OK, so a week tomorrow we’re off to Legoland for a 2 day visit and staying at the resort hotel for the night.
Does anyone know if I can park there on Tuesday morning and leave Wednesday afternoon without issues as I’ll be a guest for the night? I’ve obviously asked via the website but some real world advice is always usefull.
Also, are the restaurants really as bad as the reviews all seem to suggest?
Cheers
Tim

Restaurants are without exception the cheapest food you can obtain at the highest price they can realistically charge before a riot ensued. Take sandwiches.

Parking, probably, but they’ll likely charge you extra, because, they’re gits. However, if you’re staying at the brick castle you clearly have far too much money and thus shouldn’t care about such unimportant issues. Just get your butler to sort it out.

Just for balance, we’re going again soon.

LOL – mid week, off season hotel and 2 night pass wasn’t actually too much money. It was a christmas present to the herberts so saved filling the house up with tatt and will be a great experience :O)

Noted on the food. Chill box and Waitrose visit before hand. And get Jeaves to keep the car in the shade!

And before anyone jumps on the “mid week” bit, we home educate our kids so no registers are being done out of a tick :Op

We’ve been a couple of times and both times went for the pizza place near the lake where they do the show. It’s basically a pizza hut, so thick doughy pizza rather than gourmet Italian, but it’s eat all you can so it wins for us, especially as it’s refillable drinks too, that alone makes it worth the money, as the drinks often mount up. It means you don’t have to lug around a cool box etc.

Parking for that time will be fine if you’re staying at the hotel, it’s got it’s own car park for guests.

Random advice – if your spare wheel is outside your vehicle (like on most vans) make sure you secure it otherwise it will be stolen.

We’re removing ours from school for one day and accepting the small slide ever closer to Hell.

The butler will be staying with the car so I’ll make sure his blunderbust is loaded.

MMF – your killing their education. I hope you don’t sleep with the guilt.

Or, they’ll have a great time, remember it forever and miss absolutely nothing that can’t be caught up on.

Fine for parking, hopefully you’ll miss the worst of the queues at this time of year, it’s horrible during hols.
Don’t miss the Atlantis submarine ride, best thing there IMO

We went a couple of weeks ago. The Castle Hotel is BRILLIANT! Best lift ever. Breakfast was decent. The food in the all you can eat Restaurant is tat and seemingly very expensive. But, after a day in the park we didn’t care and inhaled several plate fulls each – on the basis of volume consumed and free drink refills, the value looked a little better.

The Park was very quiet, the longest queue was 15 minutes but we walked straight on to most things.

When you go through the gates head down the hill to the left and there’s a shop that sells bags of wee doughnuts, god they’re good!

Don’t miss the Atlantis submarine ride, best thing there IMO

Having been on the one in Winsor we were looking forward to the Billund Atlantis ride which turned out to be a rubbish short film, then a normal aquarium.
We stayed at the hotel (the one with Pirate rooms) as part of a Sunday out of season deal (the park wasn’t open on the Monday although the hotel pool was) and at breakfast, there were lots of kids in school uniform who were obviously off to school as normal. The deal was OK but not worth the extra compared to staying at home.

MMF – your killing their education.

Hope you have someone come in to help with the English lessons 😉

Concur on the Atlantis ride.

Out of the Unpopular Things Which Had No Queues (our last visit was high season, grandparents bought tickets – we hated it as it was three hour queues for big rides, and absolutely ram jam packed with unhappy children and annoyed parents) the Fire Station was great fun too.

Less impressed by the Ninjago ride where very little happens unless you buy extras.

Might be worth getting the Dragon roller coaster ride done right at opening time, if you can. OTOH, if the biggest queue is 15 minutes, world’s your oyster, etc.

