Legoland!

[katyringo]

Before we got spend 6 days at Disneyland we are going to fly into San Diego and we have one night booked at the castle hotel and 1 day tickets to legoland. This will be in October. If anyone has answers to these it would be appreciated!

1. Best beach near legoland for a quick stop by? Just wanna show my kiddos the ocean.

2. Is purchasing early check-in for legoland worth it? Our flight lands at like 9am. Then we will hit the beach. And then legoland. We only have this one night in the special hotel. However this is a Tuesday in October.. and I've read rooms being ready early.. it's $70 ahead of time to check in at 1 instead of 4. Do they let you use the pool before official check in.

3. Reserve and ride... needed on a weekday in October? The park is only open 10-5. We get early entry at 930 for 4 of the rides it looks like.

4. Any must knows for legoland? Must foods? It's harder to find food info about legoland..

5. We purchased a dinner package for the castle hotel dinner, and we get free breakfast buffet at castle hotel. When the park closes at 5 we are debating booking dinner at the bricks buffet in the other legoland hotel. It will be around $100 for the 4 of us. We would do this before driving to Anaheim. Is it worth $100? Our back up was just pizza press as we will be staying at the Anaheim hotel.

7. I was thinking of giving each kiddo $50 legoland gift card for our day there. Is that too much? They don't necessarily need a lego set that we have to travel home with, but like a souvenir, a mini figure, etc.

 

[GBRforWDW]

We'll be hitting up LL in July. Super excited as we've never been. I bought the early check-in as I know the family will want to rest as soon as possible, our flight gets in at noon. Also splurged on the major reserve and ride, but it's the 4th of July so will likely be crowded.

I like to check Thrill data for historical data. Here's October 2021 data

https://www.thrill-data.com/waits/park/lego/legoland-california/2021/10/04/2021/10/05/False

And also pre-pandemic
https://www.thrill-data.com/waits/park/lego/legoland-california/2019/10/08

Where did you find the info for early park entry? I saw something about it, but didn't find much info.

Happy planning, hopefully someone else has better answers cause I'd like to know too, but also can't wait to get there!

 

[katyringo]

Here is the early entry stuff:

https://www.legoland.com/california/places-to-stay/early-access/

 

[superme80]

We love the food at Legoland. We went last October for Brick or Treat. We ate at the Urban Kitchen and the Burger Stop. We are a family of 5, and we were able to share our food at the Burger Stop. For dinner, I just sent my husband to pick food up at a local place. The first night we got BJ's Brewery, and the second night he picked up from a local Mexican restaurant. The restaurant is named Roberto's. It is a favorite of ours. My kids didn't really buy any souvenirs at Legoland. I might do a $20 gift card, but budget for a little more if they see something they like. I hope you have an amazing time!

 

[GBRforWDW]

Here is the early entry stuff:

https://www.legoland.com/california/places-to-stay/early-access/

Ah, thanks, guess I didn't look hard enough . I like that the 4 rides are right there at the front of the park. Gives you a good head start on others not staying on site.

 

[China Expat]

You will be a stone's throw from Carlsbad State beach. Cute town with shops and restaurants within walking distance from the shore!

 

[Disney Dad ADL]

Before we got spend 6 days at Disneyland we are going to fly into San Diego and we have one night booked at the castle hotel and 1 day tickets to legoland. This will be in October. If anyone has answers to these it would be appreciated!

1. Best beach near legoland for a quick stop by? Just wanna show my kiddos the ocean.

2. Is purchasing early check-in for legoland worth it? Our flight lands at like 9am. Then we will hit the beach. And then legoland. We only have this one night in the special hotel. However this is a Tuesday in October.. and I've read rooms being ready early.. it's $70 ahead of time to check in at 1 instead of 4. Do they let you use the pool before official check in.

3. Reserve and ride... needed on a weekday in October? The park is only open 10-5. We get early entry at 930 for 4 of the rides it looks like.

4. Any must knows for legoland? Must foods? It's harder to find food info about legoland..

5. We purchased a dinner package for the castle hotel dinner, and we get free breakfast buffet at castle hotel. When the park closes at 5 we are debating booking dinner at the bricks buffet in the other legoland hotel. It will be around $100 for the 4 of us. We would do this before driving to Anaheim. Is it worth $100? Our back up was just pizza press as we will be staying at the Anaheim hotel.

7. I was thinking of giving each kiddo $50 legoland gift card for our day there. Is that too much? They don't necessarily need a lego set that we have to travel home with, but like a souvenir, a mini figure, etc.

The Bricks dinner buffet is just a generic buffet. It's fine, but I wouldn't go out of my way to eat there. The dining options are pretty slim on site though after the park closes.

I don't think there's anything particularly notable about the food there, though I haven't tried everything. I've eaten at the BBQ place, the Pizza buffet, some other places. They're fine but nothing to write home about. Probably the most "famous" thing there are the apple fries.

Not sure about October specifically, we went a few weeks ago during our Spring Break, there are a few rides that had extremely long lines, then everything else was pretty short. I think Emmett's Flying Adventure is the biggest ride, wait time was around 80+ minutes, and a couple others were 60+ minutes, but the rest were pretty short. But we were there for 3 days, so we just did one "big" ride right at rope drop, then a couple of the less popular rides after that, and then they hung out in the pool/water park in the afternoon. I think you could get through all the rides without Reserve and Ride. However, if we wanted to do 1 day in the park during a busier season (like when we went), and we really wanted to go on all the rides, we probably would have just paid for the Reserve and Ride. Our threshold for paying for stuff like that is probably lower than most though, I really don't like waiting in lines.

October is probably much less busy though, so I'm guessing the lines will be shorter compared to Spring Break, so maybe lines won't be an issue.

 

[cruisehopeful]

There are Carlsbad beaches just a couple miles away from Legoland. Basically, any of those are good and very convenient. If you want to drive more, you can go to La Jolla (you'll see seals and sea lions) or the other direction to Oceanside. If you truly just want to see the beach, I'd just go to the closest Carlsbad one.

Since I haven't been to legoland in ages, my information may be very dated. The lines for rides were ridiculously long and the food was not good and on a higher pricing. October has their Brick or Treat event, which is very popular and can make the park more crowded just like Disneyland in October. You may want to wait to buy tickets, finalize plans until you are much closer to your dates because you'll have a better gauge of what's going on, but I suspect that you would appreciate anything that let's you skip lines.

Better places to have dinner next door are Karl Strauss at Grand pacific Palisades and 20/Twenty at the Sheraton next door. 20/Twenty has amazing sunset views and spectacular food and drinks, but you'll want to check the menu to see if they have child friendly offerings.

 

[shawthorne44]

I just looked at the Karl Strauss menu. If we decide to not drink beer, the to-go menu looks more interesting. For less money, I think we could get more of what we want.

 

[oakleycat]

It's been a while since we went too, but we had season passes for years an stayed at the hotels many times. The buffet is not worth going out of your way for. We only ate there when it was included with the room and it's just your standard buffet focusing on kid food. The food in the park is actually pretty good for a theme park, but nothing amazing. We always get the apple fries. Karl Strauss is great for family friendly dinners and beer for the adults, or if you go down the hill to Carlsbad Village there are restaurants there including a Ruby's Diner. The crowds are not usually bad during October weekdays but weekends get crowded due to Brick-or-Treat. For beach, Carlsbad State Beach is right there if you just want to show the kids the water. Moonlight Beach in Encinitas (about 15 minutes up the coast) is my favorite in that area.