As I mentioned last time, we were planning a short, little vacation to Legoland for some homeschooling fun followed by a night in the iconic hotel that towers over the entrance to the park. I wasn’t really sure what to expect of the hotel because the price seemed a bit high for what I figured was a mid-level stay, although admittedly I’ve only paid for theme park hotels a couple of times in the recent years after we joined Disney Vacation Club around the time that the kids were born, so I don’t really have a good gauge of what pricing should be for this type of hotel anyways…
A quick look at Disney’s current moderate pricing falls pretty close to the $375 that we paid for the one night’s stay, which did get us out of paying $35 for parking at the park that day, so that was a nice surprise!
Anyways, on to the fun stuff because overall, we all had a really fun time at this hotel!!!
There are pits of bricks everywhere for the kids to play, including in the lobby when Mom & Dad are trying to check-in! Also nearby is a giant castle/pirate ship structure for them to play around, which we found also served as a stage for a little “character show” before bedtime that evening…
We also soon learned that the elevators play disco music, complete with the flashing lights and everything, as they’re moving, so there’s that!
Of course, the real treat was inside of the rooms because I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Lego structures weren’t limited to downstairs in the lobby, but our room itself had a number of them glued to the walls and even some larger, 1-foot creations on shelves and whatnot around the room. We chose to stay in an Adventure-themed room, which put all of the decor around themes like Egypt and Indiana Jones – kind of a neat touch because the kids just studied Egypt and the pyramids in school.
While we were getting settled and taking a load off after a fun, but tiring day in the park even with my electric scooter, the kids’ own explorations led them to find a scavenger hunt that had been left for them! Pretty simple, but they had to answer three questions – each of which gave them a number – which ended up being the combination to a lockbox in the room that held a Collectible Minifigure and a juice box for all three of them, so I thought it was cool to see that they made sure to account for the number of kids in the room and not just throwing a default number of prizes in the box when they cleaned!
I think the only negative point I can give the Legoland Hotel, unfortunately, is for the food because A) although we planned on dining at the buffet restaurant (Bricks) that night to give the kids some variety, apparently it was closed for low attendance, which isn’t really fair when there are only two places to eat to begin with, and B) the place we did eat (Skyline Lounge) was kind of lackluster, which is fine for kids who only eat chicken fingers anyways, but especially after a long day where I only got a generic burger for lunch, I enjoy being able to eat something a notch up for dinner and even grab a nice dessert to take back to the room for after the kids are in bed.
The menu at the Skyline was really just meh to me, like I had to stare at it for a while before I finally settled on some pasta special that was kind of like a bolognese with a couple of meats in it. It was fine, but nothing to get excited about, which frankly is important to me when I know I’ll be dropping over a hundred bucks on the meal … especially when even lunch had been surprisingly expensive compared to fast food outside of the park, too!
And sure, we haven’t spent a lot of time in theme parks lately, but these are kind of a big part of the reason why because they are getting rapidly more expensive so at least if we drop that kind of money, we want to feel like we’re getting our money’s worth!
- Park Tickets – We got a great deal because it was an educational day, so that was nice!
- Disability Scooter – My scooter literally cost me twice as much as I paid for my admission ticket, so that’s a big hit if you need one every day.
- Food – Both in and out of the park, expensive and forgettable.
- Hotel – Seemed a bit high, but incredibly enjoyable audience and I’ll budget for it to come back again!
As an additional frustrating side note, the gift shop in the hotel was incredibly small, which meant no bedtime snacks unless we raided the vending machines … and I did with Christopher and David’s help, although at $2.50 a pop and even more for drinks, I don’t even want to know how much I spent on vending machines that night! Admittedly, if there was a candy/dessert store nearby like we often frequented at Disney, the damages would’ve been equally high, so there’s that.
The next morning, we tried Bricks again for breakfast, which was advertised originally as a breakfast buffet but instead was served on platters family style. The service seemed kind of slow, knowing that we needed to checkout soon, and although the selection was decent, my wife’s tea was cold and came without a serving spoon, which was almost as annoying as the wobbly leg that we had to contend with on our table the entire meal.
It probably helped that breakfast was included and only cost us for the tip, but the kids devoured the french toast sticks and bacon, and I had a bit of everything that they left behind, so it definitely faired better than the night before. Would I have preferred something custom-made like a nice buttermilk pancake platter or my personal favorite, Egg’s Benedict? YES! They had an upcharge option for a few kinds of omelets, but by that point we really just wanted to eat and get on with our day.
Once we had cleaned up all of the sets that everyone had started building from the night before, we checked out and just let the kids play around the lobby castle for a while so that we could decompress. Two of them eventually found the little “theater” that was playing episodes of Lego Dreamzzz, so they enjoyed laying in the beanbags watched that for a while until we wandered outside to play mini-golf.
I can’t really fault Legoland for the mini-golf – their course was small, but fine, and had more Lego models spread throughout the course – but the kids were antsy and didn’t want to play a real game, so eventually we just let them play ahead and tried to enjoy a few holes to ourselves before cutting the game early.
Patience is not a virtue for elementary schoolers, so after a quick walk along their pretty nice boardwalk on the lake, we headed out and called it a trip.
It wasn’t a long vacation, but it got the family out of the house overnight which is something we’ve sorely been missing since I started dialysis last year. All of the kids already want to go back, both to try out the pirate hotel as well as the other themes in the main one, and I can’t disagree that it’s always a nice escape after a theme park day to not have to head right home afterwards when you can extend the magic a little longer, even if it did result in spending an incredible amount on Lego sets for the five of us!
Except for the food, I’d give it an 8 out of 10 overall, and we’ll definitely be back again. 😉
