The LEGOLAND 2013 Thread Top tips and recommendations

[NoRoomForMeInMyBed]

To update from last years great threadlink to the 2012 thread

The park reopens today!!! I cant go until in a few weeks time , so if you have been, please update with this years new attractions and fun!! (Overexcited mummy here....)

Pumpkinsquid - that is hilarious!

Ok second attempt at the TRAFFIC LEAVING LEGOLAND POST!:)

The signs tell you but nobody follows it....
WHEN YOU LEAVE THE PARK, AT THE BOTTOM OF THE ROAD DO NOT TURN LEFT TO JOIN THE NON MOVING QUEUE TOWARDS WINDSOR. IT WILL TAKE YOU 60mins+ to reach the M4. If its not moving, dont join it.

So GO RIGHT and you will reach the M25 or M4 within 20 minutes ( disclaimer for traffic but there are rarely queues this way)

For Both motorways:
Turn right our of legoland at the bottom of the hill.
Next roundabout go straight towards Ascot
Next roundabout go left back towards windsor
This stunning road will take you through the great park with lovely views.
When you hit windsor you come to a large roundabout, take the last turn towards Old Windsor. (Lovely viws of the castle)
Next roundabout ;
For M25 take the last exit towards Staines. Keep going straight following the thames passing the Magna Carta monument and runnymeade and you hit the M25 there and then.
For the M4 fo left towards Datchet, and there are signs for the m4 from there. This is a very pretty road too, and you will join the M4 at jct 5.

So you have been told;)

Please help me to plan a trip to Legoland!

We are still trying to book a holiday abroad and I am having a nightmare! We have managed to find a cheap 8 night stay in France (that I still need to get booked) but I need to try to book a trip away as well. This is all becoming very stressful!

A friend went to Legoland recently and stayed in the Crowne plaza heathrow hotel and was impressed. I have looked, but there doesn't seem to be any availability for middle of August.

So, we are a family of 5 (children aged 2, 6, 9) travelling from the Midlands.

We would like to use our tesco points to pay for entry to Lego Land (does anyone know how many we would need for this?).

We would like to go around 11th August or 24th August and stay in a hotel (preferably with a pool).

I would also like recommendations for other things we should do while visiting the area?

Thanks in advance!

Gampy, dont despair!:)

Look at the travellodge windsor, or holiday inn windsor on Alma road, windsor is lovely anf a visit to the castle is great for kids, dollshouses and suits of armour everywhere!:)
There is a post on the first page of this thread with hotel tips, the premier inn heathrow in bath road seems to be popular, the windsor slough marriott has a pool and is child friendly, and the copthorne slough has a pool too. The best choice is the legoland hotel but you might be a bit late booking.

Tesco vouchers, £8.50 per person over age 3. Well worth it.

Other things to do here:
Windsor castle
Coral reef adventure pools bracknell
The look out and go ape bracknell
Kids in action soft play in Winnersh ( superb for 0-5 yr olds)
Odds Farm park for the scariest slides you have ever seen...
Windsor leisure centre swimming pools
Windsor has all the restaurants and eateries and is very pretty for a stroll. If I had to choose I would book the windsor travellodge, its right on the pedestrian walk in the town centre with easy access to LL. Have fun!

I am planning to go on 4th or 5th Sept. How many of the schools are still off then? Would we be likely to need Qbots then?
This is a fab thread. Lots of notes taken. Thank you

Loving this thread!

We are travelling down on Monday 26th August and staying nearer Slough for 4 nights. Tuesday is LL (free tickets from Sun Newspaper) then the third tickets from Tesco CC. DS is nearly 8. Will be taking tips about starting at the bottom.

Them Wed/Thurs/Fri travelling into London daily x

Really useful thread, thanks. We are planning on going either late August of early Sept (depending on when DH' s bad back gets better!), thinking about Q Bots - are they worth it for an under- 3-but-over-90 cm? Will she be able to go on many of the big/busy rides?

Lorelei, legoland is all about height, as long as the child is over 90 cm there are lots of rides she can do including most big ones. Please study the ll map to see the ones that have a taller restriction.
Qbot, YES YES YES, IT TAKES ALL THE STRESS OUT OF YOUR DAY!!!

This is a great thread! Thank you! I have three questions which I don't think are answered here:

We are considering going with DDs who are 2yrs and 5yrs - presume you need a Qbot even for the 5 year old (as well as the adult who will be accompanying her)? I am assuming that it's pretty pointless to buy a Qbot for the 2 year old because she will be too small for the rides you need a Qbot for? She is only 26 months and definitely under 90cm.

Is there any advantage to pre-booking a Qbot online? We would be buying tickets on the door, not online, as we have the KitKat 50% off offer which is only valid for non-online tickets. Or is it perfectly easy to get a Qbot once at the park? (Or do you have to queue up to buy one?!)

With small children who will only want to go on the most basic rides (eg the 5 yr old would want to do the Driving School), is there even enough to entertain us all even if you don't queue up for rides? And therefore we wouldn't need to spend ££ on the Qbot? Eg watch the pirate show, look at the Lego House of Commons etc etc?

And finally, if we did get a Qbot, are there any rides at all which have queues but are suitable for the 2 year old? And if there are, can you do the parent swap thing with a family of 4, even if you only have 2 Qbots?

Thank you, O experienced ones!

Widgeon, the qbots work on number of riders not age. So depending how many people are riding and if you want to ride as a family you can choose how many qbots to buy.
If you are Mum Dad and 2 y old and 5 y old, you can all go on quite a few rides, the worst queues are
Boating school, atlantis, and orient express,also balloon school, lazer riders ( not sure if you can qbot this ride this year but you can take little ones on it) fairy tale brook, carousel and swings at pharaoes square. So if these are rides you all want to do you need 4 qbots. If you want to take turns you can get away with just 2 q bots but you will need to queue twice (60 mins on boating school) so its doable but you will be wasting time.
Saying that you can easily entertain a 2 year old whilst the 5 year old rides rides but then you will have to split up all the time so it depends on what you want. Theres a list further down this thread with toddler things to do at LL. Have fun!