We did all the rides, queued for ages etc, then near closing we started to walk back to the car and stumbled passed the actual lego models. Who knew LEGOLAND had lego models 🙂 anyway they were pretty impressive, so yeah check those out as well as the usual sub-themepark rides.
Oh and the giant spider ride thing made me sick.
Oh and the pirate show at the lake is pretty good fun.

I second the advice about removing any external spare wheel – some scrote took the spare from my T5 when I stayed there. It’s a well documented problem on the T5 forums.

Tip: Get there first. Then – get this – go to straight to the back of the park and work your way forward. You’ll be straight on to most of the stuff, then a brief busy section as you meet the hordes working back, then get to the stuff at the start when most have left. You’re welcome 😉

Cheers all
Your-you’re. What can I say!

We took a picnic. I was pretty unimpressed with the number of rides closed for maintenance, this was a Saturday in late May so a busy time of year. Take swimmers and towels so your kids can use the waterpark. And practise lying if your five year old wants to do the driving school 😉

I don’t have a 5 yo and no DNA test is going to prove otherwise! 8 yo is 1.35m with his shoes on so all good there :0)
Cool bag and box at the ready.

bags of wee doughnuts

I prefer jam or plain old ring but each to their own.

Going tomorrow with 9 year old and his mate. Never been before and didn’t click that it was father’s day weekend when we booked. Will I hate it? Will we all die of boredom/starvation in the endless queues? Is there a risk of going a bit Falling Down towards the end?

YES.
Had this same issue a few years back.
Sister is a local and had free tickets. After 1 hr she took a look at me and walked us all out before I exploded. Had a nice afternoon in a local park in the end :0)
I think it was a BH weekend and I’m not known for my cool head or patients when it comes to being jostled about.

Sorry to be a hater, but Legoland puts me off every kind of forced fun that was ever invented. Tickets are expensive, you queue to get in, you queue for rides, you’re pushed to pay yet more money to jump queues, then you queue to get out, food and drink are over-priced, there’s no charm to the park. It’s just designed to part you from your money for the shortest of short-term reward, or for people who find queuing enjoyable.

On top of that the park is poorly run: with perhaps one-two more minimum wage staff per ride they could increase throughout on the rides, but no, where’s the short term incentive to do that? That spider ride – one staff member doing everything doubles the down time per cycle. Get an extra teenager and you’ll halve the queue time. Likewise the water ride where they are so poorly organised that every third raft goes empty. Likewise the food outlets. This is cynical marketing at its best, based purely on satisfying an upfront cost with no long term reward. Repeat customers must be few and far between. Fair play to them, but I’ll not be back.

Anyway, enjoy your trip – each to their own, I’m a miserable old git but my kid liked it, or at least pretended she did so as not to disappoint grandad who’d bought tickets.

It’ll be fine – just go with it and the kids’ll have a great time. Windsor Triathlon this weekend so expect extra traffic…car park is open from 09:30 (maybe earlier) and you can get into the park from then – rides start from 10:00.

Like someone else said – go to the furthest rides first and work back for minimum queues….

We’re going Tues/weds with a night in the hotel. I’ll be the bloke quietly weeping into his beer in the bar on Tuesday night.

B&b- i’ll Be the one crying next to you on Tuesday then!

Here now. Went to the back first and got 3 rides in with no queues. Plenty since though. Boys are enjoying it but meh. Will try and chat him into Chessington next year, presumably the rollercoasters are more entertaining?

I really wouldn’t fancy an overnight stop….

Ok, got back after trip on Tuesday.
Quiet day, got a bunch of rides in ASAP at 10am.
By lunchtime we’d reached peak crowds – queues were up to 1/2hr on the “big” rides.
Good day all in all, happy kids, got on lots of stuff.

Further advice:
1) don’t leave at closing time
1a) don’t visit the shop at closing time
1b) don’t visit the shop with tired kids
2) pick your car park spot carefully – we got stuck joining a queue that joined another queue that joined another queue – madness – and that on a quiet day
2a) or, take a picnic and sit it out until about an hour after closing