Legoland Windsor is close to Heathrow airport and only an hour or so’s drive from central London. The Laulings adore theme parks, so I thought this would be a nice addition between doing London and then the required family visits. Having been thoroughly spoiled by Disney World and Universal Studios, I wasn’t quite sure how LegoLand was going to go down, especially LegoLand in the UK versus LegoLand in the US. We went in August 2018 and were pleasantly surprised.
Where to stay?
LegoLand has two on-site hotels; the regular hotel and the Castle hotel. We opted for the Castle Hotel, thinking it would be quieter and slightly more ‘up-market’ than the regular one, and that was the case. When you drive in to the park, the parking for the hotels is immediately on the right. This confused many people thinking it was regular parking, or perhaps they thought they could sneak through the hotel, but that’s not possible without a key card for the lift/elevator. If you’re staying at the LegoLand hotel, I believe you have to leave your luggage in the car until check-in time, while if you’re staying at the Castle hotel, you can take your luggage to the luggage check-in at the front of the LegoLand hotel. You then check-in at the LegoLand hotel but can’t collect your room key until 3 pm. The luggage is then taken over to the Castle hotel and is waiting for you in your room. To get to the Castle hotel, you have to go out the back of the LegoLand hotel and down a wooden pathway to get there. It’s not impossible to take your own luggage, but just a bit of a pain.
We stayed in a Knight room, and it was wonderfully themed. There is a little treasure hunt (note: the clues are on the round table in the window) that leads to unlocking a bag of goodies in the room safe. The boys adored it. The kid’s area has 2 bunk beds, lego building station and a Playstation. Even though the Laulings have a playstation at home, there was something extra special about being able to play from a bed. They still don’t stop talking about wanting to go back, just to be able to play the Playstation from bed! There are a selection of demo versions of lego games to play. The rooms have air conditioning (a rare find in the UK) and have one bathroom. It was very nicely appointed with some amazing dragon lego builds.
Kids area 
Adults area 
amazing Lego builds 
Bathroom
Park entry and fast-passes
We stayed for 2 nights with 2 park days. We got there around 10.30 the first day, so the park had been open for about half an hour, but was already very busy. I would not attempt this park without a Qbot during school holidays. The Qbot essentially holds your place in the queue and counts down the wait time until you can go to the ride. You can go anytime once the countdown is done (there’s no window) and you can’t book another ride until your Qbot has been scanned for that ride. You can do a regular Qbot which means you wait the time of the current queue or a faster Qbot that halves the time, or a super expensive ride immediately Qbot, that not even I was willing to splurge on. If you want to Qbot Ninjago or laser raiders, those are pay for add ons too! Qbots can be picked up from the gift store in the LegoLand hotel. I did mine on my phone rather than carrying the Qbot around, and the staff set you up. Be sure to have a portable phone charger to hand though.
We did the regular Qbot for day 1 and the express for day 2. The Dragon coaster, Ninjago and Laser raiders consistently had wait times of about 45-60 minutes, and the pirate shores a whopping 2 hours. I personally couldn’t imagine standing in-line with my kids for that amount of time at a park that’s open from 10-6. If you set aside an hour for lunch, that would mean you could only get through 5-6 rides by the time you’d walked from one to the other and actually completed the ride.
You need to book a time slot for the restaurants in the hotels for dinner and breakfast. There are instructions in your booking confirmation on how to do this and I’d advise doing it before your stay as they do book up. You can also book a swim time at the pool for an hour, instructions for that are also included in the booking pack.
Day 1
We headed to laser raiders first and waited about 40 minutes for that as I didn’t have a Qbot for that on day 1. There was a movie screening area in the middle of the queue that the kids could sit in and then meet their parents at the end, which was neat. The ride as it sounds is a laser shooting ride. While we were waiting for that I had the Qbot queuing for Ninjago and so we were able to go straight over to that next. The theming was wonderful but the ride is really tiring on your arms after a while, and the scenes just a bit too long versus the speed of toy story mania which is a similar concept at WDW.
We then headed for burgers near pirate falls and had the Qbot queue for the dragon while we ate. The burgers were freshly made and not bad. The line to order food was long, but moved fairly efficiently.
The Dragon coaster was by far the Lauling’s favorite ride. The combination of theming inside followed by a short but fun outside roller coaster was really different. Next up was Viking’s river splash. There was no way you were getting wet on this, and the boys found the fact that there are people driers everywhere and ponchos for sale hilarious. The sides of the round raft are just too high for water to ever get in. There are no seat belts though and it really jolts so make sure everyone holds on tight. The family we were in a raft with said that when they were on it earlier, a lady flew right across the raft. We did some of the smaller rides like the scarab bouncer and swings before another ride on the Dragon, and wrapping up our day at the submarine; really cool that there are real fish.
We booked a slot for the indoor pool at 5 pm. It’s very small, with only a small kid’s slide and splash area and a small regular pool. I wouldn’t recommend wasting valuable park time on it, but if you have kids that won’t be exhausted, perhaps do a 6.30 slot after park closing and then a later dinner at 8. You only get an hour in the pool.
