To celebrate my birthday there was only one park out of all the ones we visited that made sense to visit in the area we were in, and that was of course, Legoland Germany. With German MAP in hand, we headed in, though their gate organisation is a bit burdenous, as you have to use certain gates if you have a MAP, but this is a lottery when you’ve never visited before and you can’t see the signs to direct you when the main gate is down.

The opening ceremony was cute though, with the Ollie the Dragon character coming out in a wizard costume and using magic to open the gates. Neat little touch really. We grabbed our QBots for the day and went for the first coaster of the day.

One of these rides is not like the others…

Jr Dragon isn’t actually on the QBot system, so it made sense for it to be our first ride as it had all the hallmarks of a One & Done, being a Junior Gerstlauer. It decided it didn’t want to work just as we were about to board for some reason, forcing the engineers to turn up and fix it. It was an acceptable kiddie cred, but there were bigger (for Legoland) rides on the horizon.

Fire Dragon is pretty much the staple of any Legoland park these days, and this one started interestingly in the queue, as some American woman decided to yell loudly at the person at the batch point to go through to spite us QBot people. It’s a shame the ride host didn’t come back earlier as he looked very confused as to why people had been entering the airgates area without his permission. I felt sorry for the woman at the front who clearly didn’t want to go in because Germans are sensible people, but the loud woman was very horrid. I had hoped we’d spite her later on in the day, but we never saw her again.

Onto the ride, it starts like all the others, with a dark ride section before a hidden drop under the dragon leads you to the outside portion. I think this was a Zierer, so it’s like a weird variant of a Vekoma Roller Skater. It was alright really, with again a bit of surprising force hidden within the ride, and again it’s not a kid’s ride that patronises that target audience, which gets bonus points.

Up next was Hero Factory, the Kuka arms things that Lego also seem to like (apart from Windsor). I adored the ones at Billund, so it was disappointing to discover that you couldn’t build you ride setting on this one. Coupled with the awful throughput as half of it has been spited it was a good thing we had the QBot. Setting 5 was good though, and it does have a ride photo, but I just missed the brilliant very Lego concept of making your own cycle.

New for 2014 and the spiter of the other half of Hero Factory is the X-Wing Exhibition a huge Lego recreation of the Star Wars ship. It looked amazing to be fair to it, though I do hope that when it eventually moves on they’ll replace the Hero Factory stuff back (most of the circuitry is still there).

It was then time for Flying Ninjago, a Gerstlauer Sky Fly, which I loved at Nigloland, and this would get the same reaction. Probably because I have a real knack for getting the spinning aspect of it right (dat BEng degree). I’d like to see more of these built, just wish they had a higher throughput.

Walking back to the entrance I grabbed a birthday badge cos I’m cool like that. We also had a snack and a sit-down.

The final coaster of the day was Project X Test Track, a crappy Mack Wild Mouse. We were once again glad of the QBot as the queue for this was awful, certainly worth the purchase of the MAP on this trip. We did the Teacups afterwards because they were also on the QBot.

Off to the Adventure themed area, which started with another staple of Legoland, Temple Expedition, the interactive dark ride. Again this appeared to be an omnimover, so I have no idea why they stopped building them for Sally variants. It wasn’t great though, so perhaps the change was to produce a more immersive theme around the ride, rather than big mostly lifeless rooms.

Next on the agenda was the Jungle Expedition flume ride, which was actually fab, and yet another reversing section was found within the heavily themed indoor bit. There were also Lego dinosaurs, which always gains extra favour with me.

Finally we hit up the Safari Tour, having never done the one at Windsor, it was good to actually do one. The animatronics were ok and we produced an entertaining (but not enough to purchase it) on ride photo.

We then did the Observation Tower, which really showed how tiny the park is and how far away the resort area is from the park. Time for a show, and this time it was brought to us by the Cuban Circus, who were rather entertaining it must be said, with some decent acts and some great crowd interaction which the Germans do seem to love. It also seems that Lego here gets loads of different acts over the year to come along as part of a touring section. Good idea really.

We decided to go on Flying Ninjago again, upon which the ride op gleefully yelled out Happy Birthday (indeed, there were lots of staff being all interactive with me, guess they’re not used to adults having a badge and just automatically do it all) before I proceeded to go absolutely mental sitting in the front. It just started spinning and then got FASTER, hence I aborted and ended up having extended upside down times as a result. Ew.

Lego Frabrik followed because I needed to get my head back in one place, so a fake Factory Tour was exactly the ticket required. Had a cute little video to start it off then a ‘tour’ of a ‘working’ ‘factory’. Still informative and had the actual machines that they use giving practical demonstrations, which got the engineer in me all excited.

After our informative mini-tour we re-rode Hero Factory before heading to the Boating School, which was actually fun to ride one again since I haven’t done it for YEARS! I think Windsor’s was a lot better though, but I literally cannot remember it.

We then had some ice cream as we explored Miniland, time for a photo attack!

A quick run on the Lego Express happened, which essentially showed us most of Miniland again and some backstage sheds before we hit up the Kid’s Power Tower, which was full of manual labour and effort.

We re-rode Fire Dragon and the Boating School before heading over towards the Pirate Ship, which was a Heave Ho clone and a bit meh. We also had an epic meal at the Dino Grill, which was basically a mixed grill of various meats, it was so nom I wish we had one over in the UK.

We re-rode Jungle Expedition and Hero Factory again before doing the Spinning Knight Ride, which was surprisingly intense for a Legoland ride and went both forwards and backwards for extended periods of time. We finished the day off on the Fire Dragon once more before heading to the shop and heading back to Stuttgart.

I really did enjoy my day, although this was heavily helped by the QBot being in my possession, as the park was very busy. But like most Legoland’s is has a decent lot of theming dotted around and this one probably has some of the better ride options around it, particularly Jungle Expedition and Flying Ninjago. Though small, there’s a fair amount of stuff to do but I think it needs something like Viking River Splash (which I honestly thought they had in the first place) and another high throughput cred just to keep things fresh.