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[experiment627]

Oh dear... I wanted to post this ages ago... sigh... But better late than never, don't you think so?
I actually wrote that piece in late August... enjoy!

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Two years. It actually took me two years. Finally, I've made the trip. And the park is just 20 minutes away from my parents' home! The park I'm talking about? "Legoland Deutschland".

The latest Legoland park (the fourth after the original in Denmark, the one in England and the one in California) was opened in 2002 just outside of Günzburg, Bavaria – which is about one hour west of Munich and one hour east of Stuttgart. Because I knew that the park was more targeted towards families with younger children its appeal was somewhat limited, even though I have a general interest in theme parks... I just couldn't convince myself to spend a whole day there.
But then, I didn't have to: for the first time, Lego was offering "Caribbean Summer Nights" during the month of August. Which basically meant that the park was open 'till 22:00 (or 10 p.m. for all you Anglo-Saxons out there) and you could get a discounted evening ticket for just 12,- Euros!!! What a bargain. Especially because it included a meal-coupon for 5,- Euros. Yeah!

We (my parents, my sister and me) were hooked and because we don't do family trips as often as we used too (I'm already out of the house and my sister wishes to be) this was supposed to be our family thing for this summer. Unfortunately, summer was not really in the mood. We had planned to go to Legoland for several days now and the weather had been just miserable. Now we had to go. The month was almost over... So we dared to go on a Sunday night...

We arrived at precisely 17:00 – and I was shocked: I hadn't expected these huge crowds. All in all, I had very low expectations, including crowds. But lots and lots of people were heading to the park – where they all had to stand in line to get in. So did we. Even though Legoland has quite a few ticket windows, only six were open. Which is a shame and dampened our mood considerably. It took about 30, 35 minutes to finally get the tickets and walk through the turnstiles...

The park is rather small, but is well laid out and offers some pleasant landscaping. I found the park quite charming, to my own surprise... We didn't do much rides, first because it was already pretty late in the day and second because most of the rides are more for children. But there's still some cool stuff: we did the water ride, which was short but fun. (Well, except that I got soaked...) The wild mouse coaster (called "Project X Test Strecke") is really cool and I enjoyed it very much. The lines for both rides were okay (about 30 minutes).
The third attraction we did was a different matter: it's a people mover style ride over the rooftops of Legoland's "Imagination" area (the park has different areas: "Miniland", "Imagination", "Knight's Kingdom", "Lego City", "Lego X-Treme" and "Land der Abenteuer"). The so-called "Tret-O-Mobil" looks like a Lego / Duplo car combined with a bike. If you don't step into the pedals, the ride vehicle starts moaning that it has to do all of the work by itself – so it doesn't really matter if you play along or not, you are moving forward. It's alright – but had the slowest loading station I've ever seen. It took us ages to go through the queue. About 50 minutes, I'd say... (even though the board at the entrance said it would be 30 minutes...) Nothing that I have to do again. But you have a nice view of the park.
A cute idea that I noticed in the queue: the had a small children's playground so the smaller ones wouldn't get too bored waiting. Good idea. Thumps up for that one.
The park has lots of smaller rides for children, but also some more attractions that might be interesting for adults as well (which we didn't have the time for). There's a 4D movie theatre, a "Lego Racers" go-kart ride, a dragon coaster (two actually, one coaster that is housed in an old castle and is a bit more thrilling and right next to it a kiddie coaster) and the "Bionicle Power Builder" – one of these new KuKa robo-coasters (similar to the robots seen in the last James Bond movie... incidentally, these machines are being built in Augsburg, which is half an hour away... but I degress). But I just didn't have the stomach for that one.

The real attraction, however, is the "Miniland": several miniature landscapes completely built with Lego bricks. Truly lovely miniatures. There's Venice, Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt (with its amazing skyscrapers), Amsterdam, a Swiss landscape, Neuschwanstein (including a miniature King Ludwig and his Sissi, dancing in the castle's ball room), Munich Airport and a typical local village. Unfortunately, the lighting was very bad and we couldn't see much after night fall...

For dinner, we chose to visit the "Dino Grill" – the only table-service restaurant in the park. It's more a diner than a proper restaurant (but then again, the target audience is families with children...). The service was very friendly and the prices more than fair. The food was so-so, but the portions were huge. All in all, not too bad for an amusement park...

I really enjoyed my visit to Legoland Deutschland. True, I probably would get a bit bored if I spent a whole day there. But families will find lots of attractions and shows suited for them. There were also lots of indoor and outdoor play areas, which I thought was great. Then there are few nice touches – and it really amazes me what one can do with these little bricks...

Also, the people were all extremely nice. To my surprise not only the cast, but also the guests. All were relaxed and in a good mood – which has to be one of the best compliments one can make about an amusement park.
There were a few minor glitches, but all in all I had very pleasant evening at Legoland Deutschland...

[Kristof]

Tnx, I'd love to visit Legoland someday.  I suppose they also sell a lot of Lego bricks in their stores?  :wink:

[experiment627]

In all sizes, shapes and colours  :wink: