Legoland. The land of multidimensional torture. Parental, financial, psychological, physical. All under the guise of Having Fun. After hours of queuing and trying not to lose children in the crowds, the main question on my mind was ‘Where can I get a bloody glass of wine??!’ Here are my tips for how to increase your chances of survival.

Our UK trip in April was drawing to an end and we wanted a big fun day out with the family. Goobie suggested visiting Legoland in Berkshire.

Tip One: don’t listen to your six year-old.

I like Lego. It’s a great product that keeps Goobie entertained for ages.

I hate Lego movies. I’ll never get back the 90 minutes of my life I spent watching a plastic yellow mutant dressed as a superhero. Utter torture.

But as it turned out, that wasn’t the only 90 minutes of my life I was to waste in the name of Lego.

Here’s a little story that sums up a trip to Legoland:

An alien comes down to earth for a day. He arrives in a place called Legoland. He notices that lots of humans are trying to get inside. They sit in their cars for an hour waiting to get to the car park. They join a throng of other humans waiting to pay lots and lots of money to be allowed inside.

Once inside, he sees a brilliant sight. Loads of fun rides crammed onto a hillside. There’s a castle, boats, big wheels, mysterious buildings hiding more rides within. He races to the nearest ride.

And joins a queue. Where he waits for an hour. Children full of pent-up energy annoying stressed parents. And they stand. And wait. And wait. But it will be worth it, they say. This ride looks excellent. Finally, they board the ride. It’s fun!!!

And over in 30 seconds.

Squashed in with hundreds of humans, the alien joins queue after queue. Finally he loses his cool. ‘Why are we doing this???’ he cries out. Hundreds of tired faces look back at him. ‘Because we are having fun,’ they sigh.

At the end of the day, the alien returns to his spaceship and tells his alien friends about Planet Earth. ‘For fun, humans hand over vast amounts of money to be squashed together for hours in queues for rides that last 30 seconds.’ He looks at his intergalactic watch. ‘In total I spent over 3 hours queuing for rides that lasted 2 minutes. 2 minutes of fun!’

‘Insane planet,’ all the aliens agree. ‘Let’s move on.’

Get the picture? Okay. If you’re still considering a trip to Legoland, read on.

Tip Two: go to Chessington World of Adventures instead.

I love rides and have been to most of the main theme parks in the UK. Chessington World of Adventures is one of my favourites. It’s not too far away from Legoland in Surrey. It also costs a lot (though not as much) and also has long queues but, in my experience, it’s only the massive rides that have the really long queues, not the smaller rides. Also, Chessington is more spread out so you aren’t constantly in a crowd. They have different lands and themed rides and it’s all done so much better than Legoland. Plus there’s the wildlife park and the Sea Life Centre for when you are sick of queuing.

Tip Three: if you are determined to go to Legoland, go on the off-peak days.

Peak times are weekends and school holidays. So-called ‘Blue Flag Days.’ So to avoid the crowds you either have to bunk school or, if you are local, get an annual pass and pop in after school for an hour or two. If you are a grown-up, don’t ever have kids and you can go whenever you want.

Tip Four: if you have to go during peak times, sort out tickets in advance.

Unless you want to be totally shafted financially, don’t wake up one morning and go to Legoland on an impulse. You need to plan. It costs £60 each to go on a Blue Flag day. If you book tickets a week in advance, it’s £13 cheaper. Or look around for special offers. My dad managed to get a couple of £13 tickets via his Tesco Clubcard. My mum raced around Sainsbury’s looking for Buy-One-Get-One-Free coupons on cereal packets – and found some.

Tip Five: don’t get there at 9.50am.

Because that’s what the rest of the world will be doing. Legoland opens at 10am (though the times can vary, so check in advance) so it makes sense to get there bang on when it opens. After all, you want to make the most of every second since you’ve had to take out a small mortgage to pay for tickets. But don’t do it. Either get there before 9.50am or quite a long time after.

Purely by accident, we got there early and drove into the car park with no trouble. My parents were 10 minutes behind us and got caught up in the queue of traffic all aiming to get there at exactly the same time.

By the time they arrived, we didn’t get into Legoland until 11am.

Tip Six: decide in advance whether to use Q-Bot.

