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Published: June 24th 2011
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Being the parent of an eleven-year-old boy that loves LEGOs and a travel writer, it was inevitable that I was going to eventually end up in LEGOLAND. So in October since we were going to be in Southern California anyway, we hopped on a Grayline Bus Tour and headed south to Carlsbad from Anaheim.
LEGOLAND in California is actually a 3-part theme park. They have the main park with the rides and LEGO activities; there is an aquarium and then also a water park. As we only had a limited amount of time, we spent our whole time in the main part of the park.
I was warned beforehand by friends that had visited in the past that the park's rides were geared more to the 10 and under crowd. This is very much what we found. There were rides that my son loved to ride and then others he just looked silly on because he was too big. Another thing that was different about the park is that they opened it in two shifts. The first shift only certain rides were open when the parks gates opened and then an hour or so later the rest of the
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Zac and Indiana Jones (in LEGO form) park opened.
Not sure why they do this, but it was annoying because the parts of the park that were not open when we were actually there we never ended up back at as the day progressed. So we missed a number of rides and park sections.
We both did have fun in the park as there were a lot of interesting sculptures made completely out of LEGOs and the general atmosphere was something that just made you smile with all of the cartoonish fun around you.
With it being Halloween as well, my son was able to go "brick-or-treating" in the park. He received some candy, activities and a souvenir Halloween LEGO.
Of course, with it being LEGO there were also opportunities to build with the LEGOs in certain parts of the park. I believe that one of the two places that we spent the most time at was where he was able to build a LEGO race car and race cars made by other kids on a sloped race track. It looked like he was having a blast.
The best thing that I liked about the LEGO Park was the merchandise. Zach (my
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A detailed look of Indiana Jones' head son) had saved up all of his allowance, birthday money and also extra work money to spend at LEGOLAND. I was nervous about him doing this as usually the merchandise in a theme park like this is marked up to capitalize on the excitement of being in the theme park. We found however that the LEGOs (which are expensive in the first place) were actually cheaper in the park than at stores outside the park, yes, that even included WalMart.
Zach was able to walk out with a HUGE bag full of LEGO sets and more stuff than he would have been able to if I had him buy them at home, thinking that we would have saved more money.
Overall, did we have fun? Yes, it was worth the money.
Would we do it again? I am not sure. I would probably not offer the trip, but would be open to going again if Zach ever asked to go back again.
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