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Legoland Windsor

Matt N said:
Another pedantic criticism is that I'm not a fan of how the park don't let guests choose their side. Plenty of other parks with duelling coasters allow guests to pick a side without issues, and given that the queue even contains a flowchart encouraging riders to "pick their team" based on various questions, I am surprised that they don't allow people to pick. It does mean that guests may not get to experience both; I managed to experience both in only two rides, but that was through complete pot luck. Some may not be so lucky.
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This would be nice, but I suppose you run the risk of a lot of people wanting the same side at the same time and then the staff member will have to go shouting down the line. And of course, you will always get some that, even though they are the ones that want a certain side will then start to moan at staff that it is taking longer to get on the ride because one side is more popular than the other. Basically I think managing it would be a mare for the staff.
 
TPick said:
This would be nice, but I suppose you run the risk of a lot of people wanting the same side at the same time and then the staff member will have to go shouting down the line. And of course, you will always get some that, even though they are the ones that want a certain side will then start to moan at staff that it is taking longer to get on the ride because one side is more popular than the other. Basically I think managing it would be a mare for the staff.
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This is a fair point, but it doesn't seem to be a problem in other parks with duelling coasters. For example, when Dragon Challenge still operated at Islands of Adventure, they allowed you to pick your side on there, and Islands of Adventure is a much more highly visited park than Legoland is. Blackpool Pleasure Beach also allows you to pick your side on both Grand National and Steeplechase, if I'm remembering rightly. And if I'm remembering correctly, I think even Walt Disney World let you pick your side on Magic Kingdom's Space Mountain.

None of those cases seemed to have problems with side-picking, from my experience.
 
Seeing as there is already a merge point due to FastTrack/RAP the easiest thing may be to simply tell staff to accommodate requests. Realistically it's only going to be a small portion of people wanting to do this and i can't imagine it's too difficult for said staff member to monitor (on SkyLion at Legoland the staff member has a tablet or sheet to keep track of the numbers so could do something similar).
 
TPick said:
I'll admit, I've not done any of those rides. Out of interest, do they have separate queues for each side?
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On all of them, I think there was a point a little before the stations where the queue split in two and guests were given two paths to go down. I know there certainly was on Dragon Challenge.

There wasn't even any staff member there; the sides were just self-allocated, with the guest simply going down whatever path they fancied.

In theory, I don't see why they couldn't have done this on Minifigure Speedway. They could have had a small bit of queue after the RAP/FT merge point and then had a "pick your side" area with a little more queue once you're on an individual side.
 
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Sorry to double post, but here's a couple of videos showing the sort of thing I'm describing in action on Dragon Challenge at Universal.

The first is from when the ride was known as Duelling Dragons, with the "choose thy fate" sign towards the end of the queue (go to 3:12 in the video):


The second is from after the ride was rethemed to Dragon Challenge (go to 6:20 in the video):
 
Matt N said:
And if I'm remembering correctly, I think even Walt Disney World let you pick your side on Magic Kingdom's Space Mountain.
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At times one side was all Fastpass and one side was all standby queue for Space Mountain but I'm not sure if that is still the case. I think sometimes you could end up with one side all Fastpass and the other 50% Fastpass and 50% standby if the FP return queue got too long.
 
Matt N said:
On all of them, I think there was a point a little before the stations where the queue split in two and guests were given two paths to go down. I know there certainly was on Dragon Challenge.

There wasn't even any staff member there; the sides were just self-allocated, with the guest simply going down whatever path they fancied.

In theory, I don't see why they couldn't have done this on Minifigure Speedway. They could have had a small bit of queue after the RAP/FT merge point and then had a "pick your side" area with a little more queue once you're on an individual side.
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I see. Maybe Legoland have missed a bit of a trick there, or this is possibly something they could do in the future.....

..... they won't :laughing:
 
Got on Minifigure Speedway yesterday, and I'd say that it is a good addition to the park. As a coaster I think I do prefer it to the Vekoma models; it had a bit more force and because the end of the first half is a life and not a spike you actually take the backwards section at a good pace.

It was getting between 800-850pph yesterday when we rode it, which was pretty good. It meant that the queue from the entrance to sitting down on the train was about 25 minutes, despite being advertised at 50 minutes. They do not have enough queue line for the ride, but I am going to say that's a good thing!

