Legoland for birthdays

For a few weeks I had a think about what we could do for D's birthday this year.  Last year we went to the National History Museum which was great, if a tad busy in the places that I really wanted to go with him - the dinosaur exhibit for example.

The last few months, all he has talked about has been Lego.  Constantly.  He has some at preschool that he has been playing with - working with others to create masterpieces - mostly planes apparently.  He also loved the Lego Movie, the longest film that he's sat and totally soaked in - even though he didn't understand everything that was going on.

He got quite a bit of Lego for his birthday and he's played with it in every moment possible since.

I was so pleased when I realised that I would not be at work for D's birthday this year - Legoland seemed like the ideal place to go - and when Mr K also took the day off and D's grandad was also free, it seemed that everything would be perfect...

Until I woke up and saw the weather.

It was particularly dismal.  The forecast was heavy rain for most of the day.  So what do you do?  Well, reader, we went anyway and it was amazing.

We made use of the Grownups go free promotion that Kellogg's is currently running, meaning that all four of us got in for £80 in total.  Not a bad deal - in the past we've managed to go for 'free' with Tesco points.  D was telling everyone that we saw that it was his birthday and that 'yesterday I was three, today I'm four' and the lady on the entry point was told this as we arrived.  She sang happy birthday to him and told us that if we spoke to guest services, they'd put his name up on the LED screens around the site.  They were true to their words - D was put up for the whole day with his name and his birthday, along with a few other visitors.

The rain dissipated a bit at this point - we were actually really lucky overall with the weather - it was bad enough first thing that it seemed to put enough people off and as the day went on we only really had light drizzle on a few occasions.  The weather then got worse just in time for going home.

We discovered that D is a dab hand at driving.  He did so well to steer around the corners and only really needed help from staff when he got distracted/worried about other drivers driving into him.  

The site was so quiet that we got on to every single ride that we wanted to almost immediately.  We'd last taken D to Legoland when he was two and a half and we found some rides we could do and spent a fair bit of time in Miniland but he was so tiny that we didn't find so much we could do.  This time was much better.  He's finally reached the hallowed 90cm and so could do a much wider variety of rides.  He loved the fire-engine race (although Mr K and Grandad did most of the hard work) and rides that he had some control over up and down - the helicopters and the balloons were really popular.

He was less keen on the laser ride - he found that a bit scary which is a shame as he really enjoyed the Buzz Lightyear one at Disneyland Paris.

Unsurprisingly, there was a lot of Lego around and a few references to the Lego movie.  D couldn't have been happier to have met one of his current heroes -

and a former hero.

But we also saw a range of animals... 

Firefighters...

fairytale characters...

workmen...

... and even explorers... 

There was plenty for him to get into and take pictures with.  

 Then there was the amazing pirate show.  We missed out on it last time we went as it was just too busy.  This time, we got a space in the splash zone (edging a bit away from the soak zone!) and enjoyed the hilarity.  It was impressive - well timed and all performed with a great deal of humour.

The drops from the lighthouse were surprising - I found it hard to believe that they would fall from so high but they did - multiple times!

 The one thing that was consistent throughout the day was D's smile.  He truly had the day of his life. Every member of staff that saw his badge made a fuss of him and wished him a happy birthday and he even had the restaurant staff singing to him and delivering him a little cake in the pizza buffet.

 We all had a great day.  I can't thank Legoland Windsor enough for the star treatment D got.  I'm hoping we'll be able to return again for another magical day.  Hopefully we'll be able to do the dinosaur safari on that day - I'm sure that's something D will love.

We came away with a LOT of Lego and I've been helping him to construct in every spare moment since.

Disclaimer: - I just enjoyed our birthday visit to Legoland that I decided to share it here - I haven't been compensated in any way for this post.