LEGOLAND Shanghai opened last year, built specifically for families with kids aged 2 to 12. It's the world's eleventh LEGOLAND resort and the first international-IP family theme park in the Yangtze River Delta β eight themed lands, over 75 interactive rides, shows and attractions, and thousands of LEGO models built from more than 85 million bricks.
When he heard that number, Little Tiger's eyes lit up before we even left.
We picked a weekday to go β a very correct decision, and I'll explain why.
First impressions inside
LEGOLAND is fairly large. If you want to hit every ride, queue time and all, plan for a full day.
For a four-year-old boy like Little Tiger, the favorite area was LEGO City β it has the Driving School (drive little cars around a track; he queued twice and pushed every button he could on every run), plus the Rescue Academy, where adults pump a lever to raise a fire truck while he sits there yelling encouragement and I do the sweating.
LEGO City has six rides: Driving School, Junior Driving School, Coast Guard HQ, Rescue Academy, City Train Station, and Junior Flight School β basically suited only to kindergarten-age kids. So if your child is two to five, this area is the core; build your time around it.
There was one area I thought he wouldn't care about: the build-and-play zone. A big table of loose bricks where you sit and build whatever. Little Tiger sat there for almost forty minutes β I've never seen him focus that long on anything. The parents around all sat down and built too. For that moment, it was genuinely quiet.
A few practical notes
First, going on a weekday is the best-value call. Weekends are packed β popular rides routinely mean 30 to 60 minutes of waiting. On weekdays there's basically no queue. Same ticket, completely different experience.
Second, the park has ten shops, six themed restaurants, and dozens of kiosks and carts. Prices were more reasonable than expected β a latte was about 25 yuan, barely different from outside. True: I went in braced for being gouged and found the food not especially outrageous.
Third, the big shop lets you customize a minifigure β 99 yuan each; you hand-draw the outfit and pick accessories. We did it, and Little Tiger held that minifigure from the store all the way to the parking lot β for almost forty minutes.
Fourth, if you stay at the LEGOLAND Hotel, there's the world-first Monkie Kid themed room, its facade decorated with 54 giant bricks at 450Γ normal size β boys basically can't walk past it. We didn't stay, but we're considering it next time.