Legoland debuts new Dino Valley land with revamp of two 20-year-old rides

Youngsters can journey again in time to the land of dinosaurs at Legoland’s latest themed space Dino Valley, which opened Friday.

Simply off the park entrance, Dino Valley options three rides, carnival-style video games with dinosaur plush toy prizes and a hands-on play space, the place children can construct with Legos and dig for fossils.

Park president Kurt Shares stated the choice to revamp and re-theme components of the previous Explorer Island after 20 years was pushed by knowledge and surveys gathered from visitors. Dinosaurs had been the resounding alternative.

“The humorous factor is, once we take a look at new ideas and new themes throughout the park, it’s virtually all the time that dinosaurs comes out as the highest theme,” he stated. “We’ve been contemplating dinosaur choices for a extremely, actually very long time and we lastly bought the chance to create this completely immersive new land … for your entire household.”

A type of rides that the entire household can take pleasure in — with no minimal peak requirement — is Explorer River Quest. What was Fairy Story Brook, a ship trip by basic storybook scenes, is now a sightseeing tour of colourful prehistoric creatures.

For households with preschool-age kids, Duplo Little Dino Path places the tiniest explorers within the driver’s seat. Actually. The four-seater, Jeep-style automotive provides children a steering wheel and somewhat “digital camera” that triggers interactive moments, like motion and sound results, alongside the monitor. The massive, huggable-looking Duplo dinosaurs are a redo of the park’s outdated Safari Trek, which had solely two seats in every automotive.

Generally, Legoland is geared towards children ages 2 to 12 and this Duplo trip provides to the park’s sights for preschoolers. There’s even a information for fogeys referred to as, “What To Do When You’re Two.”

As for larger children and the thrill-seekers of the household, certainly one of Legoland’s hottest curler coasters, Coastersaurus, is unchanged. It matches proper in with the Dino Valley theme, given its Lego 1,100-pound Brachiosaurus and a 10-foot tall Parasaurolophus scavenging for meals.

Dino Valley options 1.8 million Lego bricks that convey to life colourful explorers and creatures that when roamed the Earth. The park’s grasp builders crafted the dinosaurs utilizing each shade at their disposal, which took two years of brainstorming and constructing.

“I believe one of the crucial thrilling fashions we’ve is a really colourful Stegosaurus that’s simply over 5 toes tall, 12 toes lengthy and has almost 120,000 bricks,” stated Dino Valley venture supervisor Thomas Storer. “The colours are simply so magnificent and he’s hidden alongside and also you see him consuming a few of the shrubs on the finish” of the Explorer River Quest, he stated.

Storer additionally described two sibling T. rexes scattered across the space. One among them is prepared for a household photograph alternative and stands at almost 7 toes tall. It took 5 grasp builders greater than 430 hours to finish it with about 40,000 Lego bricks. The opposite T. rex within the Explorer River Quest is nearly 11 toes tall, took greater than 700 hours and 140,000 Lego bricks to construct.

Elements of Dino Valley’s new sights additionally lean into know-how to create an immersive expertise so “the visitors aren’t simply sitting on the trip and being a spectator” however participating within the thrilling world, Storer stated.

Dino Valley is certainly one of Legoland’s larger initiatives shortly. In 2021, it launched Lego Film World, which on the time was its greatest endeavor that devoted 2 acres of the park to its standard Lego Film franchise.

Final 12 months, the park additionally unveiled a venture smaller in scale however simply as huge of a deal to locals: a miniland model of San Diego, full with a Petco Park mannequin and nods to iconic landmarks.

Friends at Legoland’s two resorts can get early entry to Dino Valley forward of the park opening and relying on the closing hours that day.