If you recall, three years ago during our first post-pandemic vacation, I messed up. We did the Jersey Shore, and the last leg was supposed to be Legoland. Well, between the weather--which included the remnants of a hurricane--along with some problems with a ticket deal I was trying to take advantage of and pandemic-era capacity restrictions, tickets sold out for both of the two days we could have gone. I felt terrible about it. We made the best of it and ended up at the New York State Fair instead, which barely compared but also was a good life experience to check off the list, but I always felt bad about Legoland. I had hoped that our sports travels or another trip would take us back that way, but it never happened and I worried that since Jacob and Carter were so much older, it might be pointless to go since a lot of the rides were pretty kid-focused. But then it came up again as we were discussing this trip, and this felt like the time to do it. I once again held off on tickets for a bit as the weekend evolved because I was watching the weather, but it turned out to look pretty good once we were into the weekend, so it felt good to get them booked Saturday night...finally!
Because they were only open from 10-6, I wanted to get a good jump on the day. As had been the theme of the vacation, this once again tried my patience. We got up early-ish compared to other days, but nothing went fast and we barely made it down to breakfast by the 9:30 close (I only got one cinnamon roll because they took them away by the time I wanted another!). Jacob didn't get enough to eat even with the better options that Holiday Inn Express has so we needed to make a stop on our way. Well, as we were packing up the van, Carter couldn't find his magic trick he got in Rehoboth Beach. We swore he left it in the van, but it was nowhere to be found (and neither was his golf ball, which we knew rolled way under his seat somehow). He thought maybe he had brought it in, but we definitely didn't see it when we did our usual last scan of the room before checking out. I went back to the desk and had to get a new key to go back in the room, and at first we still didn't see anything. Finally I looked near his bed, and way under at the very head of the bed, there it was! I have no idea how it got there--it was probably in the stuffed animal/blanket bag and flung out when he took out everything else--but at least we found it. And the golf ball was recovered from the depths of the floor while we were looking.
Then it was on to Starbucks, and I picked the one that was on the way, just off the highway, rather than the one that was in the general vicinity of the hotel but in the complete opposite direction of where we were going. When we got there there were signs up about closing early Saturday for a boil-water notice in the city of Goshen, and apparently it lasted all weekend and into Monday as Starbucks was still closed. Seriously?! What were the odds? For the record, I just looked it up and it lasted two days after that, too! We headed across the parking lot to a CVS where he could get some yogurt and other things, but it was yet another delay. In the end we didn't get to Legoland until 11, which made me crazier later once we got the lay of the land and realized how much we had to cover.
The entrance was very exciting with all the builds and photo ops before we were even through the gate, but I was annoyed because we were running so late, and then I was struggling to get the tickets up on my phone and organize my stuff, and it was already so hot which made me extra agitated. Then everyone tried to get me to wear a birthday button at the gate, but the button was weird and I was sure it was going to ruin my shirt (even though I think the weird press-on back was meant to avoid a damaging pin, but it seemed it could pinch fabric even worse) and I just didn't need that aggravation at that point, merely trying to get in and get started. And then as soon as we got in everyone wanted to go into the store. I didn't want to spend all day in the stores, even though I knew Jacob had some very specific wants in mind. The main store was pretty impressive, though.
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| Just a sample of the fun stuff outside the park |
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| So much detail on the entrance! |
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| The dinosaur was just inside, which I was trying to capture the best angle of while Carter went to the bathroom and the big boys beelined for the store in the background |
I probably could have taken a thousand pictures of all of the builds. Some of them were pretty incredible. This one was very tall!
This faucet was cool, but look at those trees!
Had to take a selfie with the brick girl!
And had to get Carter with the sleeping old guy.
We picked a direction to go in, and eventually found a ride. It's a lot like Music Express or the Himalaya rides at most parks but it was Lego! The line didn't look bad so Carter and I got in, but for some reason it took FOREVER. It don't know why loading took so long, or why all of the checks took forever, but it was at least twice as long as a typical park and that meant the line took way longer than expected. I think each cycle probably took a solid 10 minutes. Ridiculous. Craig and Jacob went shopping while we were waiting and still made it back in plenty of time to see us ride. This was our view from the ride. Pretty cool regardless.
