Legoland Trip

It's no exaggeration to say that a trip to Legoland Windsor is always, rain or shine, anticipated joyfully by our kids; they just love the place because it has something for everyone. In fact it's not even too painful to visit as an adult as Lego (or Merlin Entertainments anyway) really know how to cater for their target market. So there was general excitement all-round when we surprised the little ones this morning even though Mummy was going to be absent (having family and a flower-show to take in up-North). That left me to organise the whole shebang and it worked out pretty well if I say so myself; we managed to haul ourselves to Windsor before lunchtime and while the car-park fill-factor spoke of a busy day it wasn't going to be at the August level of insanity!

I decided to let Joshua and Christina decide what to do (as if I had a choice) because I had nowhere else to be and no particular agenda. So we started off small with a bit of messing around on the slides:

Feeling no fear!

Then it was a case of heading down to the main rides via some enormous Easter Island heads, a moving (literally) picture of how moles mined out the million's of Lego bricks required for the park and substantial time spent in the deserted imagination facility. That's one of the greatest things about Legoland - that kids can, more or less, run anywhere, climb, poke and push things without being remonstrated with and find something that'll capture their attention. So when Joshua and Christina wanted to settle down to building towers I was content to oblige them:

This is just the start of a metropolis

Of course there's more to life than bricks and a 'zone' that both of them absolutely adore is the driving area where there are a couple of academies that furnish them with driving licenses! As is common in the park different age-groups are split sensibly and so while Joshua ran off to the big kid's track (lots of space and a touch more speed) I took Christina to the beginner's school where they don't have to handle much more than steering and hitting the gas. Even this proved too much for some pupils with a few epic smash-ups taking place! Christina is an old-hand though and quite adept at talking and driving:

I can multi-task you know!

The other strength of Legoland is that they have a number of shows taking place around the clock; so you can just arrive, settle down with your lunch and enjoy a properly entertaining performance. A known favourite for us is the water show involving pirates, jet-skis, a lot of falling into the briny and heaps of slapstick; if you're still in your first decade of life there is no finer experience than watching grown men trip each other up! From here we wandered into some sort of Pharaoh bouncing ride, onto the Chair-O-Planes (which I sensibly avoided) and then took in the 'Steam' train; so a fair variety (no pun intended) and there was very little waiting in line involved.

It's funny actually because as we slowly headed back towards the entrance we still managed to drive around dinosaur land, crash our boat in a trip through the jungle, re-live the tale of the Three Little Pigs in the style of Michael Caine and take another boat ride through the world of nursery rhymes. There really is some variety here, as well as plentiful facilities for food, drink and everything else, and that's before we get to a feature that's more entertaining than you would believe - Miniland! Here the whole world, it seems, is rendered in Lego and then animated; all of the London landmarks are present and correct and they even had a Royal Wedding diorama in place today. Topical and captivating; what's not to like?

North by Northwest anyone?

After all of this we somehow managed to miss buying any ice-creams (and neither of them noticed, much less complained, about this parenting failure) but on the other hand we did get sucked into the giant Legoland shop. I can't really complain as it's a real treasure-trove for the Lego fan - much like the rest of the park - and I did manage to escape fairly lightly from the chance of a real wallet-bashing! It's fair to say that we might have done a few more rides with two adults present but to be honest there were no rides that we wanted to go on and couldn't; that's how well Legoland delivers a fun day out for children. We will be back and not just to experience the new Atlantis ride that opens in a couple of weeks.....