Now that we’re settled into the routine of fall, I have finally have a bit of time to sit down and recap all our awesome summer adventures, including our super fun trip to Legoland New York! Jane was hooked on the idea of going to Legoland after watching our favorite travel vloggers, the Top Flight Family, review their stay at the theme park and hotel (we have watched that video more than I should probably admit!). After months of begging to go, we decided to make a last minute detour to check out the Lego-themed amusement park on our way back from a family visit in nearby New York. After I shared a reel of our fun day at the park, I got TONS of messages from followers asking us for all the details on what we did, where we stayed, how long you could spend there, and I’m hoping that this post answers all of those and more!
What We Loved. The park is designed to be a big loop and is divided into different lands that align with Lego themes. we followed the advice of our favorite YouTubers and started our day by moving through Bricktopia. The Bricktopia Factory tour was one of the first rides we went on and we loved it – it was reminiscent of the Ratatouille ride in Disney where you’re immersed in the ride experience. The Ninjago was another ride that felt like a Disney-ride, with an interactive game that required you to be a ninja and fight off villains (I got the high score and am still bragging about it, no big deal).
In the Lego Castle world, we loved the tower ride and stopped for a bit to have lunch in front of the big castle. We visited on a very warm summer weekend, and the two indoor restaurants had extremely long lines because people were trying to get out of the sun and into some shade and air conditioning. If you’re looking for a faster bite, the castle eatery was pretty standard family-friendly amusement park food, and there was plenty of shady seating under outdoor umbrellas. I waited for a table and the food, while my husband and Jane hopped on line for the tower-climbing ride to maximize our time.
As we continued on to Lego City we hit up some of the most memorable rides/experiences of the day. We hopped into the 4D movie theater to watch a short lego movie, and it was a welcome, air-conditioned break from the hot sun. If you can time it correctly, it was a great mid-day pit-stop to beat the heat. After that, Jane tried out the lego driving school, which was definitely the highlight of the day! Kids can drive around a mini city, complete with stop lights and road signs, and when they finish they can get a “lego city driver’s license” to take home. We were very impressed with her driving skills, she took the rotaries like a real Massachusetts driver, ha!
The Pirate land at Legoland NY is one of the final areas of the park loop and one of the best themed in my opinion! There was a really fun boat ride that had water cannons on it, and you can wind up the water cannons to squirt and people passing by on the outside. But don’t worry, pedestrians can get their revenge at similar water cannons along the walkway and squirt back at the riders on the pirate ships!
We ended the day walking through Miniland, which has tons of complex displays of mini cities built out of Legos. This part of the park is built into a hill, so we slowly wound our way through all of the city displays before ending back at the entrance. There is a massive Lego gift shop at the entrance of the park, which we popped into for a souvenir keychain on the way home – if your kids are itching for a lego set at one of the other gift shops, it’s nice that you can hit this on the way out and not have to carry it around all day!
By far Jane’s favorite part of the whole experience was the plethora of large scale lego sculptures that you could touch/sit-in/take pictures with in each land. I think I have 90 pictures on my phone because she wanted to take a picture with every.single.one. And I’ll admit, they were pretty cool! They also helped break up some of the walking that we did around the park. 
What We Skipped. We did the majority of the park in one day, but we did skip a few things to prioritize what we really wanted to see. One of the big things we skipped was splash zone-water park area, mainly because we didn’t pack a bathing suit and didn’t want to be soaking wet our ride home. If you wanted to do this water area, you have to pre-reserve a timed slot online beforehand. It looked *quite* crowded on a hot summer day, and no one in our family seemed bummed out about skipping it, but if you were staying overnight on the property it might be fun to do this mid-day and then take a break for some dry clothes and lunch back at the hotel.
We also skipped staying over at the hotel. Our good friends went a few weeks before us and raved about how cool the themed rooms were and how fun play area in the lobby was. The hotel rates were very expensive on the weekend we were there (more than we paid to stay for a night in Disney World!) and because we had family nearby we decided to skip out on an overnight. If you’re coming from the Boston area, we left the park to head home around 3:30 in the afternoon and made it back home at a reasonable hour. I also thought that for an average Lego fan like Jane, one day was a really good amount of time to see the nearly the entire park. 
A Few Legoland NY Tips. A few things we learned from our day at Legoland New York! First, the park and resort is cashless and some of the food stands were virtually managed, meaning you had to order and pay through the Legoland App. There was no way to order or pay at the Castle where we ate lunch, and we were savvy enough to quickly download the app and use the QR code to place our food order and check out – but there were definitely families struggling with this! Having the app pre-downloaded would be really helpful, and we ended up using it to navigate the park and find food and ice cream and bathrooms too.
The app also had wait times listed for the rides, but we found that they weren’t entirely accurate (in most cases we waited way less than the listed times, a few times we waited a bit more). Another thing we weren’t entirely prepared for was the mini-figure trading!
Our trip was impromptu and we didn’t bring any mini-figures with us, but there are trading posts throughout the park where you can swap your mini-figure for another (and you can trade with park staff that have that them on their name badges!). It was a cute idea, and next time we’ll come prepared! And with that, my final note, we had so much fun that there will definitely be a next time for us at Legoland New York!