But the ride wasn't really worth it, and after we were done I was more panicked than ever about our timing if every ride was going to be that slow. We made our way through Ninjago land...
...and down to the Castle section.
We all decided to ride the Dragon coaster because it wasn't much bigger than something like Slinky Dog Dash at Disney. The wait was shockingly short, and it was a pretty fun ride! Not long, but exciting!
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| Click to zoom in and get a closer view of the coaster. There's a dragon head on the front of the train. |
Carter and I decided to ride this one other very unique ride in this area since the line didn't look bad. It wasn't quite as slow as the other one, but I was willing to deal since it was something I had never done before but had wanted to try. There were a few towers, and each tower had four sets of double seats with a rope. You literally pulled yourself up to the top of the tower with the rope and then let yourself drop back down. It was pretty cool, but hard work! We both had a little rope burn by the time our couple minutes were done!
The park theming really was impressive. Everywhere you looked was Lego-ed, with buildings having cool details that looked just like Lego pieces (see the flags and torches on the castle above, for example), along with big and little builds along all the paths, like this sleeping guard with his turkey leg.
And the flowers and trees made me so happy to see life-sized!
We moved on to the City section of the park where Carter could do the fun "Driving School" ride. He's almost too old (13 and under, though not sure he would fit within a couple years), and it was so cute--a bunch of roads complete with stop lights and pedestrians all along the edges. It was like slow go-karts.
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| He got a bit hung up here, but I liked the guy in the foreground. |
Next we went to the movie theater where they had 4-D movies playing a few times an hour. It was cute, much like the Muppets one at Disney with the 3-D glasses and special effects. I liked the fake concession counter inside--check out the popcorn!
The movie itself was fun. Ours was a City-themed one with a criminal chase by police. There were blasts of air, splashes of water, and things that nipped at your ankles, all with 3-D effects from the screen. I wish we would have had time to watch another one! I took this picture outside the theater, and with the items in the foreground it turned out even better than I expected, like something out of Hollywood!
We wandered past the big new kid waterpark section, which is like the kid structure at most waterparks that has the big dumping bucket on top and lots of climbing and slides. You apparently needed a reservation for it but Carter didn't want to do it and we didn't have time for it anyway. But it looked fun!
We went into the Pirates section to check that out, which was the last themed world we hadn't seen. By that point we were looking for food as well, but pretty much struck out everywhere. We did see this fun build, though!
There was nothing in that section for Jacob, so we headed back to the pizza place in the City section. But that was jammed and was more sit-down, so we went back up to the Castle section where they had gluten-free burgers. But they were SO expensive, and ordering got a bit weird because it was all online and said to check with them for allergies first, which ultimately seemed unnecessary. Then the online ordering system got hung up on my credit card so we finally had to order in-person. Plus it was hot, which made it even harder to focus. It cost about $90 for our full, rather unimpressive lunch, which was annoying to no end. Oh, and did I mention the boil-water notice applied to Legoland, too, which meant we HAD to buy drinks instead of relying on drinking fountains?
By this point I was not having much fun at all. It was all cool to see but it seemed like a giant cash grab and it became apparent why they push two-day ticket packages with the crazy overpriced hotel package (like $800 for one night!), because their ops are so bad that you can't physically get through all the rides and experiences in one day simply because everything is so slow. Most lines, even for the simplest of kiddie rides, were in the 50 minute or higher range, and it wasn't even that busy because a lot of kids were in school. It was nuts.
As an interesting side note, a huge portion of the people there that day were orthodox Jews. There's a huge community not far from there, so I guess I wasn't surprised, but I couldn't get over how many there were. I could tell mostly because the women and girls were dressed in sleeves and long dresses (and often high socks) despite the heat. The men usually wore pants, and some had a yarmulke and the rope belts (tzitzit), and a few had the sideburn curls, but the women and girls were very easy to spot because of the weather. I'm aware of their customs because of an orthodox Jewish social media "celebrity" whose videos keep getting served up to me. She's very sweet and the people we saw looked very much like her and her daughters. But I felt pretty bad for them, honestly, because the little boys seemed to be able to wear whatever they wanted and the men could wear short sleeves, but all the females had to suffer with full coverage--pretty much no exposed skin aside from their hands, neck, and face. The married women even have to cover their natural hair, either with a wrap or wig. The thing is, I respect their religion and I think it can be really beautiful, especially during the holidays, and I admire their dedication to their faith. But I've questioned some of the bizarre rules they have to follow (Google mikvehs and orthodox food rules, for starters), and seeing the modesty rules play out in this way made me a little angry at the misogyny, if I'm being honest.
