Big Adventures, Little World

Now I know I have been to LEGOLAND in the UK before, but this was a chance to go to Denmark, the home of Lego, and see the original. From looking at the website I could see that it was quite similar to LEGOLAND Windsor, but it was in Denmark. How can anyone resist that? Elese had never been to any LEGOLAND, so it was something for her as well. Why am I trying to make excuses though, we all know it was mainly for me!

I’d booked flights into Billund, Denmark, and the airport there is right next to LEGOLAND and you should be able to just walk across the tarmac to get there but no, they decide to have rules and safety precautions. How lame. I digress though. So we were flying into Billund on a Sunday morning, and then had the entire day to spend at LEGOLAND before flying to Copenhagen that night. We’d be tired, but the adrenalin and excitement of LEGOLAND would soon overcome that. That’s what I told Elese anyway.

The entrance to LEGOLAND, Billund in Denmark.

After sleeping for a few hours at the airport then the short flight to Billund, we got on a bus to LEGOLAND. Once there, Elese lined up for our tickets while I walked around to check out all the cool Lego statues and taking photos. There were masses of people around and I thought there was going to be people everywhere once inside, but we were pleasantly surprised in more ways than one.

Firstly because it wasn’t as busy as the people out the front made it look and secondly because of how big the place was. It was much bigger than the UK version and the Miniland was absolutely huge! For those of you don’t know, Miniland is all famous landmarks made of Lego. It was just amazing.

We decided to head off and check out some of the park and go on a few of the rides, the better of them anyway, and then come back and check out Miniland a bit later on. So we made our way through the park having a look at all the different things all made of Lego. Much of it was similar to LEGOLAND Windsor, but it still amazed me, Elese too.

We rode a couple of the rides, but they are mainly aimed at children, but we still had fun. Maybe that says something about our mentality, or maybe we are just awesome. I believe it is the latter. We stopped for a bite to eat and then it was over to Miniland to check out all the amazing Lego structures based on real life buildings.

LEGO Model of the Millenium Falcon

Miniland was so much different than the one in the UK, because they mainly have landmarks from Denmark, whereas the UK one features mostly landmarks from the UK. The newest addition to it though was Star Wars Miniland! It was awesome, with a different section for each episode of Star Wars. It was very impressive and had so much detail and even all the little characters like R2D2, C3PO and Jar Jar Binks. We spent quite a while on the Star Wars ones, and a lot of it had interactive bits as well where you could press a button and the spaceships would fly or the little characters would move around. It was really cool. After Star Wars though there was still so much more to see from around Denmark and all over the world.

We made our way through Miniland which wasn’t really that mini at all. It just kept going all over the place and had Lego buildings everywhere. The majority of them were all from Denmark which was really quite cool, especially Billund Airport as we had just been there earlier and could see the comparisons between the real and Lego versions. We made our way through Denmark seeing the mini Lego sites like Amalienborg (noble families mansions), Lilleby (or Littletown) which was the very first LEGO Miniland village, The Amalie Gardens in Copenhagen, Copenhagen Harbour, Rosenborg Castle, Fredensborg Palace, Ribe (the oldest city in Denmark), Billund Airport and a host of other places throughout Denmark. Then we made our way around the world going to Dusseldorf in Germany, Beverly Hills, Hollywood & John F. Kennedy Space Centre in the USA, as well as places around The Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Scotland. There was also a few larger scale models of some well know landmarks from around the world including Capitol Building, The Statue of Liberty, Abu Simbel Temples, Acropolis, Osaka Castle, Kronborg Castle, The Arabian Palace and a Singapore Airlines Airbus 380 Aeroplane. It really is something that is truly amazing. The amount of hours that would have gone into building it all and the sheer amount of bricks used is just incredible. I just think of how much fun it would be to sit there and make these models all day.

LEGO Model of a Singapore Airlines Airbus A380

We spent maybe a couple of hours going around and looking at all of Miniland but the day was getting on and we were going to have to make our way back to the airport soon. So off we went and went on one last ride, then made our way through the shops to pick up some of the coolest LEGO merchandise. One last thing we had to do was go up in a circular tower, probably 50 metres or more tall so we could see out over the entire park. It was pretty cool and you could see how much space Miniland actually took up as well as the rest of LEGOLAND as well. We got back to the ground and then our day was complete at LEGOLAND. It was a really fun day, but I expected nothing less from something that is as amazing as LEGOLAND. I could have spent hours on end there but we had to make our way onwards to Copenhagen.