Legoland 2009

Our annual trip to Legoland today, to see the fireworks (and go on a few rides to, of course). This was the first trip where Boy Lacer was actually keen about it and we actually managed to get him on a ride, for the first ever time, to any theme park / fair ground. It was the Balloon School ride, rather tame, it’s a circle of gondaliers attached to ‘balloons’, that goes round and round and up and down, rather slowly. Luckily, thanks to our carer card, we had hand stamps that got us access to the ride straight away (queuing would have given him plenty of opportunity to change his mind), we got on, the ride started and oh the poor love, he was being brave but I could tell he really wasn’t enjoying it and when we got off he was ’shaky’ as if he’d just got off a terrifying rollercoaster, for minutes afterwards. So after that, was he going to go on another ride? Oh no! Mr. Lacer and Girl Lacer went off on a couple of rides and me and Boy Lacer went to Miniland, the little mini buildings, trains, cars etc and he loves those, obsessively. So lots of standing around in drizzle, as Boy Lacer stared at each scene, for _ a _ very _ long _ time. ‘Luckily’ (well not really, it is his favourite, so it was a shame it was broken) the tube train was broken, although the man trying to fix it was stared at for a while, then it was over to the docks scene, complete with trains, bliss for him and for every other obsessive little boy in the vicinity, I was all prepared for a fight to break out (it did last year, at the tube scene). But eventually I managed to drag him away and we happen to wander past the traffic zone, Boy Lacer sees the bigger kid driving school “I want to do that!”, he was way too young (chronologically and developmentally) but luckily they have a younger version, but even so, in the younger version, you deposit your child in the tiny motorised car and leave them to it. Could he do it? Would he understand? Would he freak out when I left him in? I strapped him in and walked to the exit, watching over the fence and he didn’t freak out, he needed a little prompting from the ride assistants to keep his foot on the pedal, so he’d keep moving and the occasional help with steering, but so did a lot of the other little kids, I was so blinking proud, lump in the throat time.

After that, me and Mr. Lacer swopped roles and I went off and queued with Girl Lacer whilst we went on the boating school and driving academy rides. Mr. Lacer and Boy Lacer went on the train and the digger activity. After that and a picnic tea of tomato swirls (puff pastry, cheese and tomato things, really nice, the recipe is in the I Can Cook section of the CBeebies website), we went to see the fireworks. Whilst we waited for the fireworks to start, the kids danced to music played over the speakers. This year they had an Indiana Jones theme, I love all things Indy, it’s my all time favourite film series, so that was great, fantastic fireworks to a theme of music from the series. Legoland always do extremely good fireworks, they’ve obviously got a massive budget, has put us off our local municipal fireworks for years!