After lunch, we did manage to walk right on the Factory ride, which was a ride much like Rise of the Resistance, Ratatouille, or Runaway Railway, with the magnetic floor setup where the cars just glide smoothly across the trackless floor. This took the theme of being at the Lego factory seeing things created, then it shrinks you down to become a minifigure, then you're whisked into a bedroom, much like a Toy Story feel. It was super cute. This was in the line and it cracked me up that it looked like Indiana Jones.
As I said, almost every building was done so well. I love this dragon chef with his fork!
One thing that I was super excited to see was Miniland, where they have massive, amazing builds. We saw one in Atlanta when we were there 12 years ago, and it was my favorite part of the Legoland Discovery Center we went to. This one was unreal. Jacob was a little disappointed that the people in it were not minifigures, but rather people built with Lego bricks, and I suspect (based on Atlanta's having minifigs) that they would not hold up as well outside. I'm guessing their faces and any paint on the clothes would peel or wear off quicker, and maybe that plastic is less robust than typical bricks too. But this one had one amazing display after another. They pretty much did all of New York City, for starters.
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| Botanical garden |
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| Up close detail on what's supposed to be Yankee Stadium |
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| Just a tiny part of the skyline along with Times Square |
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| 9/11 memorial - I think there may be the capability for real water in the fountains, but it was off |
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| Their version of Citi Field, where the Mets play |
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| Coney Island--the swings spun and you could animate the hot dog eaters in the lower right |
They had all sorts of different cities and landscapes beyond New York. They had the historical part of Philadelphia, a lot of Washington DC, part of Chicago, a southern paddleboat, and a whole western set that included the desert, some roadside tourist trap oddities, mountain skiers, Mt. Rushmore, a ton of Las Vegas, and parts of San Francisco and Los Angeles. It was absolutely crazy. Here are my two favorites from Las Vegas:
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| Bellagio complete with fountains! |
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| Luxor! |
Miniland was super cool but we were still struggling with getting on rides. All the lines were so long. We headed down to the Pirate land to try to ride the one big ride the boys were waiting for, and were so disappointed to see it was temporarily closed. It was an interactive pirate battle, and since the boats were still moving through as they worked on it, Carter was having fun trying to shoot them with the water guns that spectators can shoot at the riders.
We were just sort of hanging close for a bit just in case it opened, and sure enough, finally a stroke of good luck--it did! We ended up on the first boat through! Good news, bad news, though, because it meant that we had no one to shoot at on the boat in front of us, and people didn't see it had reopened so there weren't many spectators to shoot us either. Essentially each boat has four guns on each side and you weave through a lagoon shooting at targets (not sure if we were just terrible, or they're broken, or they never did do anything), other boats, and spectators, while everyone is shooting back at you. Eventually the people behind us started to get us, so we got a bit wet.
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| Shooting the octopus |
Because the line was still reasonable and everyone had fun (and felt a bit cheated with the lack of shooters), we got back in line. This time we ended up getting hammered by spectators, and then just as we got to the end, the ride had a temporary delay of about five minutes, during which we were getting absolutely hammered by the other boats ahead of us. We got rather wet that time, but thankfully it was a hot day and we dried quickly enough. I was relieved when we finally started moving again. Sadly, the other water ride next door, one with a few spinning arms just above water where spectators could hit plungers to set off water bombs, was now down, so Carter and I couldn't ride it.
We'd seen a decent number of people carrying them, and they suckered us into a 2-for-1 deal when he missed his first three shots, but alas, the ball was so darn bouncy. No dice.
