London – Day 5 – Legoland
Day 5 in London and once again this one was aimed at Morgan with a trip to Legoland. We aimed to get there just after it opened at 10am so set off from the hotel at 8am with a short walk to Earl’s Court tube station. The plan was a quick 10 minute tube journey to Paddington station to catch the train to Windsor followed by a shuttle bus to Legoland.
Unfortunately as we entered Earl’s Court Tube Station there were signs up saying that the route along the District and Circle Lines to paddington Station was closed so we had to quickly re-route. We decided to head to Hammersmith and then onto the Hammersmith and City Line to Paddington. This added an extra 15 minutes or so to our tube journey but we would still be OK.
We were soon at Paddington, only to discover that the next train to Windsor was delayed, so we had to wait around for a while there. In the end we jumped onto a train going through Slough and then changed at Slough to another train going to Windsor. It was now 10 0’clock so we headed off to find the shuttle bus to Legoland. It wasn’t obvious where it was so we asked at the tourist information centre and were sent to a bus stop just outside the church. As we arrived at the bus stop a bus (that wasn’t ours) pulled away and we checked for the next one which was due in 10 minutes or so. As we waited though the road was closed and a RAFA parade started outside the church. We waited for a while but it was clear that there would be no buses along this route for a while until the road re-opened. We took a quick look at the timetables and saw that there was another bus due soon and that there was a bus stop prior to this one on the other side of Windsor. This one would be before the road closure and would hopefully re-route around the closed road as presumably the bus we had been waiting for had done so. We made a quick dash across Windsor and managed finally to catch the shuttle bus to Legoland.
We finally got to Legoland at around 11:30, 90 minutes later than we had hoped, just as it started to rain! The entrance prices for Legoland are ridiculous at £45 per adult, but we had ½ price vouchers so managed to dave £65 on the actual entry costs. It was still a lot of money and then they rip you off with the cost of rubbish fast food and such like once in the park, but it was till a good day out.
Morgan spent the whole time saying, look, look, look, and pointing to the various lego models. he loved the rides too, especially the wet ones such as the log flume and also the ‘Dragon’ roller-coaster. None of the rides are huge which was a good thing as Anna doesn’t like them and although I don’t mind them they make me travel sick, but between us we managed to take Morgan on most of them.
The queues weren’t too long except maybe for the laser shooting ‘ride’ in Land of the Pharaohs There was quite a long wait for that, mainly because it was indoors and we joined the queue just after it had started pouring with rain. Some of the rides that we queued for such as the dinosuar safari were over with far too quickly though. After 15 minutes queuing you would expect the ride to last more than a minute or so, but it didn’t. I would have been very disappointed had I queued for an hour or more which is sometimes the case. It wasn’t really a ride either, just an excuse to see some cool lego models of dinosaurs.
Talking of models I think the best bit as far as all of were concerned was the mini-land where various countries are depicted through leg models. Morgan loved this and Anna and I thought it was pretty cool too. Similarly the Stars Wars exhibition made up of some impressive lego models of various star wars scenes was impressive too.
We saved the wettest rides for last, had a look around the shop where Morgan bought a little stationary set as a souvenir and then started our journey home feeling wet, cold and a little hungry. Thankfully the journey back was easier than the one there with only short waits for connecting buses, trains and tubes. The tube line that we needed was still closed we re-routed in a different direction this time and halfway around Morgan pointed out what could have been a shorter route. I checked it on my Tube Map app and he was right. His route would have saved us 5 minutes. He was already reading the Tube Map better than we were, but we have to take credit for it as we were the ones that taught him how to use it a couple of days ago!
We got off the tube one stop early at Gloucester Road and once again headed to Garfunkel’s for dinner. This time we could use our voucher through VoucherCloud for a free pudding again so had a decent feed before heading back to the hotel after a long day out. Tomorrow it was time for the journey home after a fun family trip to London. We were too tired to pack though so would leave that for the morning.
You would never believe that you were brought up in a house full, and over flowing with children making noise, lol
All in all though sounds like you all enjoyed you holiday in the Capital, with the added bonus of a successful Triathlon
What a pain getting there. It’s probably all set up with drivers in mind. I’d like to go, but the cost and faff of the journey put me off. Impressed by your canny use of vouchers.