Legoland’s most costly attraction yet — an ‘undersea’ sub ride — opens
When Seaworld San Diego unveiled its now closed Submarine Quest attraction last year, passengers quickly discovered that the closest they were going to get to seeing sea life during the threeminute-long ride was a brief encounter with a digital version of a giant octopus in a darkened enclosure.
Not so for Legoland California, which is delivering an abundance of marine life — more than 1,000 sea animals, from stingrays to sharks — as it has debuted its version of a submarine ride that really does go underwater.
Standing in for an actual ocean is a 300,000-gallon aquarium populated with multiple species of sharks, rays and tropical fish, a feature that differentiates the park’s Lego City Deep Sea Adventure attraction from other theme park submarine rides, including the last incarnation of Disneyland’s longstanding Submarine Voyage, now dubbed Finding Nemo.
None incorporate real sea life.
Inspired by a similar ride at three other Legoland parks overseas, Deep Sea Adventure marks parent company Merlin Entertainments’ single largest investment in an attraction in any Legoland park, outside of Carlsbad’s Sea Life Aquarium. Park officials, however, will not disclose how much was spent on the ride.
The attraction is located in the northeast corridor of the park where its miniature golf had previously been situated.
While the Carlsbad park is no stranger to underwater life considering it also operates the Sea Life Aquarium, it is no small feat creating a massive concretewalled tank and the accompanying infrastructure needed to navigate 12-seat vehicles through the watery environment.
“This is a big deal because any other submarine ride is mostly simulated and there isn’t even water in them much less sea life,” said Larry Wyatt, owner of Pasadena, Calif.-based Wyatt Design Group, which does design work for theme parks and was involved in the original planning for Legoland California. “For a lot of these it’s animation or animatronics, so this is something no one has done, not even Disney.
“There is a lot of competition in Southern California, so every so often you have to do something really big to make a difference.”
The ride inevitably invites comparisons with Seaworld’s ill-fated Submarine Quest, a ride that ran on an elevated track and did not traverse water. It has been closed since early this year with little explanation for the closure. In a
May post on his website, Themeparkinsider.com, editor Robert Niles said of Legoland’s Deep Sea Adventure: “no matter how this turns out, it’s got to beat last summer’s Submarine Quest ride at Seaworld San Diego.”
Conceived four years ago, the attraction has a direct tie-in to Lego’s Deep Sea Adventure line of toys and complements its aquarium that opened eight years ago. It also builds on the popularity of similar attractions at the Windsor, Dubai and Japan parks.
“Sea Life Aquarium is an extremely popular attraction here and part of the formula that makes Legoland a successful resort,” said park president Peter Ronchetti. “So bringing that into the ride in a very controlled way opens up a whole new area of discovery for the children. It checks all the boxes for us, it’s something different for us, it’s in an exciting environment, and we’re bringing the ride and fish together in a whole new way.”
It’s also designed to appeal to Legoland’s demographic of young children who likely haven’t been exposed to submarines or even sharks, Ronchetti said.
“How many 10-year-olds have been on a submarine and looked out and seen a shark?” he said. “The industry benchmark in North America has been submarines with animation and mechanical fish. But this is real so we’ve broken new ground for North America.”
The ride’s story line is structured around a voyage in which the passengers are searching for sunken Lego artwork, swords and other treasures strategically located on the “ocean” bottom.
In keeping with the Legoland tradition of Lego model-building, the journey starts in the ride’s queue area where children are invited to construct sea creatures at a large table dominated by a 5-foot-tall shark crafted from more than 80,000 Lego bricks. As they move through the line, submarine passengers are treated to a bit of high-tech wizardry