The Ninjago ride was another Disney-ish knockoff, this time like Toy Story Mania where you sat four across, wore 3-D glasses, and had to chop at the air to release discs (or something) to knock out the enemy ninjas. Somehow Carter had it down and beat us all pretty badly. I wasn't half bad in second place, but he absolutely rocked it. I grabbed this pic of Jacob as we were walking through the line.
Craig and Jacob decided to stay behind and ride again at that point--I think Craig was a little dehydrated and didn't want to walk more. Carter and I headed back to the front of the park to check out a few more things. On the way I took this panoramic of the bottom section of the park - City and Pirate lands. It was quite an impressive view from there.
I loved this little rainbow zebra in the grass. They actually sold one like this in the store.
Carter wanted a picture with the Fortnite llama.
He and I decided to ride the carousel, which was really cool because all of the elements were Lego builds. Carter of course wanted to ride in the spinning one!
I chose this cool motorcycle, but look at the cute Duplo ones behind it!
Time was getting short by this point, and the skies were getting a little sketchy. We tried to ride on the skyride that went from the top to bottom, but it was down when we got there. We decided to walk down through Miniland again and look for things we missed the first time. When we got down to the bottom we thought about hopping in that other water ride line, but I was finally dry and wasn't sure I wanted to get wet again just before leaving. We tried to hit the "up" version of the skyride this time, but it closed a full 10 minutes early. It could have been because of the approaching rain storm, but compared to most parks that allow you to ride as long as you were in line by closing time, that was yet one more thing that annoyed me. In the end there were probably a few more rides I would have liked to do, but at least we got most of the big ones that we could all do together. So, after getting shut out, we walked all the way back up to meet up with Craig and Jacob. I did notice this cool build overlooking the lower section on our way.
We did have to hit up the stores again for final souvenir decisions. We were tempted by a cool $100 Legoland-exclusive set of some Legoland amusement park rides, as well as a smaller set that recreated the pirate battle ride, but Carter settled for a cool double-decker Lego Store (not exclusive but also not available online from what we could tell) for a third of that price. Jacob was super disappointed by the lackluster pick-a-brick wall options. He was expecting the ultimate version of the Lego Store pick-your-own-bricks wall, and the only one they had wasn't great. He ended up picking a few small things in the big store instead.
And where there's rain and sun, there's usually a rainbow. For a while it was faint out my window, but later on it was vivid and bright out the back window.
After a patience-testing few days of vacation, I guess that was my sign of a job well done...or something like that.
The drive home proved to be a bit challenging. We had a bathroom and gas stop pretty early, and then spent the next couple hours en route to Binghamton finding food that would work for Jacob when we got there. But it was getting late and I was worried about any options being open by that time. I eventually settled on getting take-out Outback for Jacob (yay for a $5 reward knocking the cost down) and then we all went across the street and got Burger King. I drove the rest of the way after that, taking my preferred route home up Route 17 to 390 (which worked because it was closest to the area we had to go to to get to the restaurants). I still maintain that is a much more pleasant route than the endless stretches of Thruway with no exits. I was still pretty over it by the end, particularly when we got detoured less than 15 minutes from home. All of a sudden 390 was closed by the airport for some road work, and there wasn't an easy posted route back on so I did my best finding my way in the right direction until I could get back on the highway. It was so annoying, but I suppose pretty appropriate for a trip that tested my patience until the last moment! I think we got back home right around midnight, or just a bit after, but luckily the boys slept for the last hour or two. It made for a very tiring next day back at work, though!
So, all in all, it wasn't the best trip, but it also wasn't the worst. We wanted to make some family memories, and we did. We got a change of scenery and one last round of adventure for summer. We finally made right one of the errors of our vacation three years ago and experienced a new shore town. I think we learned some valuable lessons for future travels, as well. But it wasn't exactly relaxing or peaceful. And if you ask Jacob, it definitely wasn't Disney. He was already planning our next trip every time we had a moment of annoyance on this trip. But after all of the issues we've had this summer, it was actually, oddly, just the mental break I think I needed to start putting all of that behind me. Well...almost. There was still one other thing that was hanging over my head, and in it laid the potential for one more big adventure before school started. But only if the news was good. And so begins our next story, the official last one of summer...
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