Now the theming and landscaping. Well let's be honest, it is dire. Legoland is a really well presented park with nice landscaping and decent, if not at times a bit cheap looking, theming. The huge minifigure is nice, but other than that the way they have presented this new ride is so so poor and at complete odds to the rest of the park. You have a temporary looking fence outside the ride, most of the ride area is just dirt with weeds growing in it, lots of exposed steel and in the queue line the vinyl stickers are already being peeled off by guests. I'm hopeful they will make improvements, but it would have been nice if they had opened it looking somewhat presentable.
 
Matt Creek said:
Legoland’s landscaping used to be amongst the best of uk parks in the early years of existence.

However thanks to some poor/cheap designs on several attractions, there are now parts of Slough that look nicer.
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I think the new-ish Lego Mythica area was not exactly cheap, spectacular in places even (in a understated way), and I think the Minifigures 'coaster looked "bareboned" (outside of that gigantic statue; the biggest Lego figurine ever) since I guess the brand new Woodland Village camp site took up the attention of the folks doing the scenery decor.
 
TedShatner10 said:
I think the new-ish Lego Mythica area was not exactly cheap, spectacular in places even (in a understated way), and I think the Minifigures 'coaster looked "bareboned" (outside of that gigantic statue; the biggest Lego figurine ever) since I guess the brand new Woodland Village camp site took up the attention of the folks doing the scenery decor.
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Minifigures and Hyperia both have the same issues in terms of finish. Which got me thinking, have Merlin stretched themselves too much? Major coaster projects at each of their UK parks must be eating into the overall budget available?
Clear cuts were made.
 
Jb85 said:
Minifigures and Hyperia both have the same issues in terms of finish. Which got me thinking, have Merlin stretched themselves too much? Major coaster projects at each of their UK parks must be eating into the overall budget available?
Clear cuts were made.
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I think stuff for Legoland comes from a separate budget, if I’m not mistaken (from the Legoland division budget rather than the Resort Theme Park division budget), so I’m not sure if this was necessarily a factor.
 
Matt N said:
I think stuff for Legoland comes from a separate budget, if I’m not mistaken (from the Legoland division budget rather than the Resort Theme Park division budget), so I’m not sure if this was necessarily a factor.
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Merlin Magic Making will have been involved in each of the projects and, although the budgets may be separate for the builds, they only have so many staff, creatives and senior leadership members. We can hope that they add to the rides over the next closed season, tidy everything up and add more theming.
 
GooseOnTheLoose said:
Merlin Magic Making will have been involved in each of the projects and, although the budgets may be separate for the builds, they only have so many staff, creatives and senior leadership members. We can hope that they add to the rides over the next closed season, tidy everything up and add more theming.
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Worth noting though that the creatives are division specific (mostly) - Legoland have their own set of creatives, as do RTPs (for instance, John Burton is firmly RTP and wouldn’t work on a Legoland project)
 
I did notice the toilet facilities for Legoland being dramatically revamped, and customer features like that are more important than the brand new roller coaster looking a bit bland in its opening year (though the lavatory facilities in the Dragon Castle area still looked rather worse for ware).

Also, LOL, the Dragon coaster was so rough and intense for me (I haven't been on a thrill ride for many, many years) I got put off on going on the Minifigures Race coaster (but with my planned trip to Paultons, I hope to "retrain" my ability to enjoy thrill rides again).
 
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Last time I went to the Windsor Legoland, it was all a bit hit and miss.

You have some areas of the park that look rather nice and tidy, but others that look an absolute mess.

The Dragon seemed in reasonable state back in April, but could’ve changed since.

Minifigure Speedway needs more presentation and landscaping work because it looks poor currently. The sooner they demolish that Vikings eye-sore, the better.
 
Matt Creek said:
The Dragon seemed in reasonable state back in April, but could’ve changed since.

Minifigure Speedway needs more presentation and landscaping work because it looks poor currently.
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The Dragon Castle was clean and tidy, and the toilets weren't left in a rotten state or anything, just that Dragon 'coaster maybe needed new cars and the toilet features needed rennovation years ago.

Matt Creek said:
The sooner they demolish that Vikings eye-sore, the better.
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Year, that was the biggest, most miserable blot on the landscape by far (aside from that, the ground keeping around Miniland and the footpaths, etc, wasn't distracting).

Also there are plans in the pipeline to totally overhaul and replace Legoland's now somewhat grotty so 1990s looking it hurts entrance gates.
 
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Matt Creek said:
The Dragon seemed in reasonable state back in April, but could’ve changed since.
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I always feel that the outside part of the ride needs some TLC, the grassy bit seems ripe for a bit of theming and it's always nice to see the bins down below as you are waiting to go into the station :) .
 
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