What is LEGOLAND Windsor UK like with Covid-19 guidelines in place now that the theme park has recently reopened? Is it worth going? We look to answer these questions following another recent family visit in August 2020. To do so, we will look at what has changed, what is new, what is closed and what the queue times are like. This is an update to our video from almost a month back and the differences are fairly significant.
We will have a look at ticket prices pre and post covid, and surprisingly, there isn’t much difference. What about if you have an annual Merlin pass, what sort of value is there and should we be thinking of renewing them (or not)?
We’ve noticed Merlin Passes have become a little like frequent flyers – actually using and redeeming is becoming difficult / no slots available. But if you want to pay, no problem. Castles around London also having the same issue – very few slots for annual passes. Think annual passes might become the next scam / pointless to have *
Further information on the Holiday Homes / Airbnb / Short Term Lets can be found at http://www.macatsim.com/ Both flats, Broadstairs and Margate are about 75-90 minutes east of London UK. Margate has a LEGO themed Holiday Lets / Airbnb Short Term Stay awith a LEGO Wall. Broadstairs has an iconic red London bus bunk bed (at time of recording).
Time codes to the Video:
0:00 Introduction
0:51 Car Park and Entrance – Social Distancing Collapsed with People Everywhere?!
1:21 Laser Raiders – First Ride
1:50 Monster Party Haunted House
2:20 Queue Lengths at 11am
3:10 LEGOLAND Express Train
3:50 Duplo Water Park – don’t forget to pre-book
4:10 Sky Riders
5:15 4D Cinema Studios
6:00 Miniland and New Details
7:35 LEGO Stores Reopening
7:58 Refueling Drink Stations Issues
8:32 Kids Favourite things of the day
9:20 Car park … why can’t they sort this out, it’s a dead simple fix
9:40 Final Thoughts – LEGOLAND – Is the value there in visiting?
13:08 Summing up and closing
Transcript from the Show
G’day Everyone, Matt Elder of Family Bricks here and today out in LEGOLAND Windsor UK. Just thought we’d come out here and see what it is like now. We were here a couple of weeks ago and did a video on what it was like post covid with all the changes and things like that. Its been a couple of weeks now and there has been a couple more changes and a bit more relaxing, easing and opening of things. So we will go through and see what’s changed, what is different, what is the same. Maybe some other bits and pieces of what’s going on and see if it is still good value, it is worth coming out?
This video is bought to you bay Macatsim Holiday Homes in Margate and Broadstairs. Great for a week’s holiday or a weekend escape, being just over an hour east of London, UK. Treat yourself to amazing sunsets, a LEGO wall or great food. Visit www.macatsim.com and mention this YouTube video, we’ll will look after you.
Car Park and Entrance – Social Distancing Collapsed with People Everywhere?!
Feels like it is a lot more busy than when we came here a couple of weeks ago. So maybe everybody is getting back into it. Lots more people everywhere. Bag check, security screens, social distancing seems like it has collapsed.
We’re in LEGOLAND. Yeah LEGOLAND!!
Even more people everywhere.
Laser Raiders – First Ride
In early first to Laser Raiders and if you are over 11, you need a mask and heavy on the hand sanitizer.
PlayStation games themselves are closed which makes sense. At least the other drop ride is open.
Daddy, do not make me watch this video, I will get motion sickness.
Monster Party Haunted House
And the Haunted House has reduced capacity. At least they put some new shades up though. In the Haunted House, you have socially distant spots to dance on. So in the Haunted House you don’t have the front two rows and spaces in between groups… and its nice and air conditioned.
It spins around a lot. And we had a dance party. Yeah, we had a dance party.
Queue Lengths at 11am
Now its just after 11am and some of the ride times getting crazy. 90minutes there, an hour for the Coast Guard, 90 minutes for Deep Sea Adventure. Place has been really busy!
Not too bad, Laser Raiders half an hour. Some of the smaller kiddie ones only 5 minutes. At least the shows are running.
Going back, an hour there, 45 minutes there, an hour there.
Shows are back on.
LEGOLAND Express Train
Going through and giving it a clean, giving it a good spray down. Do that about every 3rd or 4th train ride. So with the train, you have every second aisle isn’t used. So while we all got separate seats and things, the lines are all bunched together. Clever Coronavirus.
