Legoland has always been a firm family favourite of ours, mainly because it’s just down the road, so it’s a great place for either a full day out, or a quick pit stop after school, and with our Merlin Annual Passes, we pay once and that’s it for the year.
Before I start this post, I owe you a bit of an apology. I’ve been a bit quieter than normal recently. We’ve had so much going on at home…our extension is nearly finished, so it’s been all hands on deck for painting and finishing touches. I say all hands, all my husbands hands. I’ve decided that I’m much better suited to a supervisory role. That, plus my short attention span means I’m well and truly over the whole thing now. My initial enthusiasm for all the decorating and renovating has long since worn off 😂 I mean, my house looks kind of presentable, as long as you ignore the half painted kitchen, the unpainted woodwork, the lack of curtains or blinds…we have a finished living room and dining room, what more do we need? 😂
As I see a weekend approaching, I see jobs that need doing and I very quickly need to find a way to get out of them. The best way to do this is to get out of the house completely. That’s why when I saw the Lego passholders event advertised, I jumped at the chance to get tickets and escape for a whole Sunday. Its a very happy coincidence that it also happened to be the Sunday that the plumber was there plumbing in the sinks in my new cake room…(that isn’t a room just filled with cake sadly, that’s a room for me to make cakes, my bread and butter work so to speak)
For those that don’t know, Legoland will always open for the day, to pass-holders only, just before the beginning of the season the numbers are limited so it shouldn’t be as busy as usual, and it allows new staff to get to grips with the ride operations, loading and unloading the rides, the tills, coffee machines, everything. I guess the idea is to ease them in slowly before the complaining masses descend. Although I saw plenty of grumpy moaning people on Sunday so I think it might be too late 😂
Firstly, it was bloody freezing (not legolands fault I know) and it was super windy. This meant that a good load of the rides were closed as it’s just not safe to operate them in high winds. I thought, oh well, better to be safe than sorry. It would seem a lot of people didn’t think that, from the whining I heard on the day, to the subsequent posts on line. People were very upset that their free day out had been ruined by jobsworths trying to keep them alive…what arseholes 😂
Secondly, because it was cold, any ride that queued indoors was crazy busy. I didn’t care though, the longer the queue, the longer I spent out of the biting wind. The only problem was, I had small people with me. Small people for some reason never believe you when you tell them it’s best to go to the toilet at a particular time. It’s like they think it’s some sort of adult conspiracy to lock them in a cubicle for the rest of the day (actually that’s not a bad idea…😂) You can almost guarantee they will need a wee in the queue, and they will need it at that exact moment when you’re so far from the back of the queue that you would have to walk past 300 people, and at least one smart arse won’t let you back through because “technically its queue jumping”, and you’re too far from the front to either hold it or push through for a quicker escape route. It’s like they know. They enjoy making your day more difficult. We reached that point in the queue, I heard that little voice saying “I need a wee” and my heart sank. Then I realised it came from my nephew and subsequently was my brothers problem and quickly stopped caring 😂
There were a few ride breakdowns too, but that’s to be expected, they’ve been shut down all winter. What I don’t understand though, is why during the winter do they not give the whole place a spruce up. All the Lego in mini land, with the exception of the new buildings, is looking tired and tatty. Cars don’t work, boats are capsized, the racing track is broken. For the amount of money they make, it doesn’t look like they invest much of it back into the park. If they want I can go and show them how to clean it, I’ve become a bit of an expert over the years due to having a house full of the sodding stuff.
They have invested in a new attraction though, their haunted house, which I believe opens on the 13th April. They seem to have been building it for ages, but I guess if you’re using tiny bricks it all takes a bit longer 😂
On the whole it was an ok day. I’d done my super saver bit, and shoved some hotdogs in a thermos of hot water, loaded my bag with buns and ketchup, so we had hot food without paying a fortune, and when it got too cold, we went home. The joy of only living 10 minutes away 😁
I have however decided not to renew our merlin annual passes…I’m mixing everything up this year. We’re getting historic royal palaces passes (doesn’t that sound cultured!) instead. I’ve spent hours researching different annual passes, so to save you a job I’m going to do a post this week about all the different passes available and what they cost, so keep your eyes peeled for that 😘 in the meantime we’ll be absolutely rinsing the passes we’ve got until they expire in April 😂 For the next month, if it’s not owned by Merlin, we don’t do it!
No such thing as normal 