“Turning 10 is a milestone!” I announced I to my son a few months before his birthday, “Let’s do something big!” I felt like he was growing up too fast and I wanted to mark the occasion, so I suggested we take a trip. I’ve heard so many adults say they wish they had gone to Disney Land when they were kids, so much so that they end up making the trip in their adulthood because they just needed to experience it. I’m not one of those people, nevertheless, I offered it up to my son just in case he was. I didn’t want him to grow up feeling that he missed out on an integral part of childhood – the adventure of going somewhere amazing. Turns out he’s not a Disney person either. Knowing his love of both, I offered up a trip to the Star Wars Convention in DC or to LegoLand in California instead. He chose LegoLand and I started planning.
I used Google maps and Google Street View to scope out the area and pick out a hotel nearby Lego Land. When we arrived by taxi from the airport to the Quality Inn in Carlsbad, our room wasn’t ready yet, so we walked to the State Beach nearby. We ordered pizza for dinner and went to bed early in anticipation of the day ahead.
We spent the next day looking at Lego creation after Lego creation - they were amazingly detailed, right down to a little Lego figure on the toilet in the underground of Grand Central Station! The miniature Washington DC (and thankfully not the miniature Las Vegas) inspired my son to choose that as the destination for his next Milestone Birthday. After our tour of the miniatures, he spent a lot of time in the Xbox room playing video games, but hey, it was his birthday so I remained patient. I even got invited to play Lego Rock Band on a huge screen in the middle of the room with some of the other kids. The rides at the park are geared toward younger children, but we had enough to keep us busy and it didn’t bother my son at all – we were there for the Lego. Despite the cool weather, we visited the waterpark twice, where we enjoyed the lazy river and collected big Lego blocks to attach to our tubes. We also checked out all of the gift shops where we found some really cool Lego statues like Harry Potter, Darth Vader, Chewbacca, and Indian Jones. I took a picture of my son with Hagrad from the Harry Potter movies. He’s not a Harry Potter fan, and mistook the figure to be a Lego Jesus. This picture makes me laugh every time I look at it.
We spent the next day looking at Lego creation after Lego creation - they were amazingly detailed, right down to a little Lego figure on the toilet in the underground of Grand Central Station! The miniature Washington DC (and thankfully not the miniature Las Vegas) inspired my son to choose that as the destination for his next Milestone Birthday. After our tour of the miniatures, he spent a lot of time in the Xbox room playing video games, but hey, it was his birthday so I remained patient. I even got invited to play Lego Rock Band on a huge screen in the middle of the room with some of the other kids. The rides at the park are geared toward younger children, but we had enough to keep us busy and it didn’t bother my son at all – we were there for the Lego. Despite the cool weather, we visited the waterpark twice, where we enjoyed the lazy river and collected big Lego blocks to attach to our tubes. We also checked out all of the gift shops where we found some really cool Lego statues like Harry Potter, Darth Vader, Chewbacca, and Indian Jones. I took a picture of my son with Hagrad from the Harry Potter movies. He’s not a Harry Potter fan, and mistook the figure to be a Lego Jesus. This picture makes me laugh every time I look at it.
SeaLife Aquarium is remarkably beautiful - we went through twice and took tons of photos - the stingrays are adorable, they look like they’re smiling as they glide above you in the glass tunnel.
Our cab driver, Steve, was nice enough to bring us on a tour of the ocean side on the way back to the airport. My son thought Steve the cab driver/surfer dude was really cool. Steve has his own surfing business - check out his website: www.simplemanadventures.com (the cab company is called Craig's Cab).
For more information about LegoLand California visit: http://california.legoland.com/
"Childhood is a short season." --Helen Hayes
“If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.”-- Tom Robbins
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