Huge queues to get into those refill drinks. There are queues here and queues over at the LEGO City area. Just lots of people in general
Duplo Water Park – don’t forget to pre-book
I love the water park. Now Duplo water park, you have to book in advance. What they don’t tell you is that you have to do it a day or two before you arrive, as they only open slots them and it fills up really quick.
Sky Riders
What can you see down there in Miniland? New York, Sydney Opera House, ISS thingya ma jiggy. The NASA Space Station, rocket bits.
So Sky Riders has been working and not much of a queue, which is good as really hot during the middle of the day now.
OK, so what can you see? Well, I can see almost the whole of Miniland, bit like a map spread out in front of us.
Don’t be afraid to go on this ride, by the way it is a slow rollercoaster, it goes quite slowly , enjoy the view, at first it goes a bit quickly like the start of a rollercoaster speed but then it kinda slows down. Its really fun.
4D Cinema Studios
OK , with reduced capacity, you couldn’t even get into the show, the queue wasn’t even very big. We came back towards the end of the day and we were able to get in then. In the 4D cinema and they are doing every other row, spacing people out.
We just did the 4D dimension cinema with the Ninjago show. It didn’t have a lot of the effects of the 4th dimension so it did feel a little flat compared with normal. It was ok but it really does make a difference and you do loose a fair but out of it.
LEGO reef and Minifigures & More, The Ultimate Brick Store are still closed.
This is typical of a spray that gets done on most of the rides and I’m guessing it takes place every half hour or so, so it isn’t after each ride.
Miniland and New Details
Down here in Miniland and have a quick look around and see what details we can see and if anything has really changed. Lets go and have a look.
So we have the NHS thank you rainbow right next to the marching soldiers right in London area of Miniland.
Here we have a nice little detail of Major Tom being knighted by the Queen who the money raise for charity with the Zimmer frame in his back garden right outside the Windsor Castle.
And here we have the Tower of London and Tower Bridge which we were at yesterday so interesting now to see it in LEGO form and made some videos about that so you can click around to find out full walk through Tours in about 10 minutes.
And here is Leeds Castle in Miniland form, also great to see and we’ve done a full walkthrough of the grounds. Check out the video around.
Down here in Miniland and there use to be a Ninjago stage there. So that looks like it is completely gone and they have actually put down some AstroTurf and some picnic tables there. That would tend to suggest that it is not going to be coming back.
Daddy is a monster who wants to capture us. He’s an alien. Daddy, can you be an alien? Raaagh!
So it is 5:10pm in the afternoon and numbers are begin to thin out quite significantly but that could be because its 34 degrees Celsius and still hot and everybody’s just tired and over it and just want to get home. Its been a really, really warm day.
LEGO Stores Reopening
Seems like most of the LEGO stores have reopened. The Duplo one is open, Big and Little LEGO shops up the top, the ones over in Heartlake city, pretty much all the ones we’ve seen have been open, so more places to go and spend money.
The Duplo Valley Theater is now open and doing shows of Little Red Riding Hood. Whereas last time we were here it was completely closed until further notice. So that’s good to see that.
Refueling Drink Stations Issues
So these refueling stations are a great idea in principle but all over the park they have been breaking down all day. So you get times when there is only 1 in operation and massive queues to get a drink so does make you wonder what the value is of it.
Boats operating pretty much as normal so always a nice thing to be out on the water when it is a stinking hot day.
While its great that there is hand sanitizer all over the park, we found there have been some in some places where it has run out and doesn’t look like it gets restocked throughout the course of the day, so probably something that needs a bit of attention.
Kids Favourite things of the day
What was the best thing you liked today? Haunted House. What was good about that? Because we went up and down.
What did you like best? Seeing Dracula. The character yeah?! Any reason why? Because he is a vampire.
I liked the rides. I liked the Ninjago ride cause the park was about to close and it was funny because I was like “oh no, we are going to be stuck on the ride”, but then we weren’t.
We got the second highest score of the day on the Ninjago ride of 369,000 points, which was only 3,000 off the top score…maybe we have been here a few too many times.
The queue at the end of the day at the LEGO shop to get out, allow some time.
