Leg it to Legoland and bed down for the night
FEW things are more irritating first thing in the morning than padding round the house and stepping on a stray piece of Lego. At least, at this place, it’s everywhere except on the floor. Windsor’s Legoland theme park, one of Europe’s most popular, has been going for nearly 20 years and pulls in more than 2 million people each year.
But with 55 rides and much else going on, many people now elect to spread their trip over two days and stay at the ‘resort’ hotel, complete with exotic indoor pool complex. It’s one way of adding some overnight gloss to a Home Counties break.
And for those who cannot get enough toy Danish brickwork, you can now sleep with the stuff. This year, for the first time, the 155-room hotel includes a number of family rooms decorated like Lego Friends (the new girl-friendly toy range).
In practice, it means a premium room for up to two adults and three children surrounded by a great deal of very bright wall-mounted plastic. Imagine a Holiday Inn designed by six-year-olds. Among the advantages of stay- ing the night is that a chunk of the park opens to guests each morning 30 minutes before the world piles in.
Like any theme park, peak summer season means queues. One way of getting around them is to hire a thing called a Q-Bot which is effectively, a digital queue-barging gadget which costs between £15 and £75 a head per day depending on the level of access.
Some may recoil at the prospect of paying a hefty surcharge on top of a chunky entry price (just under £190 per day for a family of four — or just over £140 if booked a week in advance) but it does transform the day.
Another innovation this year is the noisy Lego Friends song-and- dance show on the waterfront next to the Lego Friends ‘Heartlake
City’. Even so, my three — aged eight, six and three — regard themselves as old pros and remain adamant that the best ride is still the submarines with the plastic sunken treasure and the (real) sharks.
By the end of a couple of days, though, you may end up wishing they’d gobble up a few of our Lego Friends.
TRAVEL FACTS
THEMED family rooms at the Legoland Hotel (0845 373 2640, legoland.co.uk), sleeping two adults and up to three children, start at £289 B&B. Includes park tickets for two days, plus early bird access to selected rides.