Legoland Schaumburg (IL)

Last summer we went to the relatively new Legoland in the Streets of Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, Illinois. We were actually going to a Disney Vacation Club presentation about their new purchasing opportunities and the new stuff coming to Disney parks. (I had this premonition that we were going to win the grand prize of a vacation to WDW...shows you how accurate my premonitions are...)

Anyway, right next to the DVC home in Woodfield Mall was the Legoland, and, since my kids are 8 and 6, they began insisting we go there. They had been good, sitting through that DVC presentation (though there were parts of it they did enjoy), so we obliged. Besides, I was curious as to what it was.

From the outside, it looks pretty small. It does take up two floors, but a lot of it is a Lego store and the ticket taking and waiting area to get in. Once inside, it was bigger than it looked. You enter into a room with a scale model, in Legos, of the city of Chicago. There is also an area where the kids can control some cranes and vehicles. That's sort of a pre-show/waiting area to be admitted into the facility proper.

Once they admit the group you happen to be in, you walk into a pathway filled with full sized Lego creations, people, animals, and fantasy creatures. It's an area that the kids can touch and play on things, but there is not much to it.

When you exit that area, you see some more full sized figures. If I recall correctly, there were Star Wars figures, a Batman figure, and another character - Spiderman? I don't remember too well, though we probably have some photos of the figures.

Then you can visit the "attractions" such as they are. There is a dark ride through a medieval sort of scene where all the animatronics are made of Legos. It was not exactly Disney-quality, but it was pretty good. There is a 3D movie about an adventure of a Lego boy who has to go save a princess and fight an evil sorcerer. There is a tour of the Lego "factory", where you get a Lego brick at the end of the show. And there is a hands on area for creating Lego vehicles, much like you'll find at the Lego store in Downtown Disney, with ramps to run them on and bins of parts all over the place. There's a snack bar in the same room with the Lego parts, and of course you exit through the store.

It's a bit pricey for what they have, but the attractions are fairly good (if not Disney) quality.

I've never been to the Legoland in California, but I have to think that this is nothing like it, really....probably hard to compare the two.

The thought came to me that, what if one could create something like this, themed originally, of course, in my area? I think it could be a huge success. It has to be all indoors, obviously, but it is in interesting thought experiment.