LEGOLAND Discovery Center Dallas/Fort Worth — Attraction in Grapevine

Field Trip Review - wait time for lines inside are beyond long. I've waited less time in lines for roller coasters at Disney. if you’re going as a family make sure it’s not when they have field trips.

Our school brought all first grade classes, arriving at 10 AM, Tuesday in May. There were three OTHER school groups also for field trip at the same time (other ISDs). The process to enter Legoland was undirected by their staff. Our school was lucky I think we were the first to enter. It probably took a half hour to start filing other schools into Legoland.

The only line that moves at a reasonable pace once in is the 'Rescue the princess', laser/shooting ride. We were among the first 50-100 kids to enter so we didn’t have to wait much at all for that, and people did say throughout the day that that line continued to move the fastest of the attractions.

after that, we tried to get them into the 4D movie, but it was broken.

So they spent some time playing in the play place. (think McDonald’s play structure but a bit larger).

After that, they wanted to go on one of the other rides. So I stood in line for the ride that you pedal on and it spins you around and you go up and down. I waited in line for 30-40 minutes to try and get the group of two I was chaperoning onto that ride; while they played with the Lego construction areas within eyesight.(Racecar building). FORTY. MINUTES!.... The kids exhausted their creativity waiting in that area, but I still had AT LEAST an additional HOUR WAIT to get to the front of the line for them. (wait time confirmed by another parent from our group who did stick it out.) They were hungry for lunch, so I told them to go into the cafeteria and sit at tables and eat their sack lunches because I was able to see them through the window from line. Unfortunately, its completely not friendly for field trips (they know kids will be coming with sack lunches) and they do not allow them to eat the food they bring in their cafeteria area .(they say it’s because health codes forbid it but there’s no way that’s true). They have no space indoors for this at all. They were not losing business to people would theoretically have been trying to order their own food because they didn’t have tables. There was room. And no one wanted to buy their food anyway because EVERYONE there was field trips. They do usually provide seating outdoors which the kids could have used to eat, but they had it blocked off and inaccessible because it was a rainy day. Their 'solution' was to tell us to take the kids down through the mall to the food court. Pass.

At that point, someone came running throughout Legoland hollering at everyone that they got the movie working and they would be starting a showing in 19 seconds ... OK... So a hoard of people rushed over there, (including us because we were giving up on the ridiculous ride line). Folks in front of us generally kept their place waiting. The theater got packed. There was not enough seating for everyone who wanted to be in there. The front row of seats all are missing cushions on the plastic seat shells. The kids laughed a ton, enjoying the whole movie.

There’s a car driving ride in the back, but that line moves at least as slowly as the up-and-down spinning ride. So by the time the movie got out, we didn’t even have enough time left in the field trip for the kids to sit there and wait to get to use that attraction. They ended up spending the remainder of their time in the play place.

I will say: the kids had fun. It was generally a success for them in their first grade POV. I kept my disgruntlement to myself. But, I strongly feel it's very inappropriate of Legoland to oversell their facility by that amount. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were in excess of fire code capacity violations. I know some chaperone groups did get lucky (or strategize better) and were able to get their kids on more than one attraction, but most I’m guessing did not.

The oldest field trip group present was third graders. The youngest I think was...

Not sure how there are so many good reviews of this place…we went on a Sunday afternoon, not a holiday weekend or anything so thankfully it was not super crowded. That said, it did not feel worth the ticket price we paid, and we used a coupon through my work to get 30% off. I would absolutely never pay full price to get in here. It simply isn’t worth it.

You purchase an entrance time if you buy tix online and we had no wait to get in. We went on the Merlin ride and the Quest Adventure ride and both had about 15-20 min wait time but it wasn’t terrible.

The MiniLand area was one part we were looking forward to seeing - we have visited the big LegoLand in CA and also visited the LegoLand Discovery Center in GA last year. In both parks the MiniLand was a favorite attraction for my husband and myself as well as our kids. This location greatly fell short. For starters the lights didn’t work in the room for some reason…which made my 3 year old daughter hesitant from the start. We also could barely see any of the details of the builds so really what’s the point? We tried every single button on the displays to start animations and only found one that worked. Overall this section was a huge let down. To the point where I wondered aloud if we could get our money back for the tickets because that’s what we were most excited for and it was a dud.

