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Okay, first visit of the year to LLW on Sunday. Dived in about 3PM and got
caught by the rain at the end of the day! There are no new major rides, but a
few surprises around the park. The first thing to note was that The Beginning
had been given a makeover; new frontages to the Big Shop and Cafe, and a new
shop dedicated to Lego Clothes on the left as you enter. The Cafe has been
rebranded as "The Pit Stop Cafe", due to it's proximity to the Racers ride.
From what we could see, they're still running with just the 3 Racer centres
downstairs - I wonder if they'll ever open the two above them.
The biggest surprise came when walking between France and the Railway Yard in
Miniland - Belgium (and Italy) had disappeared! That whole island has been
transplanted to a new section down by Holland and replaced by a Racing display.
This includes a neat figure of eight racetrack, with a couple of
guest-controlled sports cars and a video display showing the action (using
active cameras rather than a recording). As each car completes its lap, it's
called into the pits and pnuematically controlled figures "attend" to it.
There's also a guest-controlled dragster race and all the usual funfair stuff
that appears at race tracks. They've even done one of my favourites from LLC,
the bungee-jumping crane - more of which later...
We carried on down to My Town, but apart from painting the lighthouse,
switching over to a Jack Stone themed stunt show, and changing over the train
to an Explorer theme, not much had changed. Oh, the motocycle shop has gone and
been replaced by a food outlet (that's real food, not stuff made from ABS!),
and Brick Brothers is now aligned with selling My Own Train/Metroliner and Jack
Stone, again probably due to the proximity of themed attractions. We didn't see
any changes across in the Pirate/Castle areas, although the castle shop is
selling the Blacksmith's Shop. This prompted a discussion with the shop's
supervisor, who bemoaned the merchandising of the set - it dosen't match in
with the HP or Knight's Kingdom themes, nor with the Hidden Inn, hence it was
difficult to find the appropriate place to display it. [N.B. It's £25 at
Windsor, unlike the £29.99 online, plus season ticket holders get 10% off that
too] Naturally, I helped her sales targets by buying one!
When we returned to Miniland, one of the animators was overseeing the
racetrack. We chatted about the amount of work that had been undertaken to get
the display set up over the winter and he opened up about some of the issues
they'd encountered. One of the more frustrating seemed to be the susceptibility
of the bungee-crane to wind! Even with a light breeze, the string tends to
"leap" off of the pulley at the top of the boom, rendering it inoperable...
Apparently the variant in Billund has the same problem, whereas the Californian
one is in a more sheltered position. An outcome of this discussion was that the
family and I were invited down into the Miniland control room to have a look at
the control system and things such as the items under repair or pending release
for the first time. Apparently, a fair amount of the repair work revolves
around correcting problems that the guests have caused - finger-snapped models,
a case of sabotage when someone caused a train to crash inside a tunnel by
placing one of the moving vehicles on the track so that it was pushed in by the
train, even a child climbing to the top of the hill above the Scottish dam!
Other tidbits of information were:-
Each remote control car costs around £4,000...
Don't expect to see the Miniland airport implemented... (long story...)
The rotating tube station platform was disabled as a safety precaution against
guests getting injured (!!!)
If anyone has any ideas on other animations they can do around Miniland,
particularly using pneumatics, they'd love to know!
When we finally got back to The Beginning we dived into the imagination centre,
where they've got a display of scale models of the crown jewels... The amount
of GOLD lego that they've used is impressive!!! (I can't think of any sets
containing gold pieces, as distinct from gold-plated... These were definitely
not plated) I didn't have a lot of time, but suspect that the displays would be
almost impossible to photo because of the lighting and glass covers.
With the removal of most of the clothing range, the Big Shop was given over to
carrying the sets and the park merchandise. Notable exceptions were that the
Santa Fe Chief, the Breezeway Cafe and Pizza To Go weren't there. They had the
pirate sets and the full range of sculptures though.
Once the kids had gone to bed I was about to start on the blacksmith's shop,
when my wife reminded me that her PC was dead and needed my attention - so
three hours, and a number of machines disassembled and reassembled later, I
went to bed... Only to come down to breakfast next morning to find that my
darling chidren had taken it on to make it up for me!
I'll just have to buy another for myself!
Cheers,
Kev
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: LLW 2002
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| Hi Kev, Thanks for the overview - I'm hoping to get there next week. I was at Carlsbad last year and went to Billund when I was a kid many years ago, but I have never quite managed to get to the Legoland in the country where I was born! As an aside, (...) (22 years ago, 19-Mar-02, to lugnet.legoland.windsor, lugnet.loc.uk)
| | | Re: LLW 2002
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| "Kev Holmes" <kev.holmes@net.ntl.com> wrote in message news:Gt7J1G.6Iz@lugnet.com... (...) story...) Well given how long it is taking to get nearby Terminal 5 built, I am not surprised. What about the Millenium Dome? Have the cleared the insides (...) (22 years ago, 19-Mar-02, to lugnet.legoland.windsor, lugnet.loc.uk)
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