Lego, Lego, everywhere! (Legoland Windsor)

Member Name: kingfisher111

Product:	Legoland Windsor
Date:	25/10/09 (170 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: lots to do, fun rides

Disadvantages: expensive, busy and a lot of time spent queuing

It is quite surprising that, since we only live about twenty minutes away from Legoland, Windsor, that yesterday was the first time that we had taken our six and four year old daughters for a visit! I think this was partly because it is quite an expensive place to visit, but also because I didn't want the girls becoming too caught up with all the thrills and spills and being less likely to be content with some less 'exciting' attractions such as our local park!

Legoland is on the B3022 Windsor/Ascot road just two miles from Windsor town centre. As I sometimes work in Windsor, I do know that at busy times this road does become quite congested due to all the cars queuing for the entrance. Once inside the park, there is tons of free parking though so it is hardly likely to be full. However, as the car park is so vast you can find yourself with a long walk into the park so you could opt to use the preferred parking car park which is much closer but will cost £6 per car. There are also bus services that take you to the park and a shuttle service from Windsor and Eton Riverside station which is very handy to know.

There is quite an efficient entry system to the park although at busy times you will definitely have to queue. The cost of entry is
Adult £37
Child/Senior £28 (under threes are free)

These are the prices for a one day pass but if you book on line the prices are all between £2.50 and £4.50 less. Even with this, the cost of a one day visit for a family of four is going to cost well over £100 so it is definitely not a cheap day out. Obviously people do pay these prices as the place was very busy and from what people tell me it nearly always is but it is an awful lot of money for just one day! However, if you live locally it is well worth buying annual passes which cost £73 for adults and £55 for children and seniors. This obviously represents much better value and I know many people who use their passes virtually every weekend so they really are getting their money's worth! Personally, I don't think that I could face going that often although I am sure my girls would love to!

The park is organised over quite a large area that is divided up into different sections. There are Land of the Vikings, Knight's Kingdom., Kingdom of the Pharoahs, Adventure Land, Duplo Land, and Lego City amongst others. Each of these areas holds a number of different attractions ranging from some high thrill roller coasters to some smaller activities for younger children. We were provided with a map that makes the park look vast but I have to say that I found this quite chaotic and confusing. This is a bit of a worry if you are there with small children because you can see that potentially you could lose them very easily especially as, even in October, the place is very crowded. I did notice some children walking around with label on giving parents' mobile numbers, supplied by Legoland which I feel is a very good idea. I don't know where people got these from though as I was not aware of being able to pick these up on the way in.

There are some good rides at Lego land although I don't think they are really in the league of places such as Thorpe Park and Alton Towers. I took my six year old on the Dragon Rollercoaster which was fun but does not last that long and only has two medium drops. There is another rollercoaster - the jungle coaster - which looks like the biggest and scariest ride in the park but we didn't go on this.
There are also a couple of good ones if you don't mind getting a bit wet. We all went on the Vikings' River Splash which is where you sit on a round raft type thing and get bumped and sprayed around a rocky river course. WE all enjoyed this but it did mean that we were all walking around with wet bottoms for the next hour! There is also the Dragon Falls which is like a traditional log flume with a couple of big drops and big splashes that do leave your heart in your mouth a bit!

The other attractions we went on were the labyrinth that was fun for the girls to try and find their ways out of, the Orient Expedition that was a small train ride, and a mini sized big wheel which gave reasonable view of the park from the top. My girls also enjoyed playing in the Rat Trap which is a multi-level wood and rope climbing play area. At the end of our visit we also caught the hill train up to the entrance rather than walking up the hill.

I think you can see that there is a real variety of activities for all ages, I have only mentioned the ones that we went on but there is so much more and you would never be able to do everything that you wanted to in just one day, which is why an annual pass does make sense. One of the problems is that you just spend so much time queuing which is bad enough for adults but a nightmare if you have small children. Now, you can get around this problem if you are prepared to pay £10 extra per person by getting hold of a Q BOT. This allows you to virtually queue without actually having to stand in the line. It sounds like a good idea but to have one of these would have cost us an additional £40! I suppose though, that if you have already spent over £100 to get in, to waste half your day queuing is such a waste, so it may well be worth paying the extra money - although it does seem a lot to pay!

There are a lot of food outlets all over the park which all seemed very busy. We had our own picnic lunch so we didn't use these. However I did buy two packets of crisps that cost 80 pence each so judging by these prices, I expect all the food would have been quite expensive. There are also a number of toilets which were being kept in reasonable order.

To me, the best thing about the park is all the lego which is just about everywhere you look. There is an area that is like a model village with lots of models of famous buildings. However, everywhere else there are animals, people and other objects all made out of lego that are fantastic - they seem to be a feature of virtually every ride and are also there as points of interest for the queues. These are all brilliant but I suspect that there might be a tendency to overlook these.

Although there is so much to do and in many ways it is well organised, I'm afraid that Legoland did not leave me wanting to come back for more. It is the cost, crowds and the queues that I really did not like, and I also felt that I could not relax as far as the girls were concerned. Perhaps, if we had gone on a less busy day, I may well have felt differently. However, I did enjoy some of the rides that we went on and I appreciate that there is lots to do for all ages. Also, I have to admit that my daughters absolutely loved the place and I know that they will be nagging me to go back there very soon! What a shame that in two weeks time it closes for the winter!

Summary: Be prepared to either spend a lot of money or queue!