Building a Great Day Out (Legoland Windsor)

Member Name: jasminesarah

Product:	Legoland Windsor
Date:	31/08/09 (65 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good quality day out for all ages

Disadvantages: Can be expensive and crowded

First of all, I have to admit that I am a bit of a snob when it comes to theme parks. I don't like crowds, queuing, fast food or ball pools. Readers of some of my previous reviews will know that (whether by nature or nurture...) I'm lucky enough to have kids who aren't all that keen on these things either! I mention this because I think we are quite a tough audience when it comes to this type of entertainment. It also begs the question - why did we go?

Anyway, we did, for my son's 10th birthday in July, and it was great! The birthday fell on the last day of term, so I felt justified in letting him take a day off, meaning that we avoided the crowds that descended the following day. I think that this was key to the enjoyment of our visit, as (combined with quite a bit of rain on the day) meant that the queues and crowds were a lot less than they might have been.

Legoland isn't cheap, an adult ticket is £37 and a child's is £28 on the day, but it is cheaper to buy tickets on the website before you go, and there are often BOGOF offers, or passes for several days including accommodation. I opted to buy our tickets through Tesco deals, and because of having got a bargain that way I justified to myself the additional (optional) purchase of 'Qbots'.

The Legoland Qbot system costs an extra £10 per person and is designed to lessen the amount of time waiting in queues - you programme in your ride of choice and then the Qbot vibrated to tell you when it is your turn to ride. It doesn't mean that you get to jump the queue, only that you don't have to physically stand in it - you can look around, go to the loo, buy a coffee etc, and then stroll to the front of the queue when it is your turn. As I mentioned, on our visit I don't think it was busy enough to merit the price for this, but it was handy to be able to see how long the wait was for each ride on the Qbot machine, and on a busier day it would really have come into its own. The system is flawed though, as despite the charge being per person you are only issued with one Qbot per party, meaning that you all have to book the same ride, only one ride can be booked and another can't be programmed in until you have ridden the first, meaning that with queues of up to 2 hours, you'd still have long gaps between the rides on busy days. A £50 deposit is taken in case you wander off with it..... which I did. Ho hum. That is how I know how busy it was on the following morning - as I had to join the queue to return it!

I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the rides and the park itself. I think I was expecting more of the model village aspect - which is there, but we didn't spend much time looking at it as we were distracted by the rides. Although Legoland is no longer owned by the same company as the toys, the park fits the rather wholesome image of Lego perfectly. Our favourites were the ones involving water - the Viking River Splash and Pirate falls in particular. I won't spoil it for you by telling you all about the rides, but I would advise you to take waterproof coats, or even a change of clothes! I don't know why it didn't occur to me beforehand that we'd get so wet, but walking about in damp jeans wasn't much fun! (Of course, if the weather had been better we would have dried a lot faster!)

On the major rides your photograph is taken, and you can go and look at them on tv screens and laugh at your expression of horror or joy once the ride is over. The photos are available to purchase at a rather steep £6 each, but there is a discount for buying several. Ice cream, popcorn etc is also pretty over-priced, much as you'd expect, but not horrifyingly so. We took a picnic, but there were plenty of places to eat and some of these looked reasonably nice - there was more choice than just burgers and chips. Across the park there are several Lego shops with a huge range of Lego products. Here the prices were not inflated - of course, Lego is quite expensive anyway but several of the toys were cheaper than we'd seen them in other shops. If you buy a Legoland Annual Pass you get 10% off everything in the Lego stores, a bonus if you have Lego mad kids!

The rides range from sedate trains and balloon rides to scary roller coaster thrills (no jokes about 'bricking it' please.....) As there are rides to suit all ages, I would recommend Legoland as a good day out for all the family, although probably 8 - 12 year olds might get most out of it, as lots of the rides aren't suitable for younger children. As adults we found that we had fun too - and everyone left tired but happy, and damp.

Summary: Pick your day, and search for a bargain