Legoland tips and tricks

If your kids are as big of LEGO fans as mine are you're going to want to take them to Legoland! I have to admit at first I wasn't super excited to go, I didn't grow up as a big LEGO fan so it just wasn't something that interested me. But my kids have been begging to go for years and after we went to the LEGO Kids Fest the hubby and I got a glimpse of how fun it would be.  We even made our Tshirts with quotes from the LEGO Movie to wear at Legoland.  You can see all the shirts here.  Here's some tips and tricks for your trip-
We went to Legoland on a Wednesday. I'm not sure if this is the reason or not, but it was a pleasant change from the crowd at Disneyland.  There wasn't much if any of a wait on the rides.  The park itself is a good size, but not so big that your feet hurt just looking at the map.  If I had to scale it I'd say it's about 1/3 the size of Disneyland. (not including CA Adventure)

Tickets:
Before you purchase your tickets be sure to search around for coupons.  There are buy an adult get a child ticket free coupons everywhere!  We got a bunch of them from the packages of LEGO's my kids got at the LEGO Kids Fest so we cut out all the coupons and took them with us- then handed them out at the park to people we saw with kids that could use them.  It felt so good to help people save some money! We figured that day we saved different people over $700.  And it wasn't any big deal to take the extra coupons we had and pass them out. :) Our pay it forward act for the day! (I really want to find more ways to do things like that because it felt so good to help others)

If you still need to purchase tickets after the coupons you will want to get them online at www.legoland.com - they will be cheaper and sometimes they'll post specials.  When we visited it was buy one day get the second free.

Figurine Swap:
ok before you do anything at the park you're going to want to get some figurines.  We found out all the tips and tricks to this swap a hour or so into our visit and wish we had known from the start.  Here's how it works- you purchase a LEGO figurine and at any time or place at the park if you see one of the employees with a figurine on their name tag that you like better you ask them to trade! You can trade as many times as you like to get exactly what you want.  It was so much fun! We purchased one for each of our kids to trade throughout the day and they had a blast with it!

So here's the tips and tricks one of the employee's gave us-
To buy the figurine you have 2 options: you can purchase a mystery pack for $3.99 that will come with a figurine and it's accessories (these aren't licensed figurines like Star Wars or anything but just generic ones)  OR you can build your own by the front of the park and the cost of those are 3 for $10.  So basically you can save some money if you build your own then trade them.
The second secret tip is- when you trade you don't have to trade any of the accessories!!  The employee told us we could keep any accessories such as a hat, stick, helmet, etc. that comes with the figurine and trade just the basic figurine.  Doing this you will accumulate some extra accessories by the end of the day that your kids can take home and enjoy playing with!

Also, every store will have a "trading box" with figurines in a little window like display where you can see if you want to trade for any of the ones they have.

We ended up with some really cool figurines including: a silver C3PO, a LEGO Chima Character, a Pizza Delivery guy, and a wizard.
Even though the mystery packs don't come with licensed figurines some of the employees may have them to trade!

Rides:
One of the main things we loved about Legoland is that our 3 year old who is about 37" tall could ride almost every ride at the park!  That was a happy difference for her after being left out of so many rides at the other parks.

One of my kids' favorites was the driving school.  There's 2 tracks/driving areas, one for ages 3-5 and the other for ages 6-13.  The kids get to drive little cars around while they practice safe driving by stopping at stop signs etc.  Then as they leave they get a souvenir drivers license that says they've passed driving school.  This ride probably had the longest ride of the park but was still only about 10 minutes or so.

My 3 year old LOVED this little airplane ride!

Although rides aren't the main attraction at Legoland there was a perfect blend of rides, shows, and things to do.

Shows:
There were some shows you could go to as well.  We went to this fire training day one where some silly firemen did really cool stunts and gymnastic routines while getting the front rows wet and keeping the kids laughing at their silliness while also teaching fire safety.

Games:
Throughout the park there are lots of carnival like games to spend your money on.  Sadly just like any carnival game you're probably going to lose more money than you will win anything :(  We got suckered out of $30 trying to win a huge unicorn from Despicable Me for our little girl and still didn't win it haha.  In hindsight we probably could have bought it for that price.  But I did see some people winning things here and there so maybe they just have better skills at the carnival games.

Miniland:
Miniland was pretty cool! It had all sorts of LEGO statues and displays to look at.  It doesn't sound really interesting reading about it, but once we were there it was really cool.  They even had some stuff set up in water, and parts that moved and did things.  I told my hubby now I want lego statues in our back yard for fun.

LEGO Movie:
They have a room where you can see all the set up from filming the live time of the LEGO movie (in the basement) It's really cool to see everything all set up- you get to actually walk around  on the movie set!

Character Meet & Greets:
At scheduled times you can meet some famous LEGO characters.  We were able to see Emmet from the LEGO Movie.  My son Brady made sure to hold his hand- coincidently his shirt had the "Lets hold hands" quote from the movie.

Food:
Sadly the food wasn't very impressive at the park, and it's just as costly as you would expect theme park food to be.  Legoland didn't do a stroller/bag check like other theme parks did so if we go again I will be sure to pack a lunch for us all.

Parking:
For $10 extra you can get Premium parking that's a little bit closer.  Since this was day 3 of theme park walking with kids I was all to happy to pay the extra.  By the end of the day walking back to the car was nice to have it a little closer- but it really wasn't that much closer for the $10.  Like the difference between row 3 or row 5.  So we probably wont do the extra parking expense next time.

Purchasing LEGO's:
We learned that if any box is damaged they have to take off 15% of the price.  Some stores have a cart with a few damaged things that are discounted.  Other than that the prices are pretty comparable to other places but the selection might be a bit more versatile.

Legoland Water Parks & Sea Life Aquarium:
Legoland also offers what looks like a fun couple of water parks and a sea life aquarium.  Since we were only there for one day we didn't have time to do any of these attractions, but they did look fun!

Park Hours:
This is the official information from the legoland site-

LEGOLAND California

• 10am - 7pm ● Turnstiles open at 9:00am ● Select attractions open at 9:30am

LEGOLAND Water Parks

• 10am - 6pm

SEA LIFE Aquarium

• 9am - 7pm

Thanks to Legoland for providing some of our tickets so we could do this review!