently even for years, a theme park dedicated to this popular phenomenon. My mother even told me that when she was twelve years old, she and her father and sister cycled from Holland to Denmark to visit Legoland Billund. The place where the creator of Lego, Ole Kirk Christiansen, was born in 1891.
And luckily we found out that there is such a park near London as well, in Windsor, at less than 45 minutes drive from our house. Now we generally don’t visit that much amusement parks, since Lara is three and most theme parks are designed for older children. But a park like Legoland completely fit with the wishes of children with a younger age.
Legoland Windsor is divided into different worlds which are all connected to each other. We started our route through the park in the Land of the Vikings, where we decided to began slowly with the Spinning Spider, a good start for Lara to get used before we would switch to the biggest attraction here: Viking’s River Splash. For our little girl a bit exciting, but the laughter made it clear that she certainly liked it.
Through a large playground you’ll enter Knights Kingdom, where you can visit a large castle via a drawbridge. What we didn’t realized yet was that we were approaching The Dragon, something Mama secretly looked forward to the most. This roller coaster slowly travels through a cave with many Lego knights, dragons and wizards and continue with a fast ride outside the castle. I guess Lara found it a bit scary, fortunately there is also another rollercoaster, the Dragon’s Apprentice, which is a bit smaller.
We approached Pirate Shores, where our eye immediately falls on the big swinging pirate galleon, the Jolly Rocker. Always a success and good for big jitters in the belly. Another favorite: the Pirate Falls Treasure Quest, where you sail in a boat through a landscape with many cute Lego animals and figures. Until you go up and a moment later glides down in great speed. The many ponchos in the row already suggested that we could get pretty wet during this attraction. And of course that happened to us. Fortunately, the sun did a great job and we were dry in no time.
Before we made our way towards the old familiar Lego City, where Lara would get some driving lessons, we visited NINJAGO. The newest world of the park where you can experience a 4D interactive ride and some training camp activities to become a master of Spinjitzu.
Next to Lego City and on the side of the park you’ll enter Duplo Valley. With next to a big playground a great water spectacle, called Drench Towers. With good weather it could be a bit crowded, but in the end it’s a lot of fun for the kids. Unfortunately, we weren’t so well prepared to bring a swimsuit and towel with us. Next time better.
On the way back to the entrance we made a final stop at Miniland. In Legoland Windsor, a large part of this miniature landscape is predominantly dedicated to English monuments such as Big Ben, Tower Bridge and Buckinham Palace. But also the other European countries are certainly covered and are easily recognizable with their landmarks.
After a long day in Legoland, the time had come to return back to the habited world. But what a great day we had in this fun amusement park. Maybe a bit on the pricey side, but when you keep an eye on the deals online and book the tickets a few days in advance it could saves considerably with the entrance fee that you pay at the door. And if you want to come back more often during the year, an annual pass may also be interesting. We will think about it.
Curious about Legoland Windsor and want to have more information about prices, accessibility and opening hours, please click here.