Legoland Day 3 - Lego At Last!

Friday 9^thAugust

Tut n Come In

As we were approaching Windsor Castle a police guard strode right towards us and said, "Good morning, are you here to visit the castle?" 

I replied, "No, just looking for the Legoland bus. Does it leave from around here?"

"Just down there, opposite the church," he said, quite relieved as if glad he hadn't had to shoot us. I assumed someone important was in residence and visits from the public were a no-no.

Disappointingly the Legoland Bus was not made of Lego, but to all intents and purposes resembled a normal bus. It didn't even have Emitt or Wild Style on the sides. But I didn't care, I was just glad to get three seats together.

It's like Piccadilly Circus out there

Arrived at 10:15am. It wasn't too busy and we managed to get in quite easily after the security check and got our tickets scanned. 

While M & N went to the Little Shop, I took the opportunity to slip away almost immediately to find a cafe, but unfortunately I had neglected to bring a re-usable cup with me, and was faced with the choice of having a coffee and killing Mother Earth, or drinking my own water and saving £2.50. I drank my own water.

The first exhibit we found was the immersive Lego Star Wars one. Pretty impressive, I must say! Big ass Death Star and everything. Sadly not life size though. Am I asking too much? Am I expecting the impossible? I think perhaps I am.

This was a thing where your kid takes a metal pan-like sieve and goes up to one of four wooden water slides filled with sand and tiny bits of gold (pyrite - fool's gold (I asked)) and does their best to sieve through the sand to find the gold, take back and get weighed. If they find over a certain amount (zero probably) they get a medal (but not the gold). 

The Wallace Monument. No sign of Grommit.
(Am I asking too much?)

In fairness I have nothing negative to say about this. I thought it was one of the best attractions. No queuing time, completely free, keeps the kid busy and absorbed with a safe, physical, educational, fun activity, they weigh their gold and so get a sense of self-appraisal and achievement, and the medal they receive is actually metal, gold coloured, and has the Legoland logo on it to remember the whole visit by. The kid asks, “Why am I doing this?” and the parent has no choice but to launch into a semi factually accurate spiel about the gold rush in the American wild west and how there was once some found in Scottish rivers. Loved it.

Tried to get into water slide ride but too long a wait. Vowed to bring something for us to do while standing in line if ever at a theme park like this again. Some lego perhaps? Paying an extra £25 per person for a Q Bot seemed a little excessive and unfair. Surely if the queues are too long for the rides then their system isn't working. Interestingly the queues for the checkouts at the gift shops at the end were very speedily dealt with.

It was around this time that I failed to win my son a cuddly toy. This was far and away the worst moment of the whole weekend. Let me set the scene. 

There's a guy manning a stall with coin slots on the counter nearest the customer. Beyond the counter on the back wall is a huge array of awesome-looking soft toys just waiting to be won. Between you and the child-sized stuffed animals is the challenge – one of the impossible tasks assigned to Hercules or Sisyphus – a backboard set at an angle of about 25 degrees backwards from the vertical, and below the board, a basket. 

In order to win one of the prizes (and your child's happiness) you have to throw a plastic ball so it bounces off the board into the basket. Simple! Easy. The guy does it a few times himself to prove how possible it is. We pay £2 for one ball and N has a go, and doesn't get the ball in the basket. The angle of the board seems to bounce the ball up and out. I pay £5 for three balls and have three goes, my son rooting for me from the sidelines. I try to use backspin to make the ball spin down the board as in basketball, but fail every time. Then the rain comes on and starts to pour down like a melting glacier. Everyone runs for cover.

As should I have.

But just at that moment and to stop losing customers to the rain, the guys says, “Hey, 4 balls for £5, 4 for 5!” I think to myself, Okay, let's do this. 

So with my son watching from the cover of the nearby building, I try a variety of different tactics: back-spinning it, top-spinning it, throwing it really weakly, all the things I could think of. But it wasn't enough. Every time the ball bounced back with an extra spring in its step that took it over the damn basket. 

I thought, Right, forget it. It's a scam, time to walk away.

So I walk back to M & N and N is crying his eyes out. In the rain. Watching little kids after us winning the prizes and the guy loudly ringing the bell and congratulating them. My son saying, “Why? You did your best Dad! Why are they winning one but we didn't! It's not fair! We spent £12! £12 and didn't get anything!” And me trying to get him to stop crying by saying big kids shouldn't cry and making him feel worse. 

We could have been sitting on the green banks of a wide, beautiful loch not catching any fish for free instead of being in this man-made, saccharine-sweet commercialist emotional trauma park, watching tears stream down my kid's face in the rain, that I caused.

Later, once my son had calmed down, he said, “I will never forget that.” 

And then we turned a corner and stumbled on Miniland : tonnes of scale models of famous British landmarks made of Lego, and I thought, Ah, finally! This is more like it. Wallace Monument, Buckingham Palace, Tower Bridge, and you are so engrossed in these that you don't realise that just over there are even more famous landmarks from all over the world. 

This was the part I had been most expecting to find and looking forward to. Call me an old fuddy-duddy, but walking around these immaculately detailed lego models painstakingly built with loving attention, was a real joy. And the icing on the cake was the moving figures and vehicles with the accompanying music. You really felt like Gulliver stepping over Lilliput in this part of the park. 

One thing I noticed though was that the attendants of Legoland all looked pretty glum and unresponsive. They even ignored each other. No smiles, high fives or pre-practiced handshakes finishing with pointing at each other and saying, "You're awesome!" or "You are the special!" or "Honey, where are my paaaaaaaants?"

But perhaps that's asking a bit too much.

After the first full day at Legoland N had his huge new lego toy under his arm and a just as huge grin on his face and we got the bus back to Windsor. 

Seemed like he'd forgotten it already.