We went to LEGOLAND New York Resort for a quick two-day trip from Boston. The resort is 3.5 hours from Boston and we recommend planning a day for travel on either end of your trip. We spent two whole days in the park and found that to be the right amount for the number of attractions they currently have. As of this writing (July 2022) they are currently working on a new addition to the park that is a water playground in LEGO City, but that is still under construction.
TIPS
Be sure to bring mini figures to trade as there were a lot of different mini figures available for trade. The four main places to trade are: Mini Market, Creative Workshop, DUPLO Baby Care, and Smuggler's Haul. You can also trade with any model citizen (LEGOLAND staff member) who keep mini figures on their Brick Badges.
Parking is not included with the price of your ticket, so pay for parking in advance so you can save time as you exit the park.
If you are buying tickets in advance for LEGOLAND you should certainly look for various offers from Buy One Get One tickets to discounted percentage-off tickets. A quick search around the internet should help you find some of them! If I end up with any deals to pass along I certainly will.
LEGOLAND PARK
It is broken up into 7 lands (Brick Street, Bricktopia, LEGO® NINJAGO® World, LEGO® Castle, LEGO® City, MINILAND, LEGO® Pirates).
Emily did some great research and we got there at 9:30 so we were able to park the car and get in line to go through security and scan the tickets so you’re ready to enter the park at 10.
The model citizens pump up the crowd a little and you can do some mini figure trading which all adds to a cute little experience to start the day.
When you walk in, the first thing you pass is guest services on the right and you can rent a scooter from them, and have all of your purchases from the gift shops throughout the day held so you can pick them all up at once on your way out and not have to carry them throughout the day.
Our recommendation: Go through Miniland first which is a very long walk down a hill (bring comfortable shoes!) that has amazing things to look at so you can get to the most popular water rides that tend to have the longest wait times and may not be reservable through the Reserve ’n Ride system.
BRICK STREET
When you first walk in to the park Brick Street welcomes you and you have a sculpture in the middle, a carousel with lego horses that you can ride and a show stage. There are a bunch of shops where you can get locally brewed coffee, eats as well as the big shop and the guest services and photo shop. If you make any purchases at the stores you can have them held at the big shop so you don’t have to walk around with them all day.
MINILAND
Mainland is great but it is a lot of walking, so be prepared to crush your daily step count goal. You walk from the top of Legoland down to the lower part of the park by going through a zig-zag type walkway and you pass various cities along the way, first up is Goshen, NY, the city where Legoland is located, then you come across New York City in all of its detail. Once you get out of New York, you come across Washington, DC, then Philadelphia, New Orleans, Las Vegas and San Francisco/California. As a Salesforce fanatic, I enjoyed the Salesforce tower in San Francisco (pictured above).
LEGO PIRATES
This was one of our favorite areas. It was hot during our stay, so we enjoyed the water rides. If it’s hot outside, you won’t need a bathing suit necessarily, since you dry off so quickly, but in case you get soaked, there are drying stations you can pay for. Be prepared - you certainly will get wet!
The first ride we enjoyed was Rogue Riders where you stand on a platform and control the barrel you are in spinning in a large circle and controlling it to go either left or right to avoid water spouts that will absolutely soak you (which feels great on a hot day)!
The second ride we loved was Splash Battle (pictured). It was the best ride for all ages and we enjoyed getting sprayed with water from other boats and onlookers as well as trying to spray others. We noticed the day we were there the green side was seated on the right of the boat so every time you were spraying people you were aiming more for the folks looking on the ride (and sometimes you even saw the pirate who made an appearance). If you were on the red side (left side of the boat when we went) you would spray the other boats as much and couldn’t spray folks outside of the ride, but unfortunately you would still feel their wrath and get soaked without being able to return the favor.
We didn’t ride the Anchor’s away ride since the adults in the party didn’t like spinning around so much and one of them would have had to accompany the little guy.