Just been told that under3s dont need qbots so that means you only need 3,:) double check on website though so be sure!:)

I have read most of this but still a bit confused as to whether Qbots are definitely necessary. I am taking dd and friend on Sunday, will there be enough to do without Qbots or would that be mad. They make a big cost even huger and I have explained to my dd that there will be a lot of queuing but don't want to spend the whole day and only go on 2 rides! Are there enough to go on that don't have mega mega queues if we avoid the worst ones or is qbot the only way to go?! Thank you.

Onoroff, it can be done without a qbot, but you wont get to do as many rides as you will simply not have the time. If you want to maximize your time them
ARRIVE EARLY, 9.00 for 10.00, time to park, get in, get coffee, get map and join the masses by being in the front of the gates to go down the hill.

LEAVE LATE, as someone on the surviving legonand thread posted; after 5 people start to leave and you can get quite a few rides in until 7 and still have dinner. Queues leaving the carpark quieten down too.

STOP AND BREATHE in the middle!:) plan, plan, plan!!!!

Agewise, check what the kids want to do. Download and print the map online. If the kids want rollercoasters, queue on the hill down towards viking river splash at opening times and leg it to knights kingdom to do the rollercoasters first. If you have younger kids queue to the left by the hill train and leg it to boating school and atlantis first.

If all fails these things rarely have long queues;
Fairy tale brook
4d cinema
Little blue train in duplo valley
Knights quest
Scarab bouncers
Small viking ship
Etc etc..

Thank you so much pumpkin. That is so helpful.

I reckon that the drinks cups with free refills all day must work out as a decent deal if you are not bringing your own food in. We spent a fortune on water and fizzy drinks during the day as it was boiling.

By careful QBotting , we got onto seven rides in very quick succession early on, which made us feel like we'd done loads - we went Atlantis, Dino Safari, Balloon School, Fire Academy, AeroNomad, Desert Chase and Swing chairs, with the longest wait being 10 minutes. After that the kids were happy to slow down.

And another vote for the alternative routes - way easier than the queues!

very useful thread and thank you for all the advice.

We are planning a trip to LL last weekend of Aug (are we mad?) We are probably staying at heathrow Crowne Plaza as there is a pool, which will be nice for the end of the day. Will it be easy to get to LL from there?

We have 3dcs (2, 6, 9) and pland to pay for entry for 4 with tesco points.Do you recommend we get qbots for 4? How much will they cost us?

Thanks again

What are the alternative routes?

QBot cost us £120 for four - that was the mid range.

Alternative route is signposted as you get into Windsor - takes you through Windsor Great Park. Definitely longer but quicker. When you leave, turn right not left to do the same.

We just went yesterday after having scoured this thread for great tips - thanks to everyone who has posted.

It was crowded, but not as unbearable as I had feared. Using the Qbots meant that we didn't have to stand in queues for hours. And there were loads of things we did without Qbots or queuing (eg pirate training, the pirate show, the puppet show, miniland, a lovely, practically empty place, where you can choose lego models to make, the 4D cinema (ok, we did queue for 15 mins in order to guarantee we got in)).

We paid for the basic Qbots (£15 each) and they were absolutely fine - the only advantage of paying for the more expensive Qbots is that it reduces the queuing time even more. But since there is so much to do while you are waiting for your Qbot time, and you can easily organise yourself so that you book the next ride as soon as you get to the one you've just Qbotted, I really am not sure of the point of the more expensive ones. YoureAll - you might be able to say if they were any better?!

For us, it was about keeping the waiting time down. By the afternoon, even with a mid range QBot it was an hour's wait for some rides - presumably that would have been two on the basic model. The staff did say they had never seen queues like the day we were there, and some were very visibly stressed trying to manage QBot and ordinary queues, especially when some people in the queue were being arsey about the QBot queues.

I'm on my way now

We're staying in the hotel tonight so plan on swimming and playing in the hotel play area after checking in, then dinner in the bar (I've heard the food is nicer in there than in the restaurant). Then up early tomorrow, race to Atlantis and Boating School then start qbotting . Dinner in the park on the kids eat free after 3 deal then we're aiming to leave at 6ish and hopefully beat the masses out.

I am very very excited because dd1 has literally no idea where she's on her way to - as far as she's concerned we're camping in the New Forest tonight (which we're actually doing from Tuesday onwards )

wow, sounds like a brilliant treat! - have a great time! Have you been before?

Is LL definitely suitable for a 9yo? Need to be sure it's the best place to take our 3dc!

If we are a family of 5, with a 2 year old, will we need 4 qbots or would 3 be enough? How exactly do they work?

We went when dd1 was 2, the hotel wasn't open then though. We've just tucked them in, they're both shattered

Under 3s don't need Qbots of their own.

How was your day Amandine?

Super excited now as I have booked Crowne Plaza Hotel for end of aug - we got a great deal in the end with breakfast included.

Now just to sort the tesco vouchers and plan the day.

We are off on holiday before this, so have a lot to look forward to now!

We had a fantastic day thanks . My plans worked out perfectly. We'd done Atlantis, Boating School and Learner Drivers before the park had even opened to the general public . I don't think we'd have had such a good day without the QBots though - we managed to fit everything in that we wanted to do, and more. We spent time watching shows, playing or in the maze instead of queuing.

Enjoy to everyone still looking forward to their trips!