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The trip was mainly for the Kimbell girls, Madison and
McKenna, but we all had fun. I would guess the park is
geared towards kids ranging from 3 to 12. There are several sections
with rides, none too wild. It impressed me as being very clean
and well landscaped. While there is an airport nearby, Billund
seemed to be a small town in a fairly rural area. Easter was early
in the season and even so there were a good number of people there.
Not too many though.
One of my favorite parts is called Miniland. In
Miniland they have constructed scale models of famous buildings and areas
in Europe and throughout the world. If you look at the pictures,
you'll notice most of them are of Miniland.
There were some things for big kids like Pete and I.
We took a couple of Mindstorms classes. Lego Mindstorms is a series
of kits that let you build computer-controlled robots. The heart of
the robot is a control module that runs a computer program you create on
the PC and download to the robot. With these things, you are limited
by your imagination. In the classes we took, the objective was to
finish assembling a robot and write a small program to make it do
something. In the first class we had to add an attachment to a robot
that would help it to 'attack' a dragon (another Mindstorms robot)
guarding the treasure. The attachment was one of three things, a
laser, a dart launcher, or a boxing glove. With the attachment, you
had to write a program that would get your robot close enough to the
dragon robot so your attachment weapon could hit a target on the dragon
robot, causing it to give up some treasure - which was a little nerf
ball. The other class was similar in that you had 3 attachments to
choose from. The objective in the 2nd class was to get the robot to
push, drop, or throw little nerf balls into a basket which would record
your score.
Another area for large and small kids alike was a room
where you could build and race Lego cars on a track like the Pinewood
Derby. You would build your car or thing with wheels, take it over
to the track and race whoever else was racing at that time. We spent
a couple of hours there.
The drive to Denmark from Frankfurt was a long one, 9
hours going up and 10 hours coming back - quite a way.
We stayed in the Legoland Hotel - a nice but pricey hotel
right next to - guess where. It was also geared towards kids, with a
play area well-stocked with Legos. The restaurant had a children's
buffet with all kinds of stuff kids like.
The landscape around Legoland and Billund was
beautiful. Maybe it was just the landscaping they had done around
the hotel, but I doubt it. The terrain is flat and everything is
spread out. Lots of single family homes - in contrast to Germany
where you see mostly concentrated living quarters. And of course I
would notice walking and bike paths on BOTH sides of the road.
We were hoping to buy some cheap Legos there at the home
of Lego. I guess maybe they don't know about 'outlet' stores or we
didn't find theirs. The prices in the store at Legoland were the
same or even higher than we pay in the US. Nevertheless, money was
spent.
While I was at it, I found some
Lego links in case anyone is interested:
Official Sites
Other interesting sites
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