Legoland/ Cypress Gardens

Yesterday we headed out early to Legoland.

The park sits on the site of the old Cypress Gardens and opened just a year ago.  We were excited to hear about Legoland Florida since my boys have been asking to go to the one in California for years.

It was great.



The park isn't so large that you can't cover it in a day.

We watched a comical fire safety show that taught the kids to stay low and go, to stop, drop, and roll, call 911 for an emergency and my boys favorite to "put the wet stuff on the hot stuff."


They walked away from the show singing that little song.

We went on most every ride in the park with only a 10 minute wait at the most.

The kids went to driving school and got to drive little battery powered cars around a track.  There were little Lego areas set up throughout the park where kids could play and create while parents held their spot in line on the rides.

It was clean and so kid friendly; as all good kid parks should be.

The most impressive part of the park though was getting to see all the amazing Lego creations.

They had mini city replicas of Las Vegas, New York City, San Francisco, Washington DC, Kennedy Space Center, and various parts of Florida all represented.

Throughout the park they had large Lego animals, dinosaurs, even a full size car (with a video inside the driving school to see how it was assembled).  The ladies that used to walk around Cypress Gardens were recreated in Lego pieces as well and set throughout the park on benches.


We walked through the tribute to Cypress Gardens and saw the Banyan tree in the middle.  It was planted in 1939, it is so huge already and yet we could see where more roots were already growing towards the ground.


We saw fish, turtles, sausage trees and banana trees.  While the boys didn't think the gardens compared at all to the rest of the park we did see some really neat fauna and it was a great bit of nature set into the theme park.

We read about the knees of the Cypress Trees and learned a bit about the history of the lake and Winter Haven itself. 
  
Cypress gardens was always known for it's water ski show and Legoland also kept that tradition, Lego style.  We sat to watch the pirate water ski show complete with Lego characters.

There were boats, water skiers, a ski jump, and jet skis.  The kids sat in the splash zone and got a bit wet.  They were in awe of the water skiers and all the tricks they could do. 


We took a walk through a Lego "Factory" that I must admit was a disappointment to me.  I thought we'd actually get to see a small demonstration of a factory but it's really more of a recreation.

In a tiny room next to the store they show a short (fictional) video about the Lego factory followed by an even smaller room that has models set up showing piles of tiny plastic going into a machine and coming out on the other side as a block.  They then explain that the pieces are inspected before being boxed and shipped.

 It was still educational and the boys wanted to shop for Lego sets before leaving anyway so we were happy.

 It was a great day and so much fun.  I'm sure we'll be back on future trips.    


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