Location: Legoland Discovery Centre Birmingham, King Edwards Road, Birmingham, B1 2AA
Opening Times: Weekdays 10am – 5pm, Weekends 10am – 7pm. School holidays (23rd July – 2nd September) 10am – 7pm.
Ticket Prices: £15 if prebooked online, £20 if you turn up and pay on the door. Vouchers for 40% off are already being distributed (my daughter had one in her school bag today). There’s also a joint ticket price where you can pay £25 for entry into Legoland and Sea Life Centre. So you could do both on one day, or pop back to the second venue within a three month period.
Under 3s are FREE.
Yesterday (5th July 2018), we at Smallhousebigtrips were lucky enough to have one of the earlier viewings of the new Legoland Discovery Centre. We booked to arrive for 4:30pm, so I could get Matilda from school and we all go together.
We stayed for two hours although easily could have stayed for another hour. I think for some people this is a place to spend 2-3 hours at. For others, you could make a day of it, especially the avid Lego Lovers who could sit and make skyscrapers or other huge constructions. For us, yesterday, we were having a look around and getting a feel for the place, trying out each section, ready to feed back to you guys. We will be back again next week to play some more.
When you first enter you are asked to sit on a bench to have some photos taken, we loved ours so much we purchased them (we got the two photos for £15 package). I will scan these at a later date and add them into this review for you to see.
You then take a lift into Legoland where you are greeted with Kingdom Quest.
Kingdom Quest
This was one of my favourite parts. You take a seat in a carriage with toy pistols. The aim is to save the princess who has been captured, by shooting at targets; spiders, skeletons, rocks, trolls and various other things. The person who shoots the most and has the best score, wins.
There are cameras taking photos during the ride. I hadn’t noticed them take my picture, I had the most serious concentration face on my photo. Ha. Needless to say, that photo wasn’t purchased.
Miniland
The next section is Miniland. Me and my husband really enjoyed this sext on. Over 1.5 million bricks have built some of the famous Birmingham and Midlands iconic buildings.
The best bit is that some of them are interactive, you can press buttons and turn knobs to make them make noises and move.
There’s a tunnel for children to crawl through to reach a dome to peep out of in the middle of a display.
You could control a concert, choosing what instrument was playing.
And the room changes from day to night, so you get to experience the buildings in both the light and the dark. I loved seeing the Mailbox lit up at night.
Make sure you have a good look around at all of the detail. There’s so much to see. Loads of fine details and there’s some minifigures hiding, make sure you look out for them.
When you leave the Miniland you enter the main Lego Section.
Greeted by a massive pit full of Lego.
And a room full of Lego.
Soft Play
Our next stop was the main soft play area. Adults aren’t allowed in this section but it is good to see it is manned by staff and parents can sit on benches outside the area to watch from a distance. Jemima and Matilda both enjoyed playing in here. Jemima only just hit the height requirement for going inside (3ft).
After both girls had played for a while, we took them over to Merlins Apprentice Ride.
Merlins Apprentice Ride
Merlins magical potion room sees you sit on a flying contraption, where you have to cycle as fast as you can to help Merlin conjure his magic. The faster you pedal, the higher you go.
We enjoyed the ride and it was nice to not have to queue for long (5 minutes). Again you have to be 3ft tall to ride on here, so Jemima was just tall enough.
When we got off the ride we were right next to Lego Duplo Farm.
Lego Duplo Farm
This section is perfect for little ones too small for the main soft play section.
A mini slide, lots of bright colours and huge rubber bricks (the size of house bricks) for little ones to play with.
Both girls enjoyed playing in this section.
Next stop was the coffee shop for a pit stop. We were thirsty and the girls were hungry.
Coffee Shop
The prices were the same as all Merlin attractions, above average, but they had some deals such as buy a hot drink and get a cake for £1 extra. Or a lego lunchbox for £3 when purchasing a kids meal (which we did). You can see the lunchbox in the above picture.
The shop takes card and usually has WiFi but when we were there the WiFi was down.
After having something to eat, it was time to enjoy the Lego City Builder section.
Lego City Builder
Hero’s of Lego City and Girlfriends of Heart Lake, the Lego City Builder section is perfect for all tastes. Both girls really enjoyed trying to build things. Jemima sat building things next to skyscrapers while Matilda went off to the Heart Lake section to meet all the girls made out of Lego. She was so happy with all of the creations.
Matilda had to pose with all of them. And I didn’t mind, it meant I got a chance to have a good look at the creations. So much time and effort and skill must have gone into these.
Next stop was the 4d cinema, I was really looking forward to this.
4d Cinema
The showing when we were there was Ninjago. A little lego man film.
The girls pretended the lego person outside the cinema was a real life ticket collector, so they handed him their Lego lunchboxes as payment (aren’t kids imaginations amazing!).
We waited about 5 minutes and then headed on in to get our 3d glasses on and take our seats.
My husband managed to get a picture of me and my girls which was lovely although not sure Matilda wanted to pose. Ha!
The show was great and the 4d effects were very clever. I won’t spoil it all for you, but it was good.
After the cinema it was time for us to head home. So we walked through the Lego Shop, looked at the amazing lego sets you can purchase and headed home.
A lovely late afternoon/early evening. I’m really looking forward to when the girls are a bit older so we can all sit down and build big buildings together.
I’m told it’s all sold out until July 9th,but I recommend booking tickets online for after the 9th and popping along to have a few hours of fun too.
Disclaimer: photos not watermarked or featuring my children are pictures sent to me via Legoland PR team.