Once we were in the park, I got to fan-boy over seeing a lifesize Lego Tardis at 10:15, if you know me in real life you will know that I have built my own lifesize Dalek, and I always like to see Doctor Who proudly on display.
We then walked to the Knights Kingdom, and joined the queue for The Dragon, we waited about forty five minutes to an hour, and during that time it broke down three times, on the third and final time they had to evacuate the train and the queue line.
At this point, as we didn’t feel particularly happy with the crowd level, we opted for an early lunch in Pizza Pasta to avoid the lunch rush hour. This was a very good choice just over £36 later for the three of us, and a bit of a Pokémon Go gym war with the lighthouse gym which we won, we left for our first ride of the day.
We started to queue for Mia’s Riding Adventure, where after waiting for about 25 minutes, we had another shutdown and queue evac, thankfully this time we were told to say the hosts name, and explain the shutdown situation to use the reserve and ride system to fast track ourselves onto a couple of rides, and were finally able to get onto the first ride of the day which was the iconic Legoland Express, this season running with no water jets, which makes me really happy as I don’t enjoy getting wet on any ride.
By the time we got off the Legoland Express, Mia’s Riding Adventure had finished testing, and had reopened, I was able to get two rides almost back to back on it. It is a very good and solid addition, and probably one of the more thrilling rides at the park since I last went, still sour over the removal of the Jungle Coaster in 2009.
We then headed back to Knights Kingdom, were this time I was successfully able to get onto The Dragon twice, once via the reserve and ride and once by the main queue line. Overall operations for the Dragon were fairly decent, but I am wondering how much longer the park can keep running it with the increasing reliability issues, that it seems to be plagued with. Today on both of my rides I was lucky to have got double back row, before today I had never had a back row ride on it, so to get it twice was very fun and I really enjoyed being pulled over the two main drops.
After having a Blue Raspberry Slush, and my parents having a hot drink, we headed round to the Duplo Dino Coaster, to get the new cred. At this point my parents went round Miniland, while I waited for 45 minutes for brand new for 2020 rollercoaster, this was by far the most awkward part of the day, waiting for the kiddie coaster completely on my own.
After 45 minutes, it was now time for the experience of a lifetime, my first ride on the world’s first Duplo Dino Coaster
, I was very lucky to get a back row ride for my first ride on this iconic new coaster to open in 2020. The ride starts with a curved tyre driven lifthill, and then you enter this rides main drop. I was actually surprised at the speed that the Dino Coaster reached, after this point you hit the banked turn round, around a unique piece of Duplo Dinosaur theming, do a slightly banked* s-bend back into the Station, and then around for a second lap.Duplo Dino Coaster is a much needed part of the line up, for Legoland. It is the perfect coaster to build up nervous younglings, to the next step coaster of the Dragon’s Apprentice and then onto the Dragon. As an adult, I personally would not wait longer than about 5 to 15 minutes if I was to re-ride it, and feel like I would like to experience it when I have a family of my own.
After this, my parents had decided that they were finished with the day, so we then headed back to the car, and headed home.
Final thoughts; overall it was a very good day at Legoland, social distancing on the rides were very good, but the park did feel like it have some bottlenecks of overcrowding, and people not respecting the stay to the left hand side of the pathways.