LEGOLAND Discovery Centre & LEGO Store Birmingham — Attraction in Birmingham

Our group consisted of 2 adults and 4 children (aged 4 - 10). At first we were very put off by the price of admission, as £20 per person is quite steep, (£15 if you book online). Luckily we got quite a good discount via a promo offer.

We were advised to go mid afternoon as that is when the queues are shortest. This was a good tip as we didn't really wait in line for anything for longer than approximately 8 mins.

As soon as you walk in, you are greeted by the staff who are working to try and be as efficient as possible, you make your way down a Lego hallway towards a Lego elevator and can play with Lego walls as you wait for the lift. You exit the lift into another hallway where you hit your first queue of the day. Because of the time we went this was a very short wait for a ride that consisted of a cart and some laser guns. This really excited the children and got them pumped up for Lego! The ride was well made and I even found myself trying for a high score.

After exiting this ride you make your way to a miniature town of Lego locations in Birmingham. Some of these models are very good and the attention to detail is quite impressive. This was a good transition from the shooting ride we had just been on for the kids as it got them into a Lego frame of mind. The room cycles through different times of day and night to show off the interactive nature of the models and the kids can play with different parts of the display via controls, IE racing the long boats, controlling a concert etc. The kids did enjoy this.

After we had finished in this room we made our way out into an atrium area where different attractions surrounded a large open space and filled with visitors. This area, whilst being quite impressive at first, becomes your home for the next few hours. There are Lego building areas, a Lego race car building area and race track, a soft play area, 4d cinema (which is better than the Sea Life one), a rotating ride, activity rooms (with face painting) and a Lego masterclass room. There is also a haven for parents in the shape of a Costa restaurant and a large seating area.

Each activity kept the children occupied and at no point were they bored. The only queues we faced were for the 4d cinema, (max 10 minutes waiting between shows, even then the queue did not exceed a full cinema so you only really waited for the next showing), the ride, (takes longer to seat everybody in it than for the length of the actual ride, yes I timed this, the ride lasts 90 secs whilst the emptying and loading of people timed in at 3 mins 20secs) and the face painting, which could have been quicker had there not been only one lady painting all the eager children. After the kids tired themselves out in the soft play area, we sat down to lunch, which I am extremely glad we had packed from home. Kids meals, if bought from the restaurant were £3.95 and the adults £5.95. Meals consisted of a sandwich, snack and drink. Whilst we were munching on our own packed lunches we were discussing how much the trip would've cost had we paid full price for the tickets and bought lunch there. Days out are becoming very expensive and we probably would've given this trip a miss on a normal day.

After lunch we visited each area and attraction of this atrium and before we knew it 4 hours had passed. As we exited the atrium you pass the much needed toilets and through another elevator trip which empties you into the Lego shop. My family for some reason love fridge magnets, so they went nuts.

The kids thoroughly enjoyed the day and were occupied from start to finish. There is stuff for adults to appreciate but I think the adults will get bored long before the kids do. I do remember thinking that I was extremely glad for the ticket discounts as we exited as I think my review may have been slightly different if we had...

Good morning out for the family, but the activities and displays are a bit shabby and badly looked after.

The good: It's a really good place to take kids who are primary school age or under. It's a good half-day activity with plenty to do for 3-4 hours.

It's got plenty to for families to do together, such as building cars and racing them down ramps.

The staff are mostly friendly and polite.

For the AFOL (Adult Fan of Lego) there are some nice models of the Midlands, I particularly liked Warwick Castle and the Chinese New Year.

The bad: I was really disappointed to see there are lots of parts of the Miniland display that are broken or missing, and there were pages from activity books thrown in the displays which had obviously been there at least 24 hours as we were the first group in that morning. I mentioned it to the cleaner who didn't even acknowledge me.

On one of the rides you're supposed to use laser guns to shoot targets, but two of the guns were broken. I mentioned it to the ride operator who offered us another ride straight away, but I'm more interested to see if it actually gets fixed.

Various bits of the activities were dirty. For example the earthquake simulator has model buildings in the middle that are coated with dust - a quick 5-minute clean with a brush is all it needs. The brick pits are all a bit dirty too, and basically if you look closely it's all a bit 'minimum effort' on the cleaning.

There are also bits missing from other activities, such as the missing button and the missing wallplate in the Duplo area. See the pictures for examples.

The two adult-sized urinals were broken, leaving only the child-sized ones.

None of these things are individually terrible of course, but as a whole it shows a picture of management who don't take any pride in their attraction, which is really sad when respresenting such a good brand as Lego.

Lastly, the only new ride since we last visited is a VR experience, but apparently it costs £7 extra per person! Very cheeky, especially when it's an expensive morning out already and they're not even spending money on basic maintenance!

So, overall, it's worth a visit, but it's definitely a cash grab with very little care or attention paid to upkeep or even basic cleaning. The kids won't notice, and they will have a great time, and if you've never been it's worth doing at least once.

For what it's worth the problems are the same at Lego Discovery Centre in Liverpool, and Legoland Windsor, so it's obviously a corporate attitude on behalf of Merlin rather than just bad managers at Birmingham. Hopefully Lego will buy back the rights at some point and make the Lego parks something really...

Fantastic for small children! We made the most of the term-time weekday offer for adult and toddler, paying just £12 for our visit which was an absolute bargain!

We had our photo taken just after we entered as well as some on the shooting ride, and were able to purchase all of these in a package for just £20. This package included 2 printed photos, a keyring, a magnet and all of the photos digitally. Great value for money.

There was no queue for the shooting ride and although my son was too young to grasp the concept, he loved seeing the skeletons and spiders... So much that he cried because he didn't want to get off! The lovely ladies operating the ride very kindly let us go round again because there was no queue.

The room with the lego models was great, especially being of Birmingham and nearby. There is a cute tunnel for littles to crawl through and enable them to stand up in the middle of one which my toddler thought was hilarious! There was also lots of interactive buttons but quite a few didn't work unfortunately.

The main room was amazing with lots to keep my son busy. There was a soft play with a slide and foam bricks, a very small under 5s soft play and then a larger soft play for 3ft-5ft children. My son got to go on all three which I was glad, as the under 5s bit would not have been enough to stimulate him despite being only 2.5.

There was lots of building available in this room, with various tables to build at. It had a mix of both big duplo blocks and normal lego, so my son loved the opportunity to have a go with both. He especially liked building the cars and testing them on the ramps! The only let down of this room was the "train" area in the middle... Lots of track but no trains???

The 4D cinema was great and it was my son's first experience in a cinema environment. There was another ride in there too but my son didn't want to go on it. I particularly liked that all of the features (aside from the VR) are included in the price and that I didn't have to pay extra for anything.

We decided to have lunch there and thought that was great value too. I got a panini, packet of crisps, rocky road and drink, and my son got a kids sandwich, packet of crisps, cereal bar and a drink... It was only £15! I was very shocked but pleased.

Overall, we had a great day out and we would definitely come back for the £12. I don't think it would be worth it if we had paid the normal price of £25 each, despite staying for 4 hours. I also don't think it's suitable for older children, as I think they'd get bored quickly. It's best for under 5s...