The Ninjago climbing structure looks like it has potential, but it’s frustrating that parents can’t see into the area except for one small bit - I like being able to keep an eye on my kid in those types of jungle gyms and you really can’t. There were lots of older kids running and being rowdy so we opted not to let our 3 year olds stay in very long since I didn’t want them to get hurt.

There are lots of spots to stop and build with LEGO which is fun…I do wish the Duplo area was larger (In Georgia location it’s massive!) because I have two 3 year olds and that’s what they prefer. But my kids still enjoyed it despite being quite limited.

My kids enjoyed the rides and definitely loved the splash pad, which we saved for the end of our visit.

My big disappointments and reason for 2 stars: Everything is grimy and dirty. There’s a display of giant LEGO right when you walk in that is downright filthy. I wanted to disinfect my kids’ hands after seeing it. First impressions make a difference and that was not a promising way to start our day. The various building tables of LEGO do not appear to get cleaned regularly - there’s buildup and dirt all over. I took my kids in the restroom at the end of our visit, to change into swimsuits for the splash pad and I was fully grossed out and honestly would have just left altogether but my kids were so looking forward to the water play. The smell in the ladies restroom makes it clear that the mess/disarray is not “new” but instead is the norm. It smells kind of mildewy and rotting…I tried using the family restroom instead and it was worse. There’s a number on the door to text someone to ask them to clean the restrooms, but I don’t think it should be my responsibility as a customer to monitor the restroom and ask someone to clean it.

Also, not sure if the location was just short staffed the day we visited or what, but there were hardly any employees around to help when needed - there were attendants at the rides and I saw one person sweeping but there was never anyone else around when we had questions.

We did not love this experience…I won’t be returning. I am sad that this was not fun like the other LEGO parks we...

(Original review at bottom) UPDATE: I'm editing my 8 month old review and removing a star. We visit 1 - 3 times a month. There's a noticeable decrease in staff friendliness. Also, we pay too much money here for things to still be broken almost a year later. I'm willing to be it won't be fixed by Q1 2019. We bought 4 season passes and cannot wait for them to expire. We only return for the small discount on their retail store.

We are hoping with the new lego movie coming out they'll generate a bit more revenue to help this place but it's just not fun anymore. Floors and walls are dirty throughout the interior, the restrooms always smell really bad. All this year I have not seen them open the outside track for the cars. Did I miss it? We come so often I don't see us have missed it but if we did then it must have been closed for some reason during our visit, again with the lack of communication. Some of the cars are too worn but it's my sons favorite thing to do. The employees I thought were supposed to wear minifigures for trading, we've only traded once as they all seem lame and definitely not worth trading for.

Employees are not as kind or interactive with the kids as I would expect or hope to see. There's a few good one's but it's a team effort, please help make a positive experience. Also the employees at the exit seem rude. I don't get why. They don't ask if you had fun or thank you for visiting.They don't seem happy. A few folks are nice though. One time parents left w/o their kids and the kids went missing. Police were called it was very tragic to see, we wished we could have helped. Staff has zero sense of urgency when you lose things, even important things.

If you have dismissive employees at the entrance, only partly friendly one's inside, and rude one's upon exit then you're going to continue to see a decrease in the businesses income.

Not enough activities for things to have remained broken for almost a year!

Food is still awful.

We did enjoy the holiday lego ornaments and noticed a little change of lego parts to play with at the car racing zone. Not enough for us to renew our passes. We might return once sometime next year after the new lego movie to buy more legos and see if they listen to their customers.

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(ORIGINAL Review from April 2018:)

Despite it seeming as though there's not enough activities the kids love it here and enjoy hours of fun. I dislike their lack of communication about hours of operation, ticket purchasing, and information about the rides or outdoