Is LEGOLAND still fun if you’re an adult? We review
CILISOS got an invite last week to spend 3 days and 2 nights at LEGOLAND Malaysia in conjunction with their Friendship Fest, and the entire office was fighting for a spot. An entire office comprised of adults… which we didn’t expect, since only kids would wanna go to LEGOLAND, right? Apparently not. In the end, Umar (marketing guy), and myself (the writer) were lucky enough to be chosen to make the trip down to Johor.
Dumb & Dumber 2: Electric Boogaloo.
Anywho, after spending a weekend there, here are the thoughts of two overgrown children that grew up mucking around with Lego sets.
The hotel rooms and in-house meals were pretty rad
View of the LEGOLAND Hotel from our car.
If you were expecting a standard hotel room with beds and a bathroom at the Legoland Hotel (which totally looks like it was built out of Lego bricks, by the way) – guess again. Look, the rooms do come with those, but there’s a twist. We’ll let the picture do the talking.
This is not your average hotel room.
While the breakfast buffet at the hotel’s Bricks Family Restaurant felt kinda ehh, their dinner buffet was *chef’s kiss*. The highlights, in our opinion, were the fresh chilled shrimp, duck confit in herb sauce, roast beef in marinara sauce, and vegetarian lasagna (yeah, they’ve got vegetarian options).
That’s a buffet spread. No cap.
Hotel & buffet: 8 Lego bricks out of 10
The theme park’s supposed to be for kids, but…
Despite how it looks, we didn’t have to queue long to get in.
…LEGOLAND got us running around trying out different rides and checking out different attractions like we were 12 again. There was something about the atmosphere of the theme park that subtly drew us in and kept us there the whole day. Maybe it was because there was this sense of immersion since everything in the park was Lego themed. Maybe it was just us falsely associating Lego with simpler times.
Whatever the “something” was, Umar and I agreed that our favorite attraction in the theme park was The Dragon, a dragon-shaped roller coaster that’s set in the middle of the medieval-themed LEGO Kingdoms. The coaster drop probably won’t give you a heart attack, but the eye for detail in the indoor portion of the ride more than makes up for it. Take this for example: there’s a room of drunk Lego knights being rowdy (after a long day of jousting, ostensibly), and little details like the chandelier and the rats on the floor added so much to the mood.
Honorable mentions go to:
- NINJAGO The Ride: an interactive 4D ride that pits you against evil ninjas, skeletons and a fire-breathing dragon
- MINILAND: a showcase of super intricate, scaled-down Lego models of real life landmarks from around the world
- Driving School: kids can experience driving on a proper road (minus the road rage) AND they’ll get a neat driving license
Theme park: 7 Lego bricks out of 10
The aquarium and the water park made a splash… in our hearts
They’ve even got a marine life exchange programme with Aquaria KLCC.
Yeah, LEGOLAND’s got a dedicated building that houses SEALIFE, an interactive Lego themed aquarium. What’s so impressive about SEALIFE (aside from the actual sea life on display) is the clever use of space, which made us feel like there were way more exhibits than there should’ve been in the two-storey premise. The variety of marine life caught us a little off guard too; they ranged from seahorses to jellyfish to manta rays to sharks.
The coolest series of displays (according to the writer) were the tanks housing parts of a shipwreck… that’s modeled after a real shipwreck off the coast of East Malaysia.
Now for LEGOLAND’s water park. Here’s what Umar had to say about the attractions:
…the rides are both for kids and adults… there are also rides where you can only go with 2 or more people… the other rides that don’t require a float were also pretty exciting – Umar, CILISOS’s resident water park connoisseur
TL;DR: LEGOLAND’s water park ain’t no Sunway Lagoon knockoff – visitors are in for a whale of a time (cue laugh track), no matter their age.
SEALIFE & water park: 8/10
Would we make a return trip to LEGOLAND?
That’s made out of Lego. For real.
So, would we go back to LEGOLAND? Our answer is a resounding yes. Admittedly, not every attraction gripped us; we’d probably have enjoyed everything if we were like 17 years younger, but hey, we had a good time, and we’d gladly go again given the chance.
For families with kids tho? LEGOLAND is perfect. They don’t just have attractions that are fun, the theme park also boasts educational value. Kids can take home some geographical trivia from the miniature world of MINILAND, a little bit of practical physics from the Build and Test Centre, and much more.
We’d like to give a big thanks to LEGOLAND Malaysia again for the invite and yeah, like we said, we’d love to pay y’all another visit (wink wink).
