Flight of the Sky Lion is a flying theatre that opened at Legoland in 2021 as part of their Mythica expansion.
The idea behind the ride is that you board the ride vehicle and are then taken away on a journey by a magical Sky Lion called Maximus into his dimension. The world is inhabited by creatures unlike anything in ours and the best part about it all is that the animals you see are all created by real people in Lego before recreated for the on screen video.
The queue is quite long and winding and the first time we went, we waited in excess of an hour and a half for the attraction due to COVID restrictions. I’ve subsequently reridden it and it took a much more reasonable 30 minutes.
The first time I experienced Flight of the Sky Lion, I enjoyed it but I did feel that it was a bit over hyped. It was still a good time but not quite the best ride in the UK that was thrown about at the time. Upon riding it for a second time I noticed a glaring issue that breaks immersion for me and spoils the attraction a little. The top of the screen cuts off abruptly.
A little about the ride system for context. So the ride consists of 3 levels with ride arms on them but each level seems to give a similar experience.
I’ve tried both bottom and middle level and both times I’ve noticed the screen cut off at the top. Whilst doing a bit of research for this blog, it seems I’m not alone in noticing this either. It doesn’t completely ruin the attraction and make it unrideable or terrible by any stretch, but it does take away from the feeling of flight a little.
Because the screen is so vast, if you look down, you can’t see floor, only screen which is great as you feel like you’re incredibly high up, but when you look up, you see the top of the screen and then immersion is slightly lost.
Besides the issue with the screen, everything else is very excellent. The ride arms moves in time with what’s going on and is very smooth. The animation and video quality are excellent and believable too. On our second riding, we even got wind and water effects that I don’t recall getting on the first ride in 2021 which was a good addition to the whole experience.
I first had the though for this blog in August when we rode it for the second time as I felt like I had a lot to talk about. Between then and now however I’ve ridden The Guardian and that contextualised how Flight of the Sky Lion isn’t as bad as I thought. Both Flight and The Guardian do the same job. The Guardian just does it worse in every way unfortunately which makes Flight of the Sky Lion much better and makes me feel like I was being a bit too hard on the attraction and possibly having to my standards set a little too high.
Flight of the Sky Lion is a great attraction that fits into Legoland well and shows you a great world filled with weird and wonderful creatures. It has a small issue with screen cutting off but besides that, I don’t really have any other issues with the attraction now.
I hope I can get back on it this year to make my mind up fully but at the moment, you’re alright Flight of the Sky Lion, you’re alright.
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