Car park … why can’t they sort this out, it’s a dead simple fix
And they still don’t have the exiting from the car park sorted out. They funnel everyone into one single lane to go through an open barrier. Just open one or two of the other barriers, it isn’t rocket science! It means it would take a 10th of the time to get out of this carpark. Why are they so determined to make people miserable and frustrated to get out of a carpark when it is something so easy to fix?
Final Thoughts – LEGOLAND – Is the value there in visiting?
So we have been here today and what are our final thoughts on what LEGOLAND, whether it is worthwhile coming and all that sort of stuff? Certainly since last time we were here, much, much more of the park has reopened. Most things have reopened in some description.
Big challenge with it thought is that it felt that numbers where way up, its only a perception thing but feels like the numbers are 80% to 90% what they would normally be at peak season so if they are restricting the numbers, not seeing it in a great deal.
So you have full numbers, full price , a lot of the rides are closed in terms of every other row you’ve got something. So rides are running at effectively half capacity. Queue times after the first hour of the day get ridiculously long. So if you are going to come, make sure you are here at 10am when gates open, and come straight in and pick off the big rides . Even then that’s challenging as we wanted to do the Ninjago ride and we came down and it was just closed – wasn’t open yet.
Saw the Viking Splash on the way down, ridiculous queues and wasn’t even open yet. And with queue times on some of the rides blowing out to 90 minutes or over an hour with half capacity and all the rest of it, it really does make you wonder in terms if you really do need the Ride and Reserve, or the Q-bot, see a video around here for how it works and what it was last time. Which is going to become ridiculously expensive as well.
Compared with last time, the social distancing aspect seems to be really, really token, a lot of people really don’t pay attention to it what so ever. And then there is just stupidity and nonsense with it. Like when you are waiting for the train, you are there, we were there in the queue for 45 minutes and the way it snakes back onto itself you are basically standing next to each other anyhow. But then when you go to get on the train, which only lasts for 10 minutes, they then have every other aisle not vacant , so you can’t get into it. But it just seems like there is inconsistencies like that all over the place.
So you will pretty much get the LEGOLAND experience as you would normally, you’re just going to be paying for it, you are still going to have ridiculous queue times and on a day like today where it is really, really hot, kids get irritable in the lines and sun and all that.
So I think now you’ve got to treat it as if it is a peak summer day , that you are going to be paying full prices for, but then you have Covid restrictions in on top of that. So it may make you wonder if it is value there.
If you love LEGOLAND and you can understand that and you are happy deal with that or to put up with that, or the long queues and things like that, then by all means come along.
There is just little things they don’t tell you and you find out the hard way. Like getting into the Duplo Valley for the swim and things like that and you’ve got to book a day or two in advance. And unlike other theme parks when you’ve booked in advance, a couple of days before you go they usually send out an email going like “Hey here are all the different things you can do and make sure you do this and book this” and all that sort of stuff.
They are not doing that here which is really frustrating cause on a day when its like 34 , 35 degrees Celsius, and you have no chance of getting into that swimming area when you just want to cool down and things , not happy about that.
A lot of the shows have opened up now so they are in the background and you can do and see some of those things.
So yeah I’d just be considering it as LEGOLAND as normal, just slightly off peak times but everything else is still going to be long queues and expensive and get here early and try to do a few things, and then take the rest of the day easy and wonder around and do things that you’d normally like to do and see.
And if you really want to jump queues and things like that, you are probably going to have to deal with the Reserve and Ride or what they use to call Q-bot.
Summing up and closing
So that’s it from us here at Family Bricks in LEGOLAND Windsor UK today. Had a good day overall, kids have really enjoyed themselves. Be sure to hit that thumbs up button if you’ve gotten value out of this or gotten some entertainment or learned something. And if it has helped you to make a decision to come or not to come, we’d love to know about it, or any comments you have, put them down in the comments below.
Alternatively for some other days out in London really recommend some of the castles cause they are completely deserted at the moment so you can get in and see all sorts of things really easily. There will be links around the videos for that.
We’ve done Hampton Court Palace – totally recommend
Leeds Castle – also recommend
Hever Castle – probably a little down the list and
Tower of London right in the city as well.
That’s all from us here at Family Bricks until next time when we talk all things LEGO and Lifestyle.
