Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

We had originally intended to take the kids to two theme parks while we were in Florida. We knew universal studios was a definite – Harry Potter world was too good to pass up. We had thought we would attempt Disney World but it turns out you need to decide that way more than a few days in advance – it’s sold out until end of April 😳.

A much cheaper and much less daunting backup plan was Legoland. We have done a couple indoor Legolands in Toronto and Boston and they were always a big hit. Legoland is about a 45 minute drive from where we are staying so we figured we would book our tickets online en route. They were calling for some rain and possible thunderstorms so we wanted to wait until morning of to commit to the tickets. Little did we know that if you wait until day of the tickets go up $25/person. Thankfully after some Google sleuthing I found a discount code to get the kids in for free and we didn’t have to postpone the Legoland day.

We arrived at Legoland only slightly later than originally planned, in the pouring rain. We waited out the showers in the van so that we wouldn’t have to spend the day soaked, unlike all the other Legoland goers braving the elements in their ponchos.

The kids had a total blast. We got off to a shaky start after we had to be removed from the first roller coaster we went on. Thankfully we hadn’t left the station and didn’t have to scale down on the track like the other riders. It was smooth sailing from there though. There were almost no lines at any of the rides. A lot of them we were able to just cycle around. The kids went on every roller coaster in the park. All of them more than once. I even braved a few and didn’t hate them.

By 6:00 everyone was feeling pretty satisfied with our day. We had checked off every ride we wanted to go on – many more than once. We had refilled our unlimited (and shared) souvenir cup more times than we could count and walked over 7km. On our way out though we stopped at guest services – legoland has a rainy day policy. If it rains more than 120minutes during the day they’ll give you passes to return. We grabbed our free passes (that we are passing along to the MacPhees as a thank you for the van!) and headed for dinner.

We figured we would go really big on the day – it was too late to make it home and cook supper and everyone was still in high spirits so we headed to Chuck E Cheese for supper. I have to admit I was very surprised. I have never been to a Chuck E Cheese before but it was very clean, super bright and the pizza was delicious. I mean probably the best takeout pizza I’ve ever had. I had imagined a limp potentially undercooked soggy pie but instead it was crispy with a garlic butter stuffed crust. So good. The kids had a total blast. Again, because we are cheap, we split a single 60minute card at the arcade games. You have to space out your game taps a bit, but we definitely maxed our $25 worth of play.