Day at Legoland - top tips please?

[MaggieW]

We're visiting it for our first time for DS's birthday. Any top tips for a good visit gratefully received.

Take plenty of money.

Take picnic & drinks (cost a bomb there)

It is fab, what age is your ds?

get a Qbot thingy
it queues for you

SOmeone told me to ignore all you first see and leg it to the end as fast as possible, so you're doing the back rides while everyone else is distracted by Lego World near teh start, IYSWIM. So work your way through it all backwards - that way you avoid queues. The problem is there is no practical way you can herd children past all the good bits at the start and forbid them from looking at teh Lego Buckingham Palace etc in a quest to get to the end before anyone else - a good idea in theory though.

Only other tip is to get there as early as possible, 10-15 minutes before it opens.

Oh yes Hassled is right. At the far end of the park there are the roller coasters, pirate falls and the rotating splash boat thingy and other good rides. Then once that's out of your system then chill out with model village etc

On peak days do not approach via Junction 6 of the M4

don't go without a buy one get one free for adults
never pay full price for admissions
take your own food
take change of clothes and sawimming stuff cos you'll get wet

Hassled

You can avoid them, by taking the hill train.

It is near the lockers and behind the sweet shop.

If you can't get vouchers, google Legoland tickets and you will usually get some from Last Minute dot com.

Don't go on a weekend. If you do get a QBot.
Take a buggy even if your DC are too old - use it for lugging your picnic, coats etc around.
Before you go, get plastic ponchos from your local pound shop, for the water rides.

I found QBot utterly useless if you have younger kids as many of the rides suitable for the littlies aren't listed on QBot (although it did come in handy for the driving school) and those that are tend to have shortish queues anyway.

Also, you can only queue one ride in advance and you still have to find something to do while not in the line (i.e. you don't queue jump - if there's an hour long queue, then it sets the ride start for 1 hr time and you have to find something to do for that hour).

As there were four of us, QBot cost £40 - I don't think we got £40 worth of value out of it.

If you do get one (because you have older children who want to go on the high profile rides) then organise your route carefully, as the QBot is scanned for one ride (and you go through to sit down), quickly queue up the next ride you want to go on so some of your virtual queuing time can be used up on the current ride and the walk to the next one.

tesco clubcard do tickets for them, if you collect those. And as others said, get q-bot. And bring waterproofs if its not sunny. if it is sunny theres a water bit at the back for little ones so bring change of clothes or swim stuff.

We went last weekend and it is fab.
Sod the expense and get a qbot (but be prepared for glares and mutterings from others in the normal queue)
take lots and lots of food, especially drinks. £1.90 for a capri sun and £4.50 for a hot dog! .
take a waterproof poncho and towels and wear comfy shoes (I had to buy plasters for my feet for day 2)
If you have small children (under 8?) take swim suits as there is a splash area; dd absolutel loved this
there are various shows throughout the day so make a nolte of the times and venues and plan the day around them otherwise you end up running backwards and forwards between 'lands' constantly
have fun!

I'm completely opposite to RubberDuck. You MUST invest in a Qbot. We took ds (so 3 of us), and paid for a 2 person Qbot (DH and I alternated between which of us went on rides with him, well actually DH did more). That meant that we could do things between rides rather than just standing in queues listening to DS grumble (which he would have done).

If we hadn't have had the Qbot, I doubt we would have got on more than 4 rides, and wouldn't have had the opportunity to appreciate MiniLand to the full. DS loved that bit. I would have thought LegoLand very poor value indeed without a Qbot.

Oh meant to say, we took ds for the day of his 9th birthday. Tell them on the gate as you go in, they'll give your DC a birthday badge and might sing happy birthday on one or 2 of the rides.

DS was THRILLED, had a wonderful day and loved every minute, so did we.

Trouble is, I don't think I can beat it as a birthday treat. I think we may have to do it again next year.

is it still busy now at weekends?

It was unbelievably busy last weekend. We went on Saturday and Sunday and only got a QBot on the Sunday- Sat was a total washout as we couldn't face waiting in all the queues. We spent the QBot time wandering around Miniland or having a snack or planning where to go next.
I second the advice to decide what ride you're going on after the one on your QBot then as soon as you've gone through the gate programme the next ride. It made life sooo much easier!

oh .

It was still amazing though! It wasn't so busy you had to battle through the crowds but I wouldn't have gone back on the Sunday without the QBot. It depends on how old your dc are and what they like doing.

Yes, Saturdays are really busy. We went on a thursday and it was very empty to the point where there were some rides we could stay on.

I would say if you are going on a weekend, get there early for 10am and do the big rides first (jungle coaster, dragon and the wet rides)

Get a Qbot, but if you have any problems (and we had some with ride attendents that didn't know how to do it properly) then complain at the end of the day - we got a full refund