After shelling out £60 for your ticket, you expect a day full of fun rides, right? Wrong! You shell out £60 to queue for rides. Once you’ve arrived an hour late after queuing to get in the car park, you then spend most of the day queuing for rides. And with some queues over an hour long, you don’t actually have time to go on as many rides as you’d think. We had time to go on four.

Enter the Q-Bot. You’ve paid £60 to be allowed into Legoland’s hallowed grounds. To actually do more than just queue while you are there, Legoland wants more of your cash. You can pay from £20 extra (each!) to reserve a time on a ride. This reduces or cuts out queuing. It would actually be a great idea if it was a free service or if the ticket prices were cheaper.

So basically, to have time to fully enjoy the park, you’re paying £80 a ticket on a Blue Flag day if you don’t book in advance. You could fly to Morocco for less than that.

Tip Seven: don’t think you can guess the length of the queuing time by looking at the queue.

It’s a trick. What you can see is only the tail end of the queue to tempt you in. And once you’re in, there’s no way out. You enter a maze of tight switch-backs, squeezed into a tiny space to make the queue look smaller than it is.

Ignore the signs telling you how long the queue is. They lie. I only realised this once I was 60 minutes into the Ninjago queue. The sign said it would take 30 minutes.

Tip Eight: make sure your 4-month–old baby can walk onto the ride themselves.

After queuing for an hour to go on the Ninjago ride, I get to the front of the queue and the woman says, with a totally serious face:

‘I’m afraid your baby can’t go on the ride unless he can walk onto it himself.’

‘Oh yes,’ I want to say, ‘Hercules is very advanced. Would you like to see him fly onto the ride instead??!!’ Arsehole.

It turns out the bit about babies walking onto the ride is in the disabilities section of the ride’s guidelines. Not the section about which age-group the ride is suitable for.

Bastards.

Tip Nine: buy your large bag of Maltesers before you get there.

They cost £1 in the real world. And over £3 in Legoland. That goes for the rest of the food too. Bring your own lunch. But don’t expect to find anywhere to sit down to eat it.

If you decide to buy lunch there, expect a sour-faced waitress to tell you there aren’t any available tables.

Tip Ten: TAKE YOUR OWN WINE!!!

Legoland should give every adult a complimentary bottle on entry. But they don’t. You’ll have to take your own.

It will help with the stress of the following:

• Your child walking 2 metres in front of you and disappearing into the crowd.
• Your dad walking 2 metres behind you and disappearing into the crowd.
• Queuing 45 minutes for the poxiest mini roller coaster with your eldest child while you can hear your youngest child bawling in the arms of his grandmother just outside.
• Queuing for the loo fearing your son (and you too) might not be able to hold it in for that long. And remembering you forgot a spare change of clothes.
• For when you accept that your 4-month-old baby really can’t walk onto the Ninjago ride himself and you have to sit outside while everyone else has fun.
• For when you can’t find anywhere in the park to buy a bloody glass of wine. What do you mean they don’t sell any on the hot dog stand?

An extra tip: savour the good things

After all, you chose to come here rather than go to Morocco.

For me, it was the look on my son’s face. He was having the time of his life with his cousins. He adores Legoland. He and his cousins loved the Lego Star Wars exhibition. And who cares about queuing times when there are queue fences to swing on and Lego to build?

Goobie loved the rides, once we finally got on them. The poxy mini roller coaster was great for his age. As was the mini pirate ship. Ninjago was his favourite. Legoland is best for children under 12, I’d say. There were a few great-looking rides for older visitors, like Mia’s Riding Adventure, but there wasn’t time to queue for those too.

During 3 hours of queuing, I got to catch up with my sister, who I hadn’t seen for 9 months. And she got to meet her new nephew for the first time.

After spending hours patiently waiting around for us to go on rides, my parents found somewhere they enjoyed – the magnificent Miniland, depicting scenes of famous places across the world.

And finally, there was this. The sight of Herc on his first boat ride. He might not be able to walk unassisted onto the Ninjago ride, but he rocked the No-Children-On-Laps policy!

To conclude? Buy an annual pass and go on off-peak days. Or suck up the cost and buy £20 Q-Bot tickets on top. There are loads of decent rides at Legoland – don’t spend the day watching them from a queue.