A brilliant birthday at LEGOLAND

A few years ago I actually said that I'd love to spend my birthday at LEGOLAND - little did I know at the time that one day it would actually happen.

We'd been invited to do a press review on our blog the previous week, but a last minute panic ensued when we realised that D's arm still in plaster would mean that there was little he could do. We delayed for a week until the plaster cast came off. So the new date happened to coincide with my birthday. 

We arrived well prepared kitted out in waterproofs during a monsoon style downpour. I was particularly proud of my genius idea of wearing nappy sack bags over my socks but inside my trainers to keep my feet totally dry in the rain and on the rides where you are likely to get wet. 

We'd been fortunate to visit LEGOLAND earlier this year during sunny August when we had an overnight stay in the LEGOLAND hotel (and yes it is fabulous - it would deserve another blogpost of it's own but it wasn't the focus of our trip this time). So the photos appearing in this post will be a bit of a mish mash of photos from our summer visit as well as our most recent rainy day visit. The weather did actually brighten up during the day and so we didn't get quite as soaked as we thought. 

Now let's get to the nitty gritty of the best rides at LEGOLAND. My kids are now aged 12, 10 and 4 and there was definitely something for everyone. Perhaps in a year or two the boys won't find it so exciting, but at the moment it is the perfect theme park for us all. 

With it being October and the weather being rather rotten at the start of the day, it meant that queues were very short with many of the rides having no queues at all. A very different story from summertime. So we all got to go on our favourite rides. 

Viking river splash is great because we can all fit in a boat at the same time and enjoy the ride together. Be warned you will get wet on this one but it's all part of the fun. 

The Dragon roller coaster was the boys favourite. They loved the thrill of the speed and the twists and turns. Me and Miss T gave this a miss as we found the smaller Dragon's Apprentice a bit too fast for us too. 

Coastguard HQ in LEGOcity was enjoyed by all. Being able to drive the boat yourself seems to be the big attraction of this one. Boats featured heavily in our day as Miss T also enjoyed the mellow boat ride for Fairytale Brook and the boys got drenched on the Raft racers. 

LEGOcity is also the location for Fire Academy, L drivers, and Balloon School. All things really enjoyed by Miss T. Turns out my competitive streak is stronger than I thought when I HAD to make sure our fire engine won the race in Fire academy. The rest of the family did me proud when they went on without me.

In the adventure land part of the park, Squid surfers are great fun - not too fast and furious and whilst you can get wet on it, it was variable wetness depending where you were on the ride it seemed. 

Atlantis submarine is a really popular attraction located at the far side of the park. We usually make a beeline for this to avoid the queues but this time there were no queues. Miss T especially enjoyed heading into the submarine and seeing the fish. 

Heading over to the miniland part of the park, we've always enjoyed seeing famous landmarks including the London eye, Big Ben, and the Eiffel Tower. Here's D with a spot of deja vu recreating his Louvre moment from when we went to Paris last year.

Located nearby in Imagination centre is one of my personal favourite rides...Space Tower. I love the simplicity of being able to pull yourself up and then enjoy the thrill of whooshing down the tower.

The LEGO 4D movie theatre and Skyrider are also in this area. On this occasion Skyrider was closed because of weather and we gave the theatre a miss having enjoyed it on several previous visits. 

Turns out we have so many favourite parts of LEGOLAND... The classic log flume type ride, Pirate Falls was braved by everyone but me. However, I love Laser Raiders - another opportunity for my competitive streak to shine. 

For the first time ever we ring fenced some time in our day to watch the Pirates of Skeleton Bay show and I'm really glad we did. It kept the kids entertained and was really enjoyable seeing the pyrotechnics, water sprays and acrobatics. 

The Star Wars miniland exhibition was a must for our little Star Wars fan. You may remember how star struck she was meeting the waxworks at Madame Tussaud's and here we experienced a similar excitement seeing all our favorite Star Wars characters in glorious LEGO.

There were various Brick or Treat events going on for Halloween. For our family, we feel that Halloween is not an appropriate celebration for children, something echoed in the child development literature I studied for my childcare diploma, so apart from the Brick or Treat flags that the kids were given, we were pleased that the other activities were not 'in your face' and could easily be avoided. 

Something else that doesn't mix well with kids is smoking. We were pleased to see that LEGOLAND has designated smoking areas. We'd love to actually see these enforced as sadly there were lots of people smoking elsewhere too. Better still, as a child-orientated attraction, we'd love to see the whole of LEGOLAND become totally smoke free. 

In terms of food, we've been pleasantly surprised with the actual restaurants both in the hotel (we felt the Bricks restaurant had plenty of healthy choices on our previous visit), and on site where we opted for the pizza and pasta buffet and were pleased to find the salad bar and drinks like water and fruit juice were included in the price. 

I just wish that there were healthier snacking options on site! We ended up having to take our own favourite vegetable crisps with us and then once they'd run out ended up with popcorn which seemed to be the best option we could find. 

My feeling is that somewhere as wonderful and influential as LEGOLAND could do so much more in terms of leading the way with helping kid's (and their parents) eat more healthily. I would love to see them offering some really good truly healthy yet tasty snacking options in future. 

There's lots planned for next year and that is the great thing about LEGOLAND, there are things that are changed every so often to keep it fresh and interesting. 

A few more pics from our summer visit to remind us of what a great time we've had at LEGOLAND on both our visits this year...

We'd like to say a massive thank you to LEGOLAND for our recent day visit - it was a brilliant place to spend my birthday! (We were given day tickets for entry for the purposes of review. All opinions are our own).