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LEGOLAND® California Water Park is Getting Bigger
By Lori Weisberg
Sept. 12, 2013
LEGOLAND California three-year-old water park will grow by more than two acres
next year when it introduces a new themed area tied to LEGO® Legends of Chima
product line. — Courtesy of LEGOLAND.
CARLSBAD, CA - In what will be one of its largest investments, LEGOLAND
announced Thursday that its water park will undergo a major expansion next year,
modeled after a popular LEGO product line and cartoon show, “Legends of Chima.”
The 2.5-acre addition, while a part of LEGOLAND existing water park, will be a
distinctly new area that will include an interactive wave pool designed
specifically for the park’s key demographic -- families with young children. The
announcement, made at a morning news conference at LEGOLAND California, follows
the opening in April of its new 250-room hotel, the park’s largest investment
since opening in 1999.
“This will feel like a very contained, themed area, and the children will get it
quickly because of the Chima product line,” said LEGOLAND California President
Peter Ronchetti. “Our sister park in Florida opened a Legends of Chima area on
the dry side of the park, and we chose to go with the same product line because
it gets heavyweight support from the LEGO toy company, and the cartoon is on the
Cartoon Network. It’s the No. 1 new product for LEGO.”
He acknowledged there isn’t much more open land at the park to expand further,
although built-out areas could be re-purposed in the future.
The expansion, expected to cost an estimated $12 million, will be located on the
northeastern side of the water park next door to the 1.5-acre Pirate Reef
attraction that opened in 2012. While the theme park’s owner, London-based
Merlin Entertainments Group, typically doesn’t divulge project costs, Ronchetti
said the Legends of Chima attraction will be very similar in cost to what was
spent on the original water park. The $12 million investment in that project was
disclosed at the time it opened in 2010.
Admission to the aquatic attraction, including the new addition, will remain
$15, over and above the charge to get into LEGOLAND, which is $78 for adults and
$68 for children. It is a seasonal attraction that is open between Memorial Day
and Labor Day and subsequently, weekends through November.
Final sketches of the project have not been completed yet, but LEGOLAND revealed
details on four of the eight principal areas of the new water park, each tied to
characters in the Chima story line. Chima, as LEGO describes it, was a once
“pristine, natural paradise” that has been transformed into a battleground where
animal tribes vie in a mystical land for control of the precious energy source
known as “CHI”.
The centerpiece of the planned water park is “Lion Temple Wave Pool,” where
water will cascade down a 30-foot-tall floating “Mount Cavora” that depicts the
various creatures representing each animal tribe.
“Craggers Swamp” will be designed as a hands-on water play area where kids will
be able to ride water slides, blast water cannons and slide through the head of
a huge crocodile.
“Eglor’s Build-A-Boat, similar in style to the existing water park’s
Build-A-Raft attraction, will give children the chance to build a boat while
learning how to adjust the currents, create and dodge obstacles and race against
their companions.
A fourth area, called “Wolves’ Cantina,” will be devoted to food service in an
environment populated with collectibles belonging to the wolf tribe.
“If you combine the sounds, the sights, the rock work, the brick theming, it
will give children the feeling they’re walking into this world with a lot of
interactive activities,” said Ronchetti. “The wave pool in Florida (not
Chima-themed) is extremely popular so we’re very excited to have one of our
own.”
LEGOLAND regularly introduces new attractions on an annual basis, but larger
investments like the Chima park are not as frequent. The park is banking on the
new project to help boost attendance, especially now that it has its own themed
hotel to attract guests who want to spend more than a day at the park. Not long
after the first season of the water park, LEGOLAND officials noted that the new
attraction had helped lift attendance by double digits.
The theme park’s latest initiative is not only in keeping with a nationwide
trend to expand aquatic attractions, but it also makes good business sense given
its tie-in to a popular LEGO product, said theme park expert Dennis Speigel.
“In that Southern California market, with that weather band, this is a logical
type of expansion, and LEGOLAND is capitalizing on their existing relationship
with Legends of Chima, which is very popular with their demographic, so it’s a
smart move,” said Speigel, president of Ohio-based International Theme Park
Service. “This will boost attendance.”
Merlin makes it a policy of not revealing actual attendance figures, and
Ronchetti declined to say how the park’s attendance is currently trending. The
hotel, however, experienced a very successful summer, he was quick to point out.
“If you had tried to book a hotel in June, July or August, you would have found
us full,” Ronchetti said. “This was a massive project, and we feel compelled to
go into another large-scale investment so you can assume from that it’s been a
very successful launch.”
UTSanDiego.com
-end of report-
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