To bloody HATE Legoland

[InSpaceNooneCanHearYouScream]

Urghhh. Is it just me or do theme parks only exist to extort money out of us? The entry prices for Legoland today were £46 per adult and £41 per child.Plus £4 to park. Since when do you have to pay to park at a theme park??
Luckily I had a half price offer, but even so it still cost £71 for 3 of us. 3 of the rides were shut and there were 45 minute queues for all the bigger rides, most of which are not a patch on Chessington or Thorpe Park.
I paid £2.75 for an ice cream, which was about a third of the size of a Mr Whippy cone. The staff were visibly embarrassed handing over these extortionately priced mini ice-creams.
At the end of every ride there was the opportunity to purchase a dark grainy photo of yourself on the ride for 'only' £10. WTF?
At one of the numerous shops, I was going to buy my two older boys a tub of pick and mix sweets each. Until I saw that they cost £7.50 per tub! Even so people were falling over themselves to buy them. Not to mention the 'ponchos' on sale for the wetter rides- basically a bin bag for £3.50 each. And don't forget the 'family driers' if you get a bit wet- only £2 a pop! What a bargain.
I've always thought theme parks were not good value for money, but today's experience at Legoland really takes the biscuit. How the bloody hell do people afford to take their kids to them regularly?

Totally agree about the car park price. Really irritates me there's nowhere else you could be going not like it's a multi use car park!
I save up tokens from the sun then get more from eBay to add to the ones from the paper.
We got in for £23 for the 6 of us when we went last month.

Always take a picnic never buy anything in the shops & the kids know I won't so don't bother asking.

YANBU. I hate theme parks with a passion though.

Give me a nice walk in the woods or in the gardens of a national trust property any day

I went to legoland once with the inlaws (they paid) and found the whole experience pretty dire.

I loved legoland and thank god I posted on here before I went.

The picnic while watching the pirate show was the best tip. It is expensive but well worth it.

I'm sure you never used to pay to park, cheeky. I know in USA it is normal - $18.

Yes! I hate it as much as you op. We went there yesterday and I could have written your post. My DSD only got to go on 4 rides due to massive queues.

Had I paid full price, I'd have been fuming. As it was I was just very disappointed for her after she'd been waiting so long to go.

Will not be going again.

We went last week for 2 days and had a blast. Went as a huge group so discounted rates.

Took ponchos from Home Bargains, took drinks. Bought one ice cream. Didn't use driers. Refused to buy pictures or souvenirs.

DS was dressed as a pirate so he would get a free lunch in the pirate burger bar (an offer they have on this month).

Only thing that annoyed me was the free refill drinks bottles are half the size they were last year. I bought one on day 1 but on day 2 we took drinks in with us.

Oh you yaNbu!

My ds2 would give a limb for a visit to Legoland. We're hours and hours drive away, so it's not really a possibility, but I priced a visit up nevertheless just to see...
And !

I too wonder where people find the money.

I was very disappointed with Legoland.

Rides aren't upto much, the models are nothing like as good as they look on TV and the shop was crap. You would have thought the Lego shop would have interesting Lego kits!

Made the mistake of going for the Halloween fire works, it was insanely busy. I think a lot of season ticket holders came after lunch. We got one more ride all day.

The fireworks were OK except some idiot thought, "fireworks are scary, I know let's cover the bangs with really, really, really loud music" it was so loud DCs and me had our fingers in our ears.

I love it! It's brilliant for my daughters age and loads to do...

But I do have a merlin pass so get in and park for free and usually take sandwiches with us...

Since when do you have to pay to park at a theme park??

Here in America... Always. That's why people park far away or take the bus. But we have so many cars here that if we don't charge for parking, people won't carpool to save money, and then we'll have no spots.

We've always just packed lunch in a cooler and gone out to the car in the middle of the day and eaten at the outside picnic areas.

But.. this is also why we always go on the off season during the week day. I'm sure when DD is in school we'll take her out for a day to have fun. :)

ADHD just wait till teachers training.

I saved up very hard to ensure the DC went, and if took DS Dx letter had had gate passes from customer services.

Not quite on the same scale, but we went to a very popular forest adventure park in the Highlands on holiday last week.
It would have been £70 for us to get in, and when we arrived they were queuing to get into the car park, and the queue for getting in, after parking was well over an hour long.

We just drove straight back out again. I do not want to spend my precious holiday standing in queues!

Paying full whack and getting four rides out of it, owing to the sheer volume of people in there, is a total waste of time and money.

Ah but in the USA maybe you don't get fined for taking your children out of school....

Totally agree Pictish. I won't be bothering again.

I understand why you're sore about it. I'd be so pissed off too.

Last year I took the family to legoland. For three adults and three children with two cars and petrol it was mote than £180 to get through the gates. We spent most of our time waiting in queues. The water play area was at capacity so my kids didn't have a chance to use it. The duplo playground was so full that the children were climbing over each other. We took our own food but bought a few coffees and ices which were extortionate. The park was dirty and the toilets disgusting.

This year I have spent £133 paying for a week at a campsite. With petrol and food I don't think we'll end up spending more than the legoland day. The idea of letting merlin group have any more of my time or money makes me shudder.

And YES - the sheer audacity of them trying to extort yet more money out of customers at every turn, with a simple modest pleasure like an ice cream, becoming a complete piss take.
I get very sour about that sort of business.

YABU IMO.
We went last year for the 1st time and we all loved it!
We paid for qbots so no queuing. (Expensive but then it's the only time we've been in 8 yrs of parenthood so seemed worth it to make the most of the day)

Brought packed lunch and had tea in cafe once prices had gone down.

The Lego models were brilliant! Even my ds who had no interest in Lego was blown away by them.

I actually thought the shops quite good, bought a few little things I've never seen anywhere else and not too expensive.

But honestly, these places must cost a fortune to run and have to be run at a vast profit or the companies that own them wouldn't bother.. So just suck it up, or stay away!

cungry - we're campers too. I'm with you.

I'll stay away.
Glad to.

We had a lovely 2 days there with 2.5 and 5.5 yr olds a couple of weeks ago. We did mostly things you don't have to queue for (duplo valley, miniland etc) with a couple of big rides dotted in. We paid with Tesco tokens and camped at a nearby campsite so very little outlay.
Thank goodness for Tesco I say, or we wouldn't have had a holiday for a couple of years. Last year we used them to stay at a youth hostel for a week.

Yanbu, but theme parks (even Legoland), can be enjoyable if you go prepared.

So, never go in the school holidays if you can avoid it. Always pre book online or get vouchers 2 for 1. Always take a picnic. Start at the back of the park and work your way to the front. Always take swimming things incase there's a splash area. And leave an hour before it shuts to avoid exit queues.

I have the preschool pass for my 3 yr old. It's fab. £50 for annual pass. She plus one adult can go as many times as we like, but term time only, fine with me cos there's no queues then. No way would I go during school holidays. I do feel really sorry fir people who go to these parks during school holidays, have paid a fortune, and then spend all day queuing.

I am a big theme park fan and enjoy LEGOLAND. Each January I buy my family of four a Merlin Annual pass, this year it cost us £270 (which includes parking), which sounds a bargain compared with the prices I read people have paid just for one day out. I buy the odd discounted hot drink and ice cream but other than that spend very little.

We went years ago,came over from Dublin. Never again. So expensive. But you know I wouldn't mind that as much as the flipping queues!!

And the queues were so badly managed. Letting one person on a ride for 4 etc.etc. Awful stuff.

I think we did about 4 rides the whole day. No fun for smaller kids. Or anyone really.

Disney queues much better managed. Also found Legoland dirty.