Anyone who reads this blog regularly will know that over the past few weeks we’ve had more family days out than you would think possible! Our best day by far was last Saturday when we visited the Legoland Discovery Centre at the Trafford Centre in Manchester.
We were welcomed Professor Brick who taught us how you make Lego using his special machines (and with a bit of help from the kids) in his Lego factory which reminded me of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate factory without the chocolate ;-).
We had a quick walk though Miniland which looked fantastic although we didn’t really get to spend much time in this bit because the kids spied the Giant Lego pit as we were walking through it and no matter how beatifully made and realistic the Mini buildings looked, they were no comparison for a Giant pit filled with Lego. I did try to take a really arty photo of Miss Frugal being buried in the lego pit with only her face showing but I didn’t really take into account that Lego could be quite sharp, therefore rather painful to be laid on and buried under!
We spent the longest time in the Build and Test area building cars and racing them against everyone else. Actually, my only cristicism about the whole day was the short supply of wheel for the cars which meant that we had to wait for someone else to go and then dive on their car like vultures to strip it of it’s wheels…. Even this didn’t spoil it though – once we had our wheels we were away and had a great time building different types of cars and testing them on the various tracks. As usual, competetive dad syndrome meant that Mr Frugal had to have the best car and he spent ages designing a aerodynamic speed machine. He got that attached to it, I swear I saw tears in his eyes when he had to put it back (Only joking Mr Frugal, but you were attached to it).
My favourite bit was the wobbly Lego boards where you had to build a tower as high as you can and then press a button to make the base start wobbling, you then turned a knob to make it wobble more and your tower then collapses all over the floor.
The Master Lego builder taught us how to turn a pile of bricks into a cute little pelican – check out the boys in the picture, turning round to tell us how to do build ours as they were clearly the best Lego builders in the room (in their own minds lol)
There was a choice of two films showing alternately in the Lego Studios, Bob the Builder and another one that I can’t remember as we only went to see Bob the Builder. I’ve seen quite a few of the 3D films that have been released in the cinemas lately and to be honest, I’ve always thought that they weren’t much cop. After watching this film, I can now see exactly what all the hype about 3D was – it was brilliant and the 3D bits really were 3D. Even Mr Frugal came out and said that it was the best 3D show he had seen by far. At one point I even reached my hands out to try and touch it because it looked so real.
While we relaxed over a cuppa in the cafe, the kids played for a bit in the Fire Academy (a huge climbing frame/soft play/slide thingy) and tired themselves out completely – perfect for the drive home.
When we finally managed to talk them into leaving we discovered Lego Universe, which is a brilliant laser game where you have to break as many lasers as you can in a certain amount of time – I don’t think I’ve moved so fast in ages lol.
Look at their sad faces when we had to leave:
We stayed there for so long that we didn’t get the chance to look round the shop properly although we did manage to get our photos taken with the life size Lego Darth Vadar there. Next time we go (and there will def be a next time), we’ll spend a bit longer in the shop as we didn’t buy anything other than a Lego Star Wars keyring because Mr Frugal wanted to start the drive home…. Bah Humbug lol
If you do decide to go, I would say it would be worth pre booking tickets before you go as the queues outside looked quite long – not that we had to wait in them, the lovely people at Legoland who gave us our tickets whisked us under the barrier and to the front of the queue. The kids felt very important lol (me too actually!).
We had a brilliant day and I can’t recommend this place highly enough, the kids are dying to go back and if we lived a bit closer I would have bought the Annual Passes because it’s somewhere we would visit again and again. Thank you to the Legoland Discovery Centre for kindly giving us the opportunity to visit – we’ll be back!
