Subject:
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Billund trip report
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.loc.uk
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Date:
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Tue, 3 Aug 1999 11:43:13 GMT
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Viewed:
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768 times
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I took my wife and 2 kids out last Thursday. We flew from Gatwick directly
to Billund, by Maersk Air scheduled flight. The flight was about 1hr 20
mins. Tickets averaged at just over 110GBP each for the 4 or us.
Billund is a small airport, and seems to be the main Maersk Air hub. Its
right next to the theme park and hotel (there's a courtesy bus), and within
about 20 minutes of landing we had checked in the hotel and were in the
park!
The hotel is across the road from the park and is connected by a covered
footbridge, so has its own 'private' entrance to the park. Hotel guests can
buy a ticket for the park, valid for their entire stay for 8GBP per person.
The park itself is similar in many ways to Windsor, but is a lot more
compact. If you squashed Windsor together and removed all the gaps between
the zones, they would cover about the same area. The zones are Miniland,
Duplo land, Legoredo Town, Pirateland and Castleland.
MIniland is laid out much the same as in LLW, although of course most of the
models are of Danish towns and landmarks. The most impressive by far is the
airport, which is based on Munich airport. It is massive! A new area created
for this year is Scotland featuring a model of an oil rig which was very
cool.
The other areas of the park feature themed models and rides, some of which
are similar to those at LLW.
One of the best 'rides' is the LEGOTOP tower that takes you 36m above the
park for a birds-eve view of it and the surroundings.
There were many rides that my kids loved and kept going on again and again.
The park itself is open from 10am to 9pm, so at the beginning and end of the
day there were no queues at most rides. To be honest there were never
massive queues anywhere. The longest we queued was about 10 minutes I think.
There were some 4 shows going on throughout the day, and to get round any
language problems, 3 of the 4 were silent. (The park seems to get a lot of
Swedish and German visitors - we saw hardly any other English people). They
were good, but not as polished as the LLW ones.
The most dissapointing part of the park is the catering. There are 15
outlets around the park, but the prices were unbelievable and the quality
poor. For example, a 0.25 litre Coke cost about 1.50GBP, a hot dog was
1.90GBP, a burger 3.40GBP, barbequed chicken, salad and a roll, 9GBP, Steak
and chips 15GBP! Thankfully, the hotel breakfast was a massive continental
buffet affair so it was possible to pig out and not eat again until teatime.
Second most dissapointing was the park shop. Its about 1/2 the size of the
one at LLW, and sold nothing out of the ordinary. Prices were about 10%-20%
more than UK prices. Mos Espa podrace, for example was 80GBP. There were no
'soldier' keyrings to be seen - sorry Jon.
The hotel itself was good, and the rooms fairly reasonably priced (it was
about 110GBP for the 4 of us per night in a family room). Sadly the same
could not be said for the resturant and bar. A meal for 4 in the resturant
one night cost 70GBP. We skipped on the wine, which was 15GBP a bottle,
having instead a 0.5 litre (about a pint) of lager for 4GBP!
There are LEGO 'ornaments' all around the hotel, and of course there's a
massive LEGO room with 1000's of bricks in for the kids to play in when the
park is closed.
Away from the park and hotel, you can take a 0.5km walk into Billund centre
past the LEGO factory and the monument to Ole Kirk Christiensen (who died in
1990). There are a handful of shops there, including 2 supermarkets.
Venturing into these we soon discovered that the park prices were not
unreasonable by Danish standards at all. EVERYTHING was bloody expensive -
50% - 100% more than English prices for things like bread, crisps, orange
juice, cheese etc.
The LEGO Futura offices were also near the town centre, so it was good to
see where future sets are designed. If only I could have got in the place...
:-)
There is not much else to do in Billund, although there is a swimming pool
next to the hotel, which was very good.
3 days was about the right time to spend there, you'd need a second mortgage
to stay longer!
Overall, we had a great time. It was good to see Billund and where it all
happens. It was just a shame about the prices...
That's enough rambling for now. If you have any questions, LMK. I'll post
pictures on my web site sometime later this week.
Huw
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