We ended our day with dinner in the LegoLand hotel which was a buffet, but we were seated efficiently and everyone enjoyed their food. There was the usual kid favorites; chicken nuggets, mac n cheese, chips, but also curry, carvery meats, chicken and veggie dishes and an ice cream machine.
Day 2
The next morning, breakfast was included and served in the Castle’s restaurant. Our service was efficient, aside from them always running out of plates for the pastries. There were full English breakfast and pancake options that were served quickly and were not bad at all. The dragon sleeping on the fire place is a wonderful touch with a playground right outside allowing the kids to go and play while waiting for the food to come.
Those staying in the hotel could go in to the park at 9.30. The hotel spits you out right in to the park, where someone checks your tickets and you’re on your way. Only the rides in the Kingdom of the pharos are open first thing and the SQUID surfer. You can’t Qbot the squid surfer, so we headed to that first. There are 2 SQUID surfers and we got all the way to the front and then for some unknown reason they closed the ride. So we had to go and stand in the line for the other one and of course those that were at the back of our line were now at the front of the new line. That would never happen at Disney and this was one of many major differences in the customer service at LegoLand.
They were grossly understaffed overall. At many of the rides, such as the Vikings river splash and the Pirate falls the Qbot line joins the regular line close to the ride start point, but expect to wait at least 15 minutes once you’ve got to the join point. At both of those rides, the same person was often getting people off the ride and new people on the ride and just couldn’t keep up with the fact that the boats just keep moving. So several times, boats were let go with no one on them, or with just a couple of people. The other thing they did with the roller coaster was not have you queue all the way up to the ride, but hold you back until it was your time to go, but that meant you then had to be sorted in to where you were going to sit. As Disney, the cast members have you lined up in your ‘stall’ ready to jump on the ride the minute it gets in. So much more efficient. If they re-looked at how they got people on rides they could really change their throughput of guests. They even ran out of 3-D glasses at Ninjago!
After spending way too much time at the SQUID surfer, we headed over to Coastguard HQ. You can’t use the lower level QBOTs on that so we had to use the regular line. It was probably a 45 minute wait just after official park opening at 10 am. As we got to almost the front of the line, a lady in front of us fainted. My husband alerted one of the staff. About 10 minutes later a single female arrived with a wheelchair. The family clearly wanted to get on the ride and so the lady said she felt she was fine. The ‘medic’ didn’t check her pulse or her blood pressure, just said there was a first aid center she could come over to if she needed to lately. Personally, I didn’t feel very comforted by the way it was handled. The ride is basically an individual boat ride; different, but not super exciting.
We went to the pizza and pasta buffet for lunch. While getting seated took a while as you have to queue to pay up-front, the food was hot and constantly replenished and you could eat as much as you liked.
Having the half time QBOT for day 2 meant we could get through a reasonable number of rides. We did the 4D movie theater (surprisingly good fun and don’t worry about the water on the seats- you don’t get that wet), sky rider (nice view of the park from up there), fire academy (we were woeful at it, but good team building exercise), laser raiders, pirate falls (log flume which has a pretty impressive main big drop but was looking a bit sorry for itself on the back end due to canons that I’m assuming shot water at some point, but no longer do), Vikings river splash and submarine again, Dragon and Dragon’s apprentice junior coaster two times and spent some time in mini-land where models of buildings around the world are, and the castaway camp play area. The Dragon broke right at the end of the day just as were about to ride for a last time, which was a disappointing end to the day. They were giving a fast pass for another ride, but as it was almost 6 pm, it would have been a real hussle to get to anything else, so we just headed back to the hotel.
The Laulings weren’t interested in doing the driving school, but it looked like fun and is a popular inclusion for most kids.
We had dinner at the Castle hotel on our second night. We were seated efficiently, but ordering and getting the bill paid took a bit of time. Bizarrely the dragon is ‘turned off’ at 9 pm, even though there were still several people finishing their meals.
Check-out day
Breakfast on our day of leaving was not as positive an experience as day 1. We had to ask twice to give our order in (our server came over to give us menus and then I saw them leave the restaurant and they didn’t come back for ages, so we ended up ordering with someone else) and then we had to ask for our order to be checked on after people that ordered after us got their food first. There was also the same issue with no plates for the pastries as we had the previous day. That said, a character dragon came around to take pictures that morning with each table, which I didn’t know about, and made the kid’s day.
You were supposed to have been able to request for your luggage to be picked up in the morning to be taken over to the Legoland hotel, but despite filling in the request form, that never happened. It wasn’t a huge deal for us to take the bags over, but may have been a struggle for those dealing with strollers.
All in all, I was actually pleasantly surprised by Legoland. I didn’t have very high expectations, but many of the rides were well done, food options were better than other reviews led me to expect, and the hotel rooms were wonderful. My kids still ask when we’re going back to Legoland 6 months later. The biggest pro is it’s not cheap, especially with 4 QBOTs and the number of rides you could cover without it would be limited.
The ‘potty’ chair was a huge hit 
Sword in the stone 