British 90s nostalgia and shite

My first time at Legoland

The first time I went to Legoland was, I think, in 2002, when I was aged fifteen. This is a late age to go to Legoland for the first time. Ideally, your first time should be when you are around the age of eight, not when you are almost legally an adult. I wasn't so much a Master Builder as a mastubator.

I was disappointed with Legoland. This was for two reasons. The first reason is that I was fifteen instead of eight. The second reason is that I expected everything to be made of Lego, and the sad reality was that hardly anything was made of Lego. There was a miniature village made of Lego and some large Lego models, but the rest of the park was made of concrete, metal, and plastic.

And the models were shit and embarrassing. For example, there was this shit model of a shit clown playing an acoustic guitar. My sister and brother weren't impressed as you can see by their expressions.

Though to be fair, the log flume was pretty good. As you can see from this photo:

By our expressions, it looks pretty extreme. Not what you'd expect from Legoland. Lego's more like building shit. So the log flume at least was a welcome distraction from the rest of the park.

Lego Creator

It was in the Legoland gift shop that I saw a computer game called Lego Creator. On the case, it said you could make virtual Lego towns and then walk around them as if you were a minifigure. To me, that sounded great.

"Can we buy this, Dad?" I asked.

"Are you sure you're going to play it?" he said. What he also wanted to say was, "You're fifteen. Shouldn't you be going out and having a life instead of sitting at home and playing computer games designed for eight-year-olds?"

"Please Dad," I said. "I'll play it Dad, I'll definitely play it."

So we bought it and took it home. I played it for five minutes and it was shit, so I put it in the cupboard and never played it again. That game cost my dad £22.

My second time at Legoland

We went back to Legland in 2005. Here are some of the photos we took.

Cave

So far I've made it sound like Legoland was completely shit, but that was not the case. There were some good parts in Legoland, like the log flume. There was also a weird cave you walked around in, which was good. There were seven parts to this cave, each one with a different theme. You had to find a key in each part. One part looked like the inside of an Egyptian tomb, only made with Lego.

Mazes

I liked the mazes too even though, or perhaps because, they had nothing to do with Lego.

This man looks like he's rolling a spliff. In Legoland.

Castle

I also liked the castle. It looks like a giant Lego castle playset.

Okay, so there were actually a few things I did like about Legoland.

Giant Duplo statue

Another thing I liked was this giant Duplo creation.

It genuinely makes me emotional because we had those same Duplo pieces, even the piece with eyes, and we put the pieces together in pretty much the same way as they are here. When you're three years old, you put Duplo together in random ways like that because you can't make anything better yet.

So it's great that the park's designers didn't make something complicated. It's faithful to the things that young kids actually make with Duplo.

Nowadays of course there's loads of Duplo stuff at Legoland Windsor. The website says there's a Duplo rollercoaster, Duplo helicopters, Duplo train, and a Duplo playground. Back in my day though we didn't have any of that. We just had a Duplo statue.

My siblings and I played with Duplo throughout our entire childhoods, by the way, despite the recommended age range for Duplo being 3-5 years. In fact, I still play with Duplo now, as a grown man.

Gold panning

There was also this place where you could go panning for gold.

At least, they said it was gold. At the time even I was sceptical that the gold was real. My brother seemed to think it was real though and planned to collect enough to lift us out of poverty.

What does gold panning have to do with Lego anyway? Gold panning's a bit random, isn't it? As far as I know, there's no Lego set where you make gold panners.

A lot of Legoland was like that: bizarre and random.

Easter Island heads

We also saw these Easter Island heads. I'm not sure you were actually allowed to go near them. There may have been a fence. Not that my brother took any notice of the fence.

Driving school

Here's my brother in a car. He was thirteen years old at this point. I'm not sure if he was actually allowed on or if he snuck on when no-one was looking. He looks confused so maybe even he didn't know.

Okay, I looked it up and the Driving School still exists. According to the Legoland website, the age limit is 13 years old. So he was technically allowed on, but only just.

I should have gone to the Legoland Driving School. Maybe they could have taught me how to drive and I wouldn't have failed my driving test three times.

2008

The last time I went to Legoland was in 2008. We didn't take many photos though. We were all grown-up by that point and my family had stopped taking photos, period.

One of the only photos I have is of the Dragon ride.

I don't look like I'm having much fun. It's probably because I was 21 and yet still going to a theme park designed for children.

You would think Legoland would impose some kind of age requirement to stop weird adults like me from entering the park, but no.

The Legoland Discovery Centers actually do that. You can't go in if you don't have children with you. Believe me, I've tried.

I managed to find a way to get around this, however. It's simple: just have kids.

That's why I have a son. It's so can get into the Legoland Discovery Center.