Our first visit to LEGOLAND Florida – July 2020
We are SO appreciative to LEGOLAND for hosting us during our trip and we had an EPIC night during our stay at LEGOLAND Pirate Island Hotel (you can read about that part of our visit here).
With the current health and safety measures in place it seems like all theme parks are having shortened hours and LEGOLAND Florida was no exception.
We didn’t mind the later opening time because it allowed us to eat breakfast without feeling rushed. We had no real plan or agenda (I know SO unlike me!). We’d had SUCH a full week leading up to the LEGOLAND portion of our stay that I just made the call to roll with it as it came and not overly stress or worry.
We visited at the end of July and at that time masks were only required while ON rides, INSIDE shops or dining, and during attractions.
We visited three theme parks during our trip and LEGOLAND was my favorite in their handling of the safety guidelines. If you’re outside and socially distanced it doesn’t make logical sense to me to have to wear a mask at all times. By requiring them in areas where social distancing wasn’t possible or indoors LEGOLAND was following the CDC guidelines as they were at that time without going overboard with them either.
We really respected that and the employees at the park were also great in implementing the guidelines without being rude or pushy about them either. It flowed so well and we didn’t see any guests have any issues with the mask rule either. I think people respect rules when they are logical.
I also already mentioned this but I LOVED the way LEGOLAND handled the communication aspect of their guidelines. They made it FUN. They were the only theme park we visited where they encouraged following the guidelines in cute, kid-friendly ways. I thought it was really awesome that they took the time and effort to make the guidelines fit their theme!
The theme park is just 130 steps away from LEGOLAND Pirate Island Resort so we left our cars parked and did the short walk over!
Temp checks and bag checks were a breeze and they also had masks on hand if anyone needed one.
Tess and Britt were super committed to the pirate theme of the trip so we rolled with it. Tess cracked us up with her commitment to the eye patch majority of the day. I mean wouldn’t that drive you crazy to be only able to see out of one eye?!?
Tess also was under the impression that this trip was still all about her birthday. I promise yall I meant what I said about cutting back on the birthday celebrations! But this trip being so epic didn’t help my cause in swearing I’m cutting back either 😉
Another HUGE thing I LOVED about LEGOLAND was the height checker. Right when we walked in we were ushered over to a giant wall that showed the height milestones and which rides a child of that height could ride. It is SO GENIUS especially for families like ours with lots of kids.
It’s great to know up front what rides or experiences younger/shorter ones can’t do so they don’t get excited over something they aren’t able to ride. And often the height checks AT the rides and attractions only add to that disappointment. Like if we know Spear can’t ride something it’s much better to keep in the stroller and distract him while the others go ride rather than take him out, have his height checked, and THEN say he can’t ride it.
As they did the height checks they put wrist bands on the kids so the ride attendants would know immediately if they’d be able to ride or not. Made the day flow SO smoothly and I don’t understand why other theme parks don’t have this sort of system in place!
I was SO PUMPED to see Chewbacca!!! Spear had been wanting to see him soooo bad and we weren’t able to find him while at Disney so to walk in the park and see him first thing was SO exciting!
As I mentioned, we didn’t have any real plan. LEGOLAND was also not handing out park maps so we had to download an app which I’m just not a tech kinda girl. I’m really anti-park apps while at the parks. I want to be IN the moment with my kids and not having to navigate my phone. Plus I want my phone for the CAMERA and don’t want it to get the battery drained by having to use apps all day.
So we referred to maps some but mostly just worked our way around and hit things as we saw them.
The two story carousel was super cool and all the LEGO theming throughout the park added an extra fun element to everything we did too! Seeing all the LEGO creations was half the fun!
We cooled off a bit in watching a 4D movie and it was adorable and really funny. I have heard the LEGO movies are really funny for adults to watch too but we’ve yet to see them! Guess we should probably add that to our list at some point for family movie nights.
LEGO is all about supporting local heroes and community helpers and we are all about that too!
The layout of the park was great too as there was a toddler section of rides PERFECT for Spear right near an area with more thrill-type rides.
LEGOLAND is recommended for kids under age 13 and I agree that this is probably ideal ages to visit. Kye appreciated all of the LEGO creations and was disappointed that a lot of the free play LEGO design areas weren’t open due to COVID. He enjoyed the rides, but the thrills aren’t quite as thrilling as some larger rollercoaster style theme parks. We knew that going in so it wasn’t a shocker to him and he is SUCH a good big brother and enjoys things from THAT perspective as well.
Truly though I was surprised by just how MUCH Kye did enjoy it for himself. I thought he might be too old or might be too-preteen to think it was cool, but he loved it and said all day how much he liked it and how fun it was and he especially felt INSPIRED to get home and get to building LEGO creations for himself.