We enjoyed going on the Shiver Me Bricks! Playscape which is a giant Pirate Ship playground. The little guy (~6 years old) didn’t want to leave and could have spent the whole day there. We think it would be geared for kids up to 11 - even our daughter had a great time running around chasing after her brother!
LEGO CITY
This is really good for younger kids as it has a movie theater, fire station attraction, driving school and coast guard academy boat ride. The movie was a little scary. The driving school was a big hit with the little guy who went through the ride a few times while his older sister was watching the movie. We had the reserve ’n ride passes so we were able to save a lot of time by not standing in lines, but the day we went, it wasn’t so crowded so a lot of the lines weren’t long anyways.
LEGO CASTLE
The climbing tower was one that the kids loved. The line could be long for this ride. There were two roller coaster rides (a big dragon and little dragon). We only rode on the little dragon, which everyone enjoyed, except Emily, as she was asking to get off shortly after the ride started. Our little guy found it so funny, it was certainly one of his favorite memories.
NINJAGO WORLD
There are a lot of playground activities in this world that the kids can do. There are places to train like a ninja as well as a fun ride to go on as well. There is also a shop where you can buy special NINJAGO-themed merchandise.
BRICKTOPIA
The rides in this part of the park were great, but unfortunately the Factory Adventure ride kept having technical issues the different times we went to visit it. We enjoyed the classes that were taught in the creative workshop - be sure to sign up early for them once you get in the park since the spots are limited and they go fast!
SKILL GAMES
At LEGOLAND there are skill games or games of chance that are around the park, but are not included in the price of admission. We walked around and watched a few games, and when we tried them we found that the ones with larger prizes took more tries to win (therefore it would be better to buy more tries upfront to try and win those).
What was nice was that we noticed a lot of families walking around with various prizes from small to large which meant that the games had winners, unlike your typical carnival type games. Additionally the workers were very kind and actually would show you tips and tricks to win the games. They would also encourage you and cheer you on.
PHOTOS
During some of the attractions you can have your picture taken with the chance to see it and purchase a copy at the end of the ride. Alternatively, you can scan a QR code that is in your LEGOLAND New York resort app or on a card they can provide you so that you can group all of your photos together and purchase an option to download them at the end of the day. There are a bunch of photo options to choose from and at the time of this writing the photo prints were $17 and you could even get the photo made out of bricks ($50 as of this writing) but an awesome option for the LEGO fanatic in the group! If you would rather have digital downloads those are available for $30 for 1 day or $45 for a 2-day photo pass.
FAVORITE PART OF LEGOLAND NEW YORK
Little Guy: “My mom freaking out on the baby dragon roller coaster roller coaster and I was so excited. “
Emily: “Getting stuck on the boat with the little guy, mini figure training, and looking at the MINILAND, watching the kids do the tower climb and spin-circle cups.”
Older Sister: “All of it: Trading mini figures, rogue riders, and the tower climb. The baby dragon roller coaster - especially hearing mommy scream, and being with my family.”
LEGOLAND HOTEL
We visited the Legoland hotel and found it to be very chaotic and crowded in the kids play area that was themed as a castle. We were disheartened to see a lot of appear-to-be-unsupervised children running around playing with lego-made swords and rifles.
The arcade game room seemed a bit small and wasn’t very busy. There was so much to do that arcade games didn’t seem like it was a priority for anyone there.
One thing that would have been helpful would be more hand sanitizer to be around for after the use of the legos.
In the hotel there was a restaurant called the Skyline Bar and the food was decent although we found it to be a bit overpriced at $14 for half of a bowl of salad and $12 for kids meals that came with no drinks or sides (ex. Just a burger or chicken tenders and fries). It wasn’t a huge portion for what you were paying.
We cannot comment on the rooms because we didn’t stay in one during our stay, but everyone seems to rave about it.
NOTE: We were provided with complimentary admission to Legoland, photo downloads and skill games to facilitate this review. All opinions are our own and no other compensation was provided.
