Vacation 2009 - Day 2

The next morning, after a quick breakfast in our hotel room, we took off for parts south. We drove down the I-5, and in relatively short order were at our hotel. We had a quick lunch (in our new hotel room) and then hoofed it over to Legoland.

I wasn't sure what to expect. My friend John said that when he was there with his kids the main element to the park was long lines, which doesn't sound so fun. The entrance we went through was on the back side of the park. This meant that any crowds that may have entered through the front hadn't necessarily gotten to our part of the park yet, so at first I wasn't too surprised that lines were short, but as the day wore on, I realized that there just weren't that many people at Legoland. We had short lines ALL DAY. I think the longest we waited in line for a ride was 15 minutes. So Legoland was GREAT!

Legoland, Part I
We started off in Castle Hill, rode some tamer rides to warm up, and then tried the Dragon, a small roller coaster. Thing 1 loved it right off the bat. Thing 2 seemed to like the coaster part, but the section prior to that, which was dark and loud, scared him.


We wandered down through Miniland USA, which is an insane reconstruction of seven cities in Legos. This was where I figured out that Thing 2 was the perfect age for Legoland, because he went running ahead, so excited about these set-ups. They had the Washington, DC section set up to show Obama's swearing in. Sweetie was greatly amused by the 'giant' brown-headed cowbirds invading the towns. We took a boat ride, which gave nice views of a number of things like their Mount Rushmore, and then moved on to The Imagination Zone.



There we found a somewhat wet ride, which was nice on a hot day, so we did it twice. We saw a '4-D' movie, the Things and I did a whirly ride that would've made Sweetie throw-up, then Thing 1 and Sweetie found Project X, which is a more serious rollercoaster than the Dragon - it had a much steeper drop. Thing 2 and I decided to sit that one out, but Thing 1's quote afterwards was "That was really scary. Let's go again!"


We moved on to the Land of Adventure, which had a fun ride with laser guns, and a plane ride that the Things enjoyed. There was also a play place with air guns that shot foam balls. That place was crazy, but still not crowded.

We ate an early dinner at the park, worked our way back to the egress, stopping by the Dragon for one last ride (or two), then headed back to the hotel. For rest? No, to go swimming! Thing 2, now that he can swim, is very enthusiastic about pool time. And Thing 1 now swims well enough that I'm not convinced he's going to drown if I'm not watching him all the time. It was a great pool. A lot of it was only 3ft, and the deepest it got was 5ft. Also, there was a hot tub that even hot (unlike some hotel spas). Needless to say, everyone was pretty tired that night, and we all agreed Day 2 was a great day.