Family In London, UK - Part 2

Note:  This is the second blog post of our family trip to London.  If you wish to see the previous post, just click here.

Dear Friends:

After a couple of fun days in central London, we decided to head a bit further out, to Windsor.  This is the location of the Queen's main residence.  More importantly, this is the location of Legoland.  This is the first Legoland that was built outside of Sweden.  Since everyone in our family is a fan of various types of Legos, this was an exciting part of the trip.  G-Man has been talking about it for a long time.  It was worth the cost and effort to get to the park - because the kids could basically go on every single ride.  And, let's be honest, who doesn't enjoy playing with Lego bricks to create something from their imagination?

At the entrance, we found an awesome Iron Man "Hulkbuster" display.  This began a long series of requests from G-Man to have his picture taken next to dozens of giant Lego displays like this.  I won't include them all, but he was very excited, to say the least...

As a parent, there's nothing like this kind of excitement and joy ; )  The picture above, comes from the Lego Star Wars exhibit.  It was fantastic.  One of my favorites was a model of the Millennium Falcon, about 4 feet in length:

Next, came the most-anticipated ride in the whole park.  Basically, you have the opportunity to drive small Lego cars around an entire simulated neighborhood.  There were two areas, one for the older kids, and one for children that were L's age.  First, they both had to watch "safety videos" on how to operate the cars.  Trust me when I tell you that G-Man's video was actually complicated.  The poor kid had to stay on the left side of the road, and deal with signs he's never seen before.  He turned to me and asked what a "roundabout" was ; )  They were issued actual licenses...so cool!

Lauren hopped into her car and had fun on her small driving track.  She was annoyed with another child that bumped into her, but that's what happens on these rides:

After Garrett's safety briefing, he jumped into a car and drove all over the area.  It was really fun to watch kids stop at the right places, and "give way" or "yield" to other drivers ; )

One of the biggest surprises was the fact that there's a hotel on-site.  It literally looks like it was built out of Legos, just much sturdier.

We rode the Dino Safari Ride, which had large dinosaurs spread throughout a forest...all built of Legos, of course.  G-Man had the idea for this picture:

Another of our favorite rides was Lego Boats.  You actually had control of a small motorized craft, with waterways large enough to get into trouble.  We had a TON of fun racing each other on these boats, and trying to avoid a lot of other people that didn't have as much control of their boats:

An entire section of the park was devoted to the Lego Friends line of products.  This is aimed at girls, in particular.  It is focused on a group of girls that are "friends" and have sophisticated cars, careers and accessories ; )  L likes them, because my wife likes them:

This is one of several large Lego displays that combine all the Friends products into one place:

We found a playground inside the park that was amazing!  It was huge, and the area was filled with a kind of rubber pellets, so soft when kids land on them.  The height of this playground made me a little nervous, but the kids had a BLAST:

In Pirate Land, they had a small roller-coaster type of ride.  Both kids wanted to go, so my wife was there to make sure they were OK.  The ride moved pretty fast.  The good news is that they loved it!

In the video below, you can see the kids and my wife fly-by the camera.  The funny thing is watching both kids raise their hands in the air as they go by...like coaster pros ; )

Another popular part of Legoland is something they call "Miniland" - basically Lego recreations of famous landmarks throughout Europe.  The level of detail, and the size, is stunning.  Here were are in front of the UK pieces:

St. Paul's Cathedral in London

After a long day, we said goodbye to Legoland, and made our way back to Windsor.  As I said earlier, it's the home of Windsor Castle.  This is an image of one corner of the castle, with a statue of Queen Victoria in the middle of the street:

After a delightful dinner, we waited for the train to return to central London.  I caught the three of them, all using their mobile devices, as we waited patiently for the train to arrive.  Another great day in the UK!