Legoland Windsor Review

Both hands up, we love Lego, all ages play with it in our house, and the idea of heading to an entire theme park dedicated to Lego had us all excited. Legoland Windsor is located in a scenic location in, yes, Windsor. There are a couple of hotels nearby, but we had based ourselves in London City Centre so we used the rail network to get there instead. This was a bit of a kerfuffle as it involved taking a tube from our hotel, 2 trains and a shuttle bus. It took about 90 minutes excluding the tube journey on a rainy Summer’s day.

Did you know that Legoland has a water park area? Nope? Me either until I arrived! The kids loved ‘Drench Towers’/’Splash Safari’ and we hung around there for quite some time. If you intend to visit make sure to bring swimming gear, towels, and suitable footwear. There’s a grand observation area for parents to sit and picnic/mind smallies while the older kids splash away as well. The changing areas are spacious and clean.  There is a shop on site to buy swimming gear and towels for all ages (the adults can use the water park area as well), but it is expensive!

We are well used to rain. I always say there’s no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes. However, straight away we realised that visiting Legoland in the rain is not the best experience. For a theme park in England, I was very surprised at the lack of shelter for guests and the number of rides that had to be declared off-limits during the rain. To be fair to Legoland Windsor, guests who wanted to enter again the following day were offered discounted tickets for STG£5 each, but this isn’t always ideal if you’ve only allocated 1 day to visit.

Despite the weather it was a busy day in the park, as we arrived we realised that the kids wouldn’t get a chance to enjoy many rides without extensive queuing. Look sure queuing is grand providing it’s under 30 mins, but the queue times were longer than that within 30 minutes of the park opening. We invested in a Q-Bot for 3 of us costing STG£20 each and while this bumped us up the queues for some rides, others were closed and we don’t feel we got our money’s worth. Using the Q-Bot we managed to reserve Coastguard HQ which we all enjoyed!We also got a space for the 7-year-old at the Lego City Driving School which he thought was fantastic. All kids get a ‘driving licence’ to take home after that ride; he thought he was the bees knees.

At which stage we were starting flag so we nipped into the 4-D theatre for a movie which the boys loved. Word to the wise, if you sit in the centre area you’re going to get wet!

Finally,we visited the Lego StarWars exhibition which was brilliant, before making our way home.

To give you an idea of cost, booking 2 weeks in advance from Legoland UK online for 2 adults, 2 children will cost STG£164 which is the equivalent of a 26% discount. There are 2-for-1 tickets at the moment on Cadbury share bags, but you will have to buy your ticket at the gate on the day. Tickets at the gate cost STG£50.40 per adult, and STG £46.20 per child and the Q-Bot queue skipping pass costs start at STG£20 per person. For a family of 2 adults, 2 children the cheapest you can expect to get your tickets for is STG£96.20 for the day.

I really wanted to love Legoland Windsor, our family is mad about Lego, and it promised to be a great day. However, I think the cost of the tickets paired with the Q-Bot really made it an expensive day trip and I don’t think our experience is all that unique. I had bought our tickets in advance online on a half-price deal and I’m glad I had because if I’d paid full price I’d have been very upset. The kids thought it was fantastic but that was down to my husband and I making the effort to move them through the park and ignoring the big waits for rides, despite purchasing the Q-bot. If they were older I think it would have been far more disappointing for them as they would have understood that we strategically moved through the park and bypassed the popular rides.

Disclosure:

We were paying guests at Legoland Windsor and this review not been sponsored or requested by the theme park. If you want to know more about my disclosure policy please click here.