First of all, I’d like to apologize for being completely missing for quite a while. Life was getting a little too crazy, with nonstop doctor appointments for both me and my youngest, planning a big vacation, and my main job, home schooling the kids. We hit an emotional and physical wall while at Disney World last week that led to a long talk about simplifying our lives and calming down our schedule. The good news is that will give me more time to dedicate to this blog!
My first topic upon returning is our visit to Legoland. I wanted to love Legoland so much. I wanted to be able to say it was better than Disney World and that my kids preferred it. But we had a couple of negative bumps in the road on our trip that left us feeling pretty bummed out.
My youngest is currently wearing a heart monitor. We don’t think anything is wrong with his heart but when he has these fainting/vomiting spells, the cardiologist wants to be really, really certain that his heart isn’t a factor. Unfortunately his thirty days of continuously wearing it coincided with our vacation. He was a trooper and barely complained and did not act like it was an inconvenience at all. I was so proud of him!
Unfortunately not everyone at Legoland was so helpful with him wearing it. And our other big issue was the level of inconsistency we experienced from ride to ride.
We started at the back of the park, at the coaster called Flying School. Little Guy was allowed to wear his heart monitor in his fanny pack with no issue on that ride. No one even checked. Quite frankly, I found that to be the most intense ride we did all day and no one gave him an issue about his monitor or fanny pack.
Next up we did Driving School, where you sit through a video lesson and then get to drive Lego cars and practice the rules of the road–they have to obey stop signs and red lights, etc. It was super cute! But you are supposed to be six to do it and Little Guy is only five. But they told him that since he was tall, he could be “six for the day.” Now hang on to that, because the inconsistency we experienced later has a lot to do with this moment.
We road all the other smaller rides all day without issue. They are all super cute and I think were Legoland does shine over Disney is that the rides are ALL interactive and you have to be physically involved in the ride–the boats are not on a track, you actually have to steer it correctly; the dumbo-style ride will not stay up high unless you are pedaling; the firetruck ride does not move unless you are pumping it. We got a workout at Legoland!
But when we made our way over to Coastersaurus, things went south. There were signs saying it was an intense ride and absolutely all personal items had to be left behind. Trying to do the right thing, I asked about the heart monitor. I was told he would have to take it off or not ride. Now, we’d been in line for a solid thirty minutes at that point. Telling my five year old that he could not ride after all was not going to go well. The employee was very rude about it. I explained that the cardiologist wanted to see what his heart does on coasters and she just got really ticked off at me and told me had to take it off or not ride. I said that was ridiculous and he has it all attached so it won’t come loose. And she said she’d have to call a manager to get special permission and that would be a big pain for her to do–never mind that it is a big pain for my five year old to wear a heart monitor in the first place. She’d have to make a PHONE CALL and that’s too much WORK. I was livid. I ended up taking his monitor off and letting him ride. As it turns out, the ride was far more mild than the Flying School coaster from earlier in the day so I don’t even know what the big deal was in the first place. (Ignore my face. I’m a huge wuss on coasters and always think it’s going to be worse than it is!).
Our next bump in the road came at The Great Lego Race. This is the cool new coaster where you get to wear Virtual Reality glasses and what you are seeing is a Lego world. The coaster itself is mild. It’s the VR glasses that make it really cool. We stood in line for nearly an hour. Little Guy was measured 3 times to make sure he was tall enough. What no one told us was that he was tall enough but not OLD ENOUGH–you have to be six to wear the VR glasses and guess what? on THIS ride, he was not able to be “six for the day.” You can imagine the poor kid’s confusion when on another ride he was told he could be six for the day and then later he’s told he’s not six and can’t have the VR glasses. What?!? A little consistency goes a long way. He was allowed to ride the coaster without glasses–but there’s really no point because it doesn’t really DO anything without the glasses. Oh and here’s another fun surprise–if your child isn’t able to wear glasses, you can’t either! So my husband was also not allowed to have glasses. My oldest and I got to wear them but ours didn’t work and we had just a black screen and had to take the glasses off and hold them in our hands for the entire ride. Again–inconsistency. He could not have his tiny heart monitor strapped tightly to his body on a coaster, but we could HOLD big, heavy VR headsets in our hands on a different coaster. At the end of the ride, we were able to get passes to try it again. I was too upset at everything by that point but my oldest and my husband rode again with glasses and said it was really cool.
I was immediately in touch with Legoland to let them know about the issues we had and they were very apologetic. There was also one really awesome employee (Shout out to Emily if she ever reads this!) who helped us so much to get things straightened out and even sought us out later in the day to make sure we were ok. I made sure Legoland heard how great she was. Legoland has made things right. We were given free tickets to come back and try again. So the next time we are in Orlando, we’ll give it another try and hopefully come out with a better experience.
I plan to have another post on Legoland soon–with tips for planning your time there, what is worth the money and what is a waste of money. I have found there is not much information out there on Legoland so I plan to change that and share all I’ve learned.
Have you been to Legoland? What was your experience? Share in the comments!