Our fourth stop for this adventure was Legoland to revisit them for their Brick or Treat event. This year presenting the Monster Party!
Our visit intially felt very rushed. We’d gotten to the park early enough so we were queuing to get in but by the time we were in and on the hill train, queues had started to form at some of the parks bigger attractions and it highlighted an issue with the park for me and that’s the lack of access around it.
Very briefly, with a park like Alton Towers, the gates are opened around 9:30 which allows you plenty of time to get to the first attraction to be waiting ready for it to open. Legoland isn’t like that. It opens dead on 10:00am and everyone has to use the same 2 methods of getting down into that park. Either the hill train or walking down the hill which means crowds rush to Flight of the Sky Lion right at the very back of the park so it always gets long queues. Shame that but anyway back to our day.
As mentioned our first ride was Flight of the Sky Lion, an attraction we’ve only done once before and the awfully lengthy queue somewhat ruined the overal experience we had. This time we were in a queue that kept moving and wasn’t as bad at all so I could concentrate more of the ride itself and not the queue beforehand!
Flight of the Sky Lion is a good solid attraction that has a big flaw, at least for me and that’s the screen. Couldn’t the do anything to wrap the screen around you above? I’ll be giving Sky Lion its own dedicated blog in due course but needless to say it was as I remembered, a great ride system and visuals let down by a break in immersion due to the edges of the screen!
Once we’d done on Flight of the Sky Lion, we headed back up the park to get on Ninjago, the parks ART/Triotech dark ride. I still have issues with the ride system and feel that the motion only based controls are lacking. I’ve tried multiple times to try and get the thing to control as the instructions dictate but everytime I try it the energy balls on screen don’t seem to like up with what I’m doing with the controls.
Put guns on it or something physical to interact with please! Other than the irritating controls, everything else about the attraction is excellent! From the ride vehicles, to the story, the 4D elements and the screens.
After we’d done on Ninjago we headed down to Laser Raiders for a ride on possibly the most accurate shooting ride in the UK! These guns require absolute presicion to hit the targets, unlike Tomb Blaster or Sherrif Showdown that allow a bit more flexibility. Despite this I really like how Laser Raiders works!
The targets interact with physical effects such as lights or moving parts which sets it apart from a lot of the other interactive dark rides I’ve been on. The targets are quite difficult to hit and the guns can be a bit tiring on the fingers but nonetheless this is a great ride!
From Laser Raiders we headed down to the Knights Kingdom to ride both Dragon Coasters and try out the Monster Street Halloween walk through.
I’ll talk about Dragon later so first up is Monster Street and much like last year is essentially trick or treating in Lego fashion. Unlike last year though, the stations aren’t in 3 different parts of the park and are instead all in one place, which means you can’t miss them! You’ll get pop badges, a chocolate bar and a small kit of Lego that builds into a pumpkin. Definitely no complaints from me, especially for free!
The street itself was filled with alsorts of pun named shops and stalls themed to the Lego Monsters and is very bright and pleasant and child friendly.
Once we’d done in Monster Street we headed into the Dragon for the first of two rides as there was no queue at all and our first photo didn’t go so well!
Back row is definitely where you want to be on this coaster as both lift hills give you a great amount of ejector airtime as the train crests the hills and gains speed. The initial dark ride section is great too, but it would definitely be better if there were some more Lego models in the outdoor section too!
Dragons apprentice next and though it’s a junior coaster, it features on ride photography and can be a right laugh for posing for silly photos!
Once we’d done in Knights Kingdom we headed off towards the bottom of the park to see one a bank of three joking skeleton heads that were put in place right by the hotels. There were advertised on the map as one of the many different things to do for Brick or Treat so we headed down there as it was on our way towards Lego City anyway.
Our next attraction was Lego City Deep Sea Adventure and my thoughts on this attraction remain the same in that it’s a very inovative way of doing Sealife at Legoland, but the windows are too low or the seats too high. It’s definitely better enjoyed sat on the floor!
After we’d collected our photos we moved onto the main event for this visit, Haunted House Monster Party, the parks Vekoma Madhouse!
Brick or Treat and Monster Party go hand in hand so this attraction really stands out during the event. The ride system is still as good, the cast of characters entertaining and the music is just as good as it’s ever been. Little more to say other than its arguably the best ride at the park, at least for me. Possibly Laser Raiders but that’s an argument for another day!
Once we’d done in Lego City, we headed into Miniland to look out for letters that had been added around the area that spelled out a word. Work out the word and get a pop badges from The Brick, so we wandered around, found the first two letters and I guessed it straight away but we found the remaining ones to be safe. It was Monster by the way!
Another pop badge in hand we headed up for our very first visit to the Legoland 4D cinema to watch the exclusive The Great Monster Chase 4D film.
This was possibly the most underwhelming 4D cinema I’ve ever been in! We sat on the side as all the middle benches were wet so we missed out on the water effects but even still the screen was far too dark to really take it in properly and there lights in the room were a bit too bright which didn’t help matters.
It was great to see actual fire used as an element, as well as a snow machine but otherwise the cinema itself was a bit poor when compared to other parks offerings, sorry Legoland!
After the cinema we had a slow wander around the park, dropping in on Fairy Tale Brook, Ninjago and Laser raiders for second rides before making our way to the shop and exit.
Disappointingly the park was closing at 4pm, which meant we only had 6 hours of time in the park to get everything done. We lost a bit of time at the start as Sky Lion is so far away but I wanted to get that queue out of the way first. In all we had a great time though and despite having only 6 hours, we still got on everything we wanted to and saw all that Brick or Treat had to offer.
The park did seem to be a bit quieter than it’s usually been, but we did go on a Tuesday when only parts of the country were on half term, which probably helped!
Next stop is Alton Towers for the next two days for Scarefest!
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