Spear had a pretty amazing week and is at that age where he’s able to fully enjoy things a bit more and have a better understanding of things as well. Out of ALL the things we did all week…the Choo Choo ride with G-Mama was THE FAVORITE.
He still (almost 3 months later) talks about riding the Choo Choo with G-Mama 😉 Here I thought the TRACTOR would be the favorite thing since the kid is OBSESSED with them, but nope, the choo-choo won out 😉
I ADORE his happy smile! He LOVED every single second!
A really awesome ride is this boat thing where you free to roam the boat throughout the ride and can attack people with water guns. They DRENCHED me and I loved seeing Kye especially laughing so hard and smiling so much!
I did not ride a lot of the rides with the big kids as I was more focused on Spear and let them do their Daddy-time thing!
A BIG tip people sent me via dms was to buy the refillable cups at the entrance of the park. It was SUCH a fun purchase! We don’t do soda very often AND the refillable cups allow icee refills too! They have refill stations throughout the park and we had fun selecting the refill items and enjoyed the fun treat of sipping on drinks all day.
The kids ESPECIALLY loved it and felt “so grown” about it!
I felt like LEGOLAND had plenty to do for everyone. Plenty of stuff Spear could enjoy. Plenty of stuff the older kids found appealing. LEGO brings families together and that was the same sentiment I felt at the theme park, we were together and enjoying the park together!
Each area of the park has different themes and lots of LEGO creations on display. Having never visited before it’s hard for me to speak on the crowd levels…but we were pretty much alone a good bit of the day as we walked throughout the park.
Some of the lines were lengthy due to the cleaning process and the safety regulations in place but overall we walked on pretty much everything with little to no wait and could also ride things multiple times in a row in several cases.
A favorite of everyone’s was a shooting style ride and we rode that twice and even Spear loved shooting the little gun!
My favorite moment of the day though was when all four kids were able to ride a ride together – JUST the siblings, no parents! It was SO PRECIOUS to see all four of them together and to watch Kye protecting Spear. So, so sweet.
I love the video too (should auto play in this post) as Zach was NERVOUS and it’s so cute that he said “hold his hand Kye hold his hand!” Spear LOVED it and all the big kids loved experiencing it together. It filled my heart full as THIS is what life is all about for me!
The longest time period we had for waiting was for a flight style of ride as it ended up needing cleaning while Zach and the big kids were waiting for it. Spear was very easily entertained with all the fun LEGO designs and with such little crowds he was able to run and play freely without me having to be super concerned about him holding my hand or staying right beside me.
We were allowed to bring outside food into the park and we brought plenty of snacks. We knew the heavy breakfast would keep us full so we had tons of snacks and such to help get through the day. The water was CRUCIAL because, whew, it was super hot.
The part of the day that left the biggest impression on us all though was the LEGOLAND area. Seeing all the recreations of real life buildings, monuments, and even little cities was AWESOME. It got Kye’s mind working on things HE wants to create himself too!
It also left a large impression on Tess as she just recently (over 2 months later) said she wants a “LEGO city like we saw at LEGOLAND” from Santa for Christmas haha.
It truly is beyond awesome. So well detailed. So well done. So imaginative. So innovative. Truly a must-see! We walked through it during the hottest part of the day and were trying to rush to get to the water park but we all couldn’t help but stop and look at everything! It was so, so cool!
The “IT” ride I’ve always seen advertised is the one with Virtual Reality goggles on a roller coaster type attraction. It was a must-do on my list and I was bummed that it’s not currently the full experience (or at least it wasn’t at that time) due to the health and safety measures (which makes sense they didn’t want people wearing the goggles and sharing those germs). They all still enjoyed it, it just wasn’t AS cool as it could have been under normal circumstances.
Spear was really excited for a firetruck ride and it was one all the big kids and I did together while Zach and G-Mama got drink refills. Yall it was some WORK! We had to work levers to make the truck go and then work a water pump to get the water flowing to the hose. It was so fun and interactive and exhausting 😉
Britt’s favorite experience of the day was earning her drivers license at the driving school track. Kids each were able to drive a car and had total freedom of where to drive it (no track!). It was a great start to future driving in real life! She was very proud to earn her license. Kye was hilarious to watch as he kept shaking his head at how slow it was haha kid was ready to DRIVE.
Within LEGOLAND Florida is a water park that does require separate admission. Water park tickets were included with our package. We debated not messing with it because we didn’t really want to carry around bathing suit stuff all day but yall – it’s WORTH DOING.
With the modified park hours the water park at the time was only operating for like four hours total that day and by the time we made it to that portion of the park we had a little over two hours to explore.
There are super nice changing areas that made getting changed a breeze and it was SUCH a great cool-off to be able to hit the water at 2ish when we were ALL so hot and sweaty and just needing that refresher!
