Legoland brings bricks and more to Florida
WINTER HAVEN, Fla. -- Those colorful plastic bricks that play havoc with vacuum cleaner motors, hurt like *&%$##@ when you step on them barefoot and elicit hyperactive glee in boys of a certain age, have taken on life-size dimensions at the latest Legoland park.
Legoland Florida, which opens Saturday, touts itself as the only Central Florida theme park to target the 2- to 12-year-old set. It sports 50 attractions in 10 themed areas, including not-too-scary "pink knuckle" rides, live shows and interactive attractions. And of course, there are Lego sculptures — 50 million bricks' worth, give or take a few thousand. Life-size elephants inhabit the Land of Adventure. Albert Einstein's 20-foot-tall, 10-foot-wide noggin beckons visitors into the Imagination Zone. A regulation-sized shiny red Ford Explorer (comprising 380,000 bricks) wows 'em in Lego City.
But the park's most visually remarkable section is Miniland USA, which spotlights iconic American places painstakingly rendered in tiny plastic bricks. There are Washington, D.C.'s, monuments, San Francisco's waterfront, the Las Vegas Strip and New York's skyscrapers. Florida gets its own chunk of Miniland real estate to show off state landmarks, from South Beach's Art Deco hotels to Tallahassee's Capitol. (Hey, they left out Walt Disney World!)
At a preview last week, a brigade of minivans and SUVs streams into Legoland's sprawling parking lot. Chants of "Lego-LAND! Lego-LAND!! Lego-LAND!!!" reverberate across the asphalt as swarms of the park's core target customer, boys ages 6 to 10, spill out of the vehicles and rush toward a giant WELCOME sign rendered in bright, primary-colored Legos.
Heaven for Lego fans
Inside the park, Johnny Loncaric, 10, of Bradenton, Fla., pronounces Miniland "awesome," and declares that "for the Lego freak, this place is like they died and went to heaven."
And for him?
"I'm not quite there, yet," he says.
Frank Lawrence is. The public transportation employee from Orlando counts himself among diehard Lego fans. He once traveled cross-country to attend a Lego Maniac Convention. He owns hundreds of sets, dating back to No. 115, a generic building kit he got as a kid in the days before Legos got complicated. He has continued to acquire the plastic bricks in adulthood: No. 570 (firehouse); No. 710 (wrecker with car); circa 1979-80 town, castle and space systems, etc.
"I'm a 45-year-old kid at heart. This is how I grew up," Lawrence says. "I'm happy Legoland has come to Central Florida."
Other preview visitors aren't quite as enthusiastic. Adam Markle, 35, of Prospect Park, N.J., is browsing in the Studio Store searching for commemorative Legoland Florida pins. He's wearing Green Lantern-themed shoes and a hat studded with Disney World pins and explains (needlessly, perhaps), "I'm a compulsive collector."
That includes Lego models, which he has on rotating display at home.
Markle's take on the new park: "Not bad for a soft opening, but I'm not coming back until I'm at least four sizes smaller. I wait a half hour in line and find out I can't fit in the seat."
Consider yourself warned.
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