Just a hop, skip and a jump from San Diego in beautiful Carlsbad, LEGOLAND California is a budding brick-builder's paradise. The whole park is themed around the colorful LEGO bricks, which you'll find oversized on rides, pieced together for fantastic photo ops and assembled in models throughout the park as well as the entire section of Miniland, which offers LEGOized reproductions of seven areas of the United States. That's 20 million LEGO bricks in that one section alone! If you're always stepping on stray LEGOs around the house, then you already know this is a place you should go. But even if you're little ones aren'y yet hard-core LEGO devotees, they will still have a blast because everything in the park is geared for ages 2-12. The park is the ultimate little playground, but it can get very crowded, especially during the summer months. We've put together these LEGOLAND California tips so that you can make the most of your day in the park. Now, we are talking about making the most of your time, but be prepared for your kids to find at least one place in the park they love and don't want to leave like the Land of Adventure.
Let them go at their own pace and enjoy the sights and attractions! You can come back a second day ;) 1. Buy your tickets in advance. You will save money and time if you purchase your tickets in advance, since you can find great discounts and you won't have to stand in line at Will Call. 2. Pick the best times to visit. LEGOLAND California is busiest during the summer time and the holidays. Basically, whenever the kids are out of school you can expect major crowds. The LEGOLAND Hotel is just as well-themed as the park, and it's located right there inside the resort. It offers fantastically themed rooms (Adventure! Pirates!), plenty of hands-on LEGO activities and a zero-entry heated pool for year-round play. Plus, hotel guests get early admission into the park! 4. Measure up the little ones before you hit the park. All of the rides in the park are geared toward tadpoles between 2 and 12 years old, but more than half of the attractions have height requirements of some kind. It helps to know in advance which rides your little one will be able to ride, and especially which ones they will be able to ride without a grownup.
Also know that a handful of rides — Junior Driving School, Driving School, Cargo Ace and Lego Mindstorms — have age requirements. 5. Pack an extra set of clothes or have the kids wear their bathing suits. Even if you aren't headed to the water park, there are a few splash and play areas. If you have little ones who love to play in the water, but don't like walking around soggy, you'll want something they can change into. 6. Bring your own water. Coolers are not allowed, but guests can bring in their own water and any food or beverages required for specific dietary needs. The early bird gets the LEGO! The turnstiles open a half hour to an hour ahead of the park's opening depending on the season, with select rides open early. For the lowest crowds, arrive ahead of the park's opening and you'll be in in no time. 8. Head to the water park early. You'll avoid the biggest lines to get into LEGOLAND California's Water Park if you arrive before 11 a.m. or after 3 p.m. The Water Park opens March 7 in time for Spring Break and runs through Sept. 7, 2015!
9. Ride Sky Cruiser first thing. Aboard these pedal-powered cars, you can take in the sights of Fun Town from an elevated track. This is the park's most popular ride, so make it your first stop of the day or ride it right before closing. 10. Start in the back. If you arrive early, start in the back of the park and work your way back to the front. Lines build early for Coastersaurus, Safari Trek and Fairy Tale Brook, but there is usually less of a wait in the afternoon. 11. Don't skip the aquarium! LEGOLAND California is home to the Sea Life Aquarium, where you can see jellyfish, rays, sharks and octopus up close! There is a touch pool for little hands to reach out and touch sea stars and crabs, and feeding times are posted so you can watch and learn from the animal experts. For your little ones, you can't go wrong with a visit to LEGOLAND California! We hope you've enjoyed our LEGOLAND California tips to help you make the most of your time at the park. Have a tip we didn't mention?
Share it in comments below!This post may contain affiliate and sponsored links. We donate 10% of our sales commissions to charity. If you’re planning a trip to LEGOLAND, you’re in for a treat! We visited LEGOLAND California twice in the same year because our LEGO loving son loved it so much. The rest of us are not quite as excited about LEGOS, but we all had a lot of fun at this colorful and innovative theme park near San Diego, California. Wondering what you need to know to make your trip to LEGOLAND awesome? I have a 6-year-old son who is passionate about LEGOS and an 8-year-old daughter who isn’t. Both children had a great day at LEGOLAND. The rides are perfect for their ages, and even visitors with a casual interest in the iconic bricks will be delighted and fascinated by LEGO sculptures throughout the park. Teens and adults will find no serious thrill rides at LEGOLAND. Most of the rides are built for guests of all ages, and some require adults to ride with young children.