I LOVED their little kid area for Spear. They had a lot of swimmable areas which he was really wanting more of at the other water park we visited earlier in our stay. I thought the slides were great and it was a wonderful little kid spot.
We also enjoyed the lazy river and the tubes had spots to be able to build legos on as we went down the river. Kye was ALL ABOUT IT and it was neat to be able to connect our rafts too!
There is also a large kid play area as well as a large wave pool with lots of floating bricks to allow for more building and play.
They even have some bigger water slides for the thrill seekers! It was truly the perfect blend of water fun. Something for everyone in our group! We could have stayed longer but really were able to do it all in just a few hours and it was enough of a refresh to give us fresh energy to finish out our time in the park.
The wave pool was really fun as the kids all enjoyed playing on this little island set up and building towers and making their creations float in the water.
The younger kids are always pretty easy to please when it comes to fun activities but seeing Kye have SO much fun just was really so great and made me appreciate the experience so much. We’re at such a delicate age with him and he’s on that verge of being “too cool” for stuff so to see him cling to childhood and to have the opportunity to just have FUN and have that child-like joy was precious to see!
LEGO really does bring out the kid in everyone 🙂
My favorite part of the water park though was the Build-A-Boat area. Oh my word it was THE moment that Spear became a LEGO KID. He was ADORABLE watching the boats, building his boat, and racing his boat.
I could have stayed there all day watching him and it brought me even more joy when the other kids joined in and built boats too and all raced them together. SO FUN. Kye was ALL about it and this sort of thing is such a great family bonding experience. They all worked together to make the fastest boats and had fun being competitive and racing to see who’d win.
Spear never wanted to let go of his boat! They really should consider selling them because I promise you Mama or G-Mama would have bought that set in a HEART BEAT!
The kids could have stayed at the build-a-boat station for HOURS! To see SPEAR so engaged is such a rare sight haha!
Such a fun afternoon cooling off and making more memories together!
We hit up a refill station and Tess was very upset that the day was coming to an end. She rode a ride with Zach and the employee in charge of the ride literally GAVE her his name tag to help cheer her up.
She truly could not stop crying because she just loved LEGOLAND so much and didn’t want to leave and wanted to go back to the Pirate Island Hotel for the night. It was so sweet that she loved it so much!!!
We rode a couple of rides on our way to exit the park and we shut it down and then hit up the gift shop 😉 I ended up carrying Tess a lot of the way as she needed some Mama snuggles to cheer her up. I’m pretty sure she’s saving her chore earnings to be able to go back to LEGOLAND again! If yall ever need an idea of a gift for Tessie – that Pirate Hotel is her JAM!
I’m interested to see the long term effect of this trip on our family. Will the kids be more into LEGOS? Britt was all about finding the Harry Potter LEGO sets! G-Mama bought each kid one prize from the trip and Kye saved his until LEGOLAND day and decided to buy a creator set.
Kye has always been all about Star Wars vehicle sets and LEGO City buildings. He likes those two types of LEGOS and likes to build them by following the exact instructions and then LEAVES them built. He never takes them apart. In fact, we’re redoing his entire bedroom right now to be fully LEGO themed to allow space to store and display all of his creations!
I was proud to see him purchase a Creator Kit and to use his imagination more and design more of his own unique ideas.
Britt has never been super into LEGOS so I’m interested to see if the Harry Potter ones become something she asks for and enjoys building. Tess has always loved watching Kye build his sets and enjoys helping him so I can for sure see her getting into the LEGO life and especially it continuing to be a bonding experience with Kye.
Spear loves playing with DUPLOS and it IS something he and Kye really share together as he’s always asking Kye to build him a “tractor” 🙂 It’s so cute!
Part of our treasure hunt finds at the hotel included LEGO Minifigures and we were able to trade them inside the gift shop! My indecisive children took AGES to decide and the employee was great as he encouraged them to keep many of the ones they already had as he told them they are more rare ones! They traded one or two and had fun with that experience!
It was SUCH a fun day! Everything truly was AWESOME and we all loved LEGOLAND and especially loved the time together and the memories we created.
Thank you again to LEGOLAND for hosting us and we can’t wait to come back again soon!!!
A video should auto-play in this post of all of our fun!
We closed down the park and headed back to our vacation rental home. Since LEGOLAND is a bit North of our home, Mrs Charlotte went ahead and headed back to Valdosta. We all stopped by Ruby Tuesday’s which is located literally out of the parking lot of LEGOLAND.
We got lucky and it was Kids Night and we all enjoyed a great meal and a little more quality time together before parting ways! Spear killed that salad bar 😉
Our super-mega-epic long week came to an end (we headed home the next morning)! WHEW. It’s taken me FOREVER to blog it all but after so many months of doing NOTHING it was so great to be BUSY again and back to our love of TRAVEL!!!
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