LEGOLAND

Today we traveled about 30 minutes outside of San Diego to Carlsbad which is the home to LEGOLAND. One of the reasons that I wanted to to San Diego when the kids were this age was because I had heard that LEGOLAND caters to the 6-12 year old crowd and much older than that and theywould not find it as interesting. (Your interest picks up again when you hit about 30 and you're making enough money to buy all those Lego sets you wanted as a kid and couldn't afford.)

The park claimed to open at 9:00a however that turned out to be a bit of a trick. The gates open and a few rides at the front of the park are open but most rides don't open until 10:00a. That means you're stuck in the shops buying Lego until the rides open. Our first ride was the Pharaoh's Revenge which was an odd mash up of an Egyptian tomb and laser blasters. One thing we noticed a lot during the day was that the whole park is built as if they bought a theme park from someone else and then added a few Lego characters here and there. Less things were made of Lego than I was expecting.

We managed to get a few rides in before lunch including some where Carter was the only one allowed on. Unlike Disneyland where virtually every ride is made for all ages and sizes, many of the LEGOLAND rides are only built for little kids. This worked out well for Carter who enjoyed being able to do rides that his sister could not.

After lunch we had a bit of time before heading to the water park so we tried out the Splash Battle which looked like it was going to be a lot of fun because we could aim our water blasters at other boats. As it turned out the range was much too short and we couldn't hit anyone while we are on the ride. On the shore however, there were blasters for spectators and they were able to completely soak us. I got my revenge later when the kids and I took a turn at the pedestrian water cannons. (My apologies to the lady in the white sweater who was absolutely soaked. I lost myself for a moment.)

After a few more rides we took a break to go to the water park which was included with our ticket. Or at least it was supposed to be. We bought the upgraded ticket as part of our San Diego Go Pass but when it was converted at the gate she didn't make it a park hopper. Luckily we explained things to guest services and they straightened it out for the water park and the aquarium. The water park was nice though there was an emphasis on play areas for younger kids and not as many water slides. I spent a bit of time in the wave pool and took a nice nap while the kids and Kerry went in the lazy river.

The one item that I definitely wanted to check out while I was here was all of the miniature cities and other Lego creations. I knew that there was going to be some good city scapes but there were also quite a few Star Wars scenes. My understanding is that they now have some pretty good software for designing these things and it includes layer by layer directions. You don't even have to be a master builder to do the build. Someone with CAD experience does the design and then hands the directions off to someone else to do the build.

After miniature land and some time getting gifts in the gift shop, we went to Heart Lake City which is a relatively new line of Lego. It was unfortunately quite disappointing. They are building a massive area for the Lego Ninja-go series with a new roller coaster of some kind but for Heart Lake City there was just a carousel, a horse in it's barn, a fountain and a stage. Lego still needs to do some work before they can say they're handling gender equality properly.

We finished our day at the Lego Aquarium which was similar to other areas of the park where it looked like they bought it from someone else and then added a few Lego characters. I didn't get the sense that they were building the exhibits from the ground up with Lego parts in mind. It was still a nice aquarium. Carter got to see some more sharks and Callie got to see some more rays.
LEGOLAND was a great place to go for a day but I think we saw everything we needed to and probably wouldn't go back. (Until the kids are 30 and want to buy that 3000 piece Millennium Falcon.)