LEGOLAND DUBAI – Opening

31st October 2016

What a treat: to be invited to the opening ceremony and first day of LEGOLAND DUBAI! Kingsley and myself together with friends hit Sheikh Zayed Road for a day of fun designed specifically for little people. The theme park is located just past Jebel Ali, a mere half an hours’ drive from The Marina and is interconnected with three other theme parks: Riverwalk, Motiongate and Bollywood on the same parcel of land. On this gloriously mild Autumn day two mums and two toddlers braved the crush of media to get in, and to get amongst what every kiddo loves playing with: millions of pieces of colourful LEGO.

And there were plenty of pieces, everywhere in fact. Our first stop once through the turn styles was ‘mini world’ – a vast emporium of modern and ancient empires and lands rendered beautifully from literally millions of LEGO. India, Petra, Kuwait, Dubai, Egypt, you name it, it was built with LEGO. And every tower was produced to be interactive: kids encouraged to press buttons and watch how this tower lights up, or that building shines bright, this truck moves or that train scoots along its tracks.

The outdoor attractions were just as fun especially for kids over 105cm tall (which Kingsley is not as yet). For each ride has of course height requirements and rightly so. We got a lot of bang out of the proverbial buck on three rides specially designed for toddlers: ‘airplanes’, ‘driving school’ and ‘fire engines’. Little ones accompanied by an adult get the experience of flying, but even more exciting is that little ones are allowed to ‘drive’ by themselves round a track. Kingsley simply would not get out of his safety belt! He was dermined to drive round and round. In fact Kingsley did not wish to leave any of these activities; dragging him to the next was near impossible. I of course wanted a glass of wine, but alas, LEGOLAND is not licensed.

When it got too warm outside there were plenty of indoor options such as LEGO building school, DUPLO groups for the babies and a movie theatre where we watched the latest LEGO movie in 4D. Here is our day in pictures…

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