Our First Trip to Legoland!
This is a sponsored post. I was compensated in the form of a discount, free product, or monetary payment in exchange for this post. All opinions are my own.
Guys, Squirt has entered the Lego phase of life. I have been equal parts looking forward to this day (education toys! individual play time! learning while playing! Star Wars! Harry Potter! Marvel!) and dreading this day (stepping on Legos is no joke y’all). But whether my feet like it or not, the day has come, and it’s safe to say Squirt is obsessed (Matt’s not sad about it either, let’s be real). I come from a family of Lego lovers, but since Legoland didn’t open in California until I was already in high school, we never went as kids. We’ve been waiting for the right time to take Squirt, and now that we are based in Anaheim, we figured the time was right. The drive from home to Carlsbad was about an hour, which is what it used to take us from our old house to Disneyland, so all in all, not a terrible commute. I’m going to break down some of the highlights of our trip, but I’ll just say this now: Squirt has asked me LITERALLY every single day (most days multiple times a day) to go back. The kid freaking loved it.
A couple of things about our trip in particular: We went on December 28th, because it just happened to be the date that worked out best with Matt’s work schedules and Squirt’s time off school. In general, I would avoid going to theme parks during the week between Christmas and New Year because it’s by far the busiest time of year. For us at Legoland, however, it was fine because I knew we wouldn’t be going on any of the roller coasters or more “big kid” rides. I’m definitely looking forward to taking Squirt back on a less crowded day so we can do some more of the smaller rides, but we had a blast despite the crowds. The other main thing to consider when looking into a trip to Legoland is the value of their annual passes. Matt and I received comp tickets from Legoland, but we needed to purchase one for Squirt. When we arrived, we checked out our options and saw we could buy a one day ticket for $105 or an annual pass for $200. For us, the pass was a no-brainer. We live close enough to go at least once a month, the pass includes Legoland plus the Sea Life Aquarium (more on that later), and the pass includes parking and food/merch discounts. Even if we hadn’t opted for the pass from the get go, we would have upgraded after seeing how much Squirt loved the park. I’ll be purchasing my own pass soon, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Matt did too.
Now that the business is out of the way, on to the fun stuff! We explored Legoland as much as we could on our day in the park. It was strange being in a theme park that was totally foreign to me, but it was fun to see what was in store for us. The Star Wars section was, of course, a huge hit with all of us. I will definitely be doing a separate post on all of their awesome SW scenes. We spent a lot of time in this section of the park.
Adjacent to our Star Wars friends is Miniland USA, which has some amazing detail to it. There are miniature versions of LA, New York, San Francisco, and other popular US cities, with their landmarks all made completely from Legos (duh). The detail work is impressive to say the least. This was the section I was most looking forward to checking out, and to my pleasant surprise, it was where Squirt wanted to spend most of his time. He was way more into looking than he was to riding rides (no complaints from me). We spent a good chunk of our day exploring Miniland.
One area I knew Squirt was going to love is Fun Town, which lives up to its name. This section is what I would describe as the transportation section, with cars, boats, planes, everything Squirt loves. I think on future trips we will be spending a lot of time on these rides.
One of the few rides we did was Junior Driving School, which is specifically designed for kids ages 3-5. They get to drive their own cars around a little track (with some guidance from some VERY patient Model Citizens, aka Legoland employees). Squirt had some trouble getting going, but he had fun, and I was so impressed with how well the MCs worked with the little ones.
After the cars, Squirt opted to spend the rest of the day exploring, building, and shopping (so. many. Lego. sets.). We had a tasty lunch at the Aquarium (which will be getting its own post we loved it so much), and spent a couple of hours roaming around and taking in the Lego sights. We did ride on the boats that circle Miniland, which was great, but we went after dark so no pictures.
Once we got close to closing time, we headed in to the Big Store and let Squirt pick out a Lego set (one he loves and I haven’t seen available anywhere else…I’m going to be spending a lot of money in that store). I also found a Captain America keychain, which I haven’t ever seen before so score one for me (though I’m still waiting for my Thor Lego keychain, what gives?). After we exited the park, we went to the Legoland Hotel and had dinner at the Skyline Cafe. We were seated right next to a whole skyline made of Legos, which kept Squirt occupied while Matt and I chilled with some beers.
We left Carlsbad by about 8:00, and were home around 9:00, which for a full theme park day is not too shabby. I’m really interested to do a lot more exploring at Legoland and see what the park is like when it’s not so crowded. I imagine I will be writing many more posts on the park and our experiences, so stay tuned for more. For our first time, the trip can be summed up like this: Squirt loved it!
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