Monday morning was the official day one of our trip. We were in San Diego, and ready to start hitting some of the attractions we'd come to see. Of course, we'd already been to the beach the night before, and planned to go again and again. But what I'm talking about is those amusement parks that southern California is so well known for. There were three of them we meant to visit while we were here: SeaWorld, the San Diego Zoo, and Legoland.
It looked like we were in for some rain in the middle of the week, according to the weather reports. In fact, it looked like Monday would be our only rain free day. So we asked the kids which place they wanted to visit on the day that the weather would definitely not force us to leave early. Their answer, unequivocally, was Legoland.
It was no surprise to us. The kids have loved Legos for many, many years.
So, with a long history of joy from Legos versus no idea what the deal is with SeaWorld; and a Zoo, something that they have in pretty much every city in the world; obviously they chose Legoland.
Legoland was all right, but it kind of failed to deliver what you would expect. Legos have always been very creative and interesting, even innovative. Legoland was pretty much like every other amusement park you've ever been too. Or perhaps even less.
It seemed to me like Legoland did what a fair number of amusement parks do. They're only interested in fleecing you for every single cent you've got. They charge an exorbitant fee to get you in the door, then, once you're in, you can't walk ten steps without coming across another place that's trying to charge you another exorbitant fee: kids' hamburgers that cost $8, or crappy souvenirs that cost at least twice what you'd pay outside the park. There were rides, but most of them were about as impressive as what you'd see from a traveling carnival stopping at small towns in the summer. And, there were surprisingly few rides too. Probably because they had to leave space for all the food and souvenir kiosks.
What was Legoland like? I'd call it a cross between a museum that would appeal to someone my age and a that traveling carnival that comes to our home town each June that would appeal to someone Little's age, maybe a little older. Why do I say it's like a museum? Well, they had a lot of exhibits like this:
A life-sized statue of Darth Vader assembled from Legos. I loved this stuff. I could have spent the entire day just walking around and looking at things like this. My wife was...well, I wouldn't say that she wasn't impressed, because that wouldn't have been right...but she definitely had a different agenda. She wanted the kids to get a chance to ride all the rides that they could. The park's hours were 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM, not very long really for an amusement park, and she didn't want them to miss out on something they would have enjoyed. So, we rushed over to as many rides as we could. But they were all pretty lackluster.
We found a building that had a recreation of the set from the Lego Movie. This was really cool.
Everybody in our family loved the Lego Movie, and it was a really successful show too. It seems like they should have had a whole lot more stuff in the park that was Lego Movie related. But this was pretty much all we came across.
As weak as the rides were, the lines were still fairly long, but a neat thing that they do at Legoland is put a section in the middle of the line where the kids can go and build with Lego blocks while their parents wait in the line. Then, when they're close to the front, they call them over, and go together to the ride.
My kids all took advantage of the opportunity to do something other than stand in line. I might have done so as well, if only I'd seen just one other parent in their building a robot or a car or something. Sigh.
At lunchtime, we shelled out enough money to get us another night in a hotel in Las Vegas to give our family hamburgers. At least the hamburgers were pretty good, even if they cost an arm and a leg. It would have been much more frustrating if they'd cost that much and really sucked too (which freqeuntly happens at tourist traps like this). They weren't big, however, and most of us were still hungry when we were done.
From here, we went down to Miniland, where they had a bunch of Lego reproductions of famous places like San Francisco, New Orleans, New York, New England...all of those places with new in their name.
Right in that area was the boat ride, where they take you around to look at some more of these types of reproductions. We took the boat, and saw the Eiffel Tower:
And New York City:
Needless to say, I loved this stuff. As I said before, half of Legoland was like an art museum that would really appeal to old guys like me. As you might have guessed, when we reached this, I'd found my favorite spot in the park:
One time, when I was working in Sacramento, they had a Lego expert come into the studio to be interviewed for the morning show. There are people who get licensed by Lego as Lego Certified Professionals. They're the kind of people who build these outrageously awesome pieces of art. The guy sat in our studio the whole morning long, building things out of Legos. I'm not sure if it's a job or just a hobby, but if it is a job, I would love to have it be my job.
As the last hour of our stay in Legoland arrived, we finally found the places that were worthwhile. The rest of the park should have been just like these. They had buildings where you could use the Legos they provided to build cars and race them down a track, or build robots or other things. There were little kids running all over the place in these buildings, making different kinds of cars and so forth, and then there was my son.
My older son's only fourteen, still well within the age of people who enjoy Legos, but he's also six feet tall. So, he looked a lot like Gulliver among the Lilliputians out there building his cars. I'm glad he's not one of those kids that can do nothing more than text and roll his eyes. I'm glad that he still has that kid living inside of him. Sometimes I wish he had better control of that kid living inside of him, say when it comes time to do homework and he just can't get himself to do so. But I love that he's willing to get down on his knees and build a Lego car shoulder to shoulder with eight-year-olds without a hint of self-consciousness in doing so.
We spent a fair amount of time building cars, and then finally, on our way out, hit their biggest souvenir shop. This one was full of Lego sets, and other Lego related stuff as well. The kids picked out a few souvenirs, like Lego figure keychains for their backpacks. Then we said goodbye to Legoland
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