Some rides have minimum height requirements of 34-42 inches. However, even the roller coasters are tame by most theme park standards. My kids loved them. There is no good reason to pay full price at the gate for your tickets at LEGOLAND California! There are several easy ways to get discounted and even FREE tickets. Want to know how? Join our FREE travel deals email club and we’ll send you this exclusive post: 3 Ways to Save on LEGOLAND California Tickets. Despite Spring Break crowds, one day was enough to get our fill of LEGOLAND, but we didn’t have time to ride every ride or set foot inside either LEGOLAND Water Park or SEA LIFE Aquarium. The 1-Day pass we purchased included a visit to the aquarium, and allowed us to come back to only the aquarium the next day. The LEGOLAND Hotel is located next to the park’s front gate, and is like no other hotel you’ve ever seen. Imagine disco balls in the elevators, bunk beds in the rooms, and colorful LEGO play everywhere!
During the busy seasons, the park officially opens at 10:00 a.m., but the turnstiles open at 9:00 a.m. and some of the rides open at 9:30 a.m. We arrived at the ticket window before 9:00, bought our tickets and walked into the park without waiting in line. Guests who arrived a couple of hours later were not so lucky. Here is a link to LEGOLAND California’s Opening Days and Hours calendar. Find out what time the park opens on the day you will be there. We had 30 minutes to browse the gift shop, which is the biggest and best in the park (see Tip #6), and then rode the Coastersaurus and Safari Trek while wait times were relatively low. If you are not near the front of a line at 9:55 a.m., walk directly to the back of the park and hit the headliners in Pirate Shores, where several water rides are located, or Castle Hill, or scurry to another of your top priority rides. You will not see shorter lines for the rest of the day. Who wants to carry a bag full of souvenirs around the park all day?
Use LEGOLAND’s Package Pick-up service. The souvenirs you buy early in the day will be transported to the park exit for you to pick up before you leave. After the first hour, the long waits for major attractions were the only thing about LEGOLAND California Resort that disappointed me. The lines didn’t look so long, but they moved surprisingly slowly. I think that Disneyland could have moved twice as many people through the lines in the same amount of time. LEGOLAND California Resort does provide play areas full of LEGOS near the lines of their most popular rides so children can play while parents wait in line. They also provide pagers for some rides, so you don’t have to stand in line. By lunchtime, I decided that I didn’t care how many rides we rode and I started enjoying the things that make LEGOLAND different from other theme parks. An area of the park we particularly enjoyed was Fun Town. There are no major rides in Fun Town, so it was less crowded, but completely charming.
At the Fun Town Police and Fire Academy, families can compete against each other by moving their hand-powered fire trucks down a lane, shooting a target with water guns and powering back to the finish line. This was perhaps my favorite “ride” in the park. The LEGO Factory Tour and the Adventurer’s Club in Fun Town were interesting and creative walkthrough experiences. At the nearby LEGO Club, LEGO lovers can build with LEGOs and purchase bricks by the pound. My children also enjoyed the XBOX Family Game Space. My son loves playing LEGO video games at home, and in the Game Space he was able to try out games that we don’t own. We didn’t spend much time here, but it was a fun diversion while my husband held our place in the Chima 4D Movie X-Perience line next door. The 4D Movie was my son’s favorite part of LEGOLAND California Resort. If you’ve seen 4D movies at other parks, this will probably be similar, and of course, it’s an ad for the LEGO kits that are sold in the gift shop.
However, it was the only high-priority attraction on my son’s list and he was not disappointed. There are also several playgrounds in the park where children can run and play freely. I wish we’d taken more time to enjoy these. One of the nicest parts of my day was relaxing at a patio table at the Garden Restaurant. This is a counter-service restaurant that offers fresh, healthy fare and great views of Miniland. When we finally walked into Miniland in the mid-afternoon, my LEGOLAND experience changed from “It’s okay” to “Wow, this is cool!” Imagine the landmarks of Washington D.C., New York City, Las Vegas, San Francisco and New Orleans made of LEGOS. Nearby, you’ll find LEGO busts of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Queen Elizabeth II, William Shakespeare and other famous faces. Around the corner, every major planet from the Star Wars movies is depicted in LEGOS. As parents, we had to divide and conquer in Miniland. My son would not be torn away from examining the Star Wars worlds he knows well, while my daughter was fascinated by the cities.