I love having my kids’ birthday parties at home, but I also love NOT having them at home. As much as I enjoy all the fun and details, it’s A LOT of work. If I had to list one of Daniel’s favorite things this year, it would be LEGOS. (He even went to LEGO summer camp.) So I was not surprised when he said he wanted to go to LEGOLAND Florida for his 7th birthday. The deal? It would just be our family. He was fine with that…so off we went!
We first experienced LEGOLAND Florida during their grand opening festivities in October 2011. We were excited to go back and check out the new attractions and finally visit the giant water park. It was August in Florida, so we knew we’d welcome the cool off after a day filled with rides and lots of walking.
We spent the first night in Orlando where we hung out at Downtown Disney and had dinner at Daniel’s favorite restaurant, Joe’s Crab Shack. The next morning we were up bright and early to drive the 30 minutes to Winter Haven, FL – the home of LEGOLAND!
Daniel’s favorite part of LEGOLAND is MiniLand USA. It’s the heart of the park and features seven different cities all built out of LEGOS. It’s truly amazing and my future architect could not get enough. We stayed there a long time and he had to pose in front of all the landmarks.
Annabel’s favorite part was the LEGO Friends Shop where she picked out her one treat. It was a stuffed LEGO puppy dog. No surprise there. She even met one of the LEGO Friends!
I love the Safari Trek. Whenever I can see a giraffe, I’m happy. Even a giraffe made out of hundreds of brown and cream colored LEGOS.
And I held the stuff while the rest of my family enjoyed the roller coasters. It was the first time Daniel and Annabel went on the LEGO Technic ride and they loved it.
We also saw our first LEGOLAND live show, the Pirates’ Cove Water Ski Show. It was all about pirates invading the LEGOLAND lake and there were some seriously cool water ski stunts and special effects. The best part? The hero of the story was a girl! Annabel was thrilled. (Daniel thought it was pretty awesome too.)
And you can’t go to LEGOLAND without building with LEGOS! The kids went right to the earthquake building zone where you try and build large towers that can withstand the giant shake button. Everyone was checking out their creations. They could have stayed there all day. I kept reminding them that they have boxes of LEGOS at home, but it’s definitely much more fun to build there.
I didn’t snap any pictures of the water park because it was packed and hot and all we wanted to do was spend time in the wave pool and water slides. The final stop of the day was the giant LEGO store to pick out Daniel’s birthday present. He chose a glow-in-the-dark ghost train. The biggest accomplishment was leaving the park with just ONE box. Phew. But the REAL accomplishment was that smile glued to Daniel’s face for eight hours straight. Thanks for the fun, LEGOLAND Florida! See you soon!
