World's largest LEGO store opens in Leicester Square The world's biggest Lego store opens in London on Thursday marked by the unveiling of a six-metre high 200,000-brick Big Ben. The structure dominates the two-storey 914 square metre store in Leicester Square after taking 2,280 hours to build, and features a working clock face which will be illuminated at night. The opening also includes the unveiling of a new Lego mascot named Lester, an English tea-drinking Minifigure, and the first Lego London skyline replica set ahead of its worldwide release in January. The phenomenally successful Danish company reports having sold more than 72 billion Lego "elements" or pieces last year. Loren Shuster, executive vice president and chief commercial officer at Lego said: "We want to inspire and develop children across the globe through creative Lego play experiences, and our Lego Brand retail stores allows children, parents and fans to explore the many different Lego products while getting a truly unique and immersive experience of the Lego brand."
Lego made headlines last week when it announced it had no further plans for free giveaways in the Daily Mail following a campaign calling on advertisers to boycott newspapers promoting "demonisation and division" during the Brexit debate. The company - which ended its relationship with Shell in 2014 after a Greenpeace video highlighted the oil group's plans to drill in the Arctic - declined to say if it was responding to the campaign or if it had changed its marketing plans.Everyone in Dubai is talking about Legoland. When it opens at the end of this month, on the 31st, people can see the world’s tallest Lego building structure – the Lego Burj Khalifa in Miniland. Dubai’s junior sweetheart and Prince Hamdan’s best friend, Mohammed bin Ahmed Jaber Al Harbi, unveiled the tallest structure which is 17 metres tall. The little-but-already-the-arab-world’s-most-famour-5-year-old added a tiny replica of himself to the model to launch the structure. He also turned on the first of the building’s LED lights.
Master Al Harbi became world famous when a video of him removing his top hat and shaking Queen Elizabeth II’s hand at the Epsom Derby went viral. This little boy lives a life as glamorous and adventurous as his (his father’s to start with) best friend Dubai’s Crown Prince Hamdan bin Mohammed al Maktoum. He is also already quite a charmer. He is confident in front of the cameras, and strides like a true celebrity. Legoland Dubai, which is considered to be the region’s largest integrated theme park destination, will also have a creative LED light show and a recreation of the famous dancing fountain that is iconic to Burj Khalifa. The Burj model is no modest feat either. It was designed and built in over 5,000 hours using 439,000 Lego bricks, and weighs a ton. The park is designed for families with children aged 2-12 and will feature over 40 interactive rides, shows and attractions as well as 15,000 Lego model structures made from over 60 million Lego bricks. There will be six-themed lands – Lego City, Adventure, Kingdoms, Imagination, Factory and Miniland as well.
So it is not just another attraction, this will be one worth a trip. And my nephew arrives just in time too we are going to have so much fun! More than him though, I am really thrilled! While the excitement is still hot topic, one concerning factor of Legoland is how crazy expensive the tickets are priced. AED 250 for a person is not cheap. And with additional passes for a day at the waterpark within the same attraction, price is AED 350. Which means, like the famed brunches and the famed fun activities around Dubai and the famed beauty treatments and the famed night attractions, even this is going to be reserved for a clientele that have comfortable salary packages. For others, well, we will just have to resort to coupon booklets and lottery tickets or try and make friends who have friends at high places.Mind the gap … between all 637,903 Lego bricks used to make this life-size Tube carriage. It is on display at the world’s largest Lego store, which opened today in Leicester Square.
The London flagship has been two years in development and also features models of a dragon, the Elizabeth Tower and Big Ben and a Royal Mail postbox. The creations on display are made from 1.7 million bricks and together weigh five tonnes. More than a third of those bricks went into the London Underground carriage, created in partnership with Transport for London. It took 4,000 hours to make and features an unusual passenger — a model of Shakespeare. Dylan Collie, 12, was given a sneak preview of the store and said: “There is so much to do. It was bigger than I expected and sitting on the Tube carriage makes it feel like the whole world has turned into Lego.” The 914 sq m store also has a 1:15 scale model of the Elizabeth Tower and Big Ben, which is 6.5m tall and weighs 1,035 kilograms. It took six model builders nearly 3,000 hours to create from 344,030 bricks, features a working clock and chimes with the sound of Big Ben. There are also models of a telephone box, the Leicester Square Tube roundel and an Underground map.
Attractions include the world’s first Lego Mosaic Maker, which allows shoppers to buy a personalised Lego mosaic portrait. The machine captures the portrait before producing instructions and the bricks required to complete the image. There are also play tables where children can sit and build. John Goodwin, executive vice president and chief financial officer of the Lego Group, said: “We want to inspire and develop children through creative play experiences — and this store is all about that.”I love deciding which sets I am interested in, I like reading and researching it, building it, playing with it and then making something else from it. I play with it for hours. With the world's biggest LEGO store opening its doors in Leicester Square I took my love of LEGO one step further and actually became a LEGO masterpiece Among the 1.7 million bricks used to build the vast models in the store there is a booth that turns people into 4,502 pieces of LEGO. The Mosaic Maker is a world exclusive to the London store which scans the face like in a passport photo booth, and then converts the image into a LEGO pixels.
I am now officially a LEGO set. For me it was the highlight of my visit to the store, which began by walking through the Victorian tube station 'iron gate' made out of tens of thousands of black bricks. After just a few minutes taking it all in I realised the shop had been made just for me... and the millions of other LEGO enthusiasts. The flagship store is made up of two floors with jaw-dropping replica models which took 10,000 hours to create. The centrepiece is a beautifully intricate, two-storey chiming Big Ben with a working clock face. The hourly chimes were the only clue to how long I had been in there. Brickley the dragon, complete with iconic London accessories of a bowler hat and black umbrella, is also coiled ready to welcome visitors. As I sat in between life-size models of William Shakespeare and a Queen's Guard, and just a few inches away from Her Majesty the Queen, I thought there couldn't be anything more English. The walls of the store are lined with sets to buy, from Architecture, Star Wars, Ninjago, Nexo Knights, Friends, LEGO City and to the cars and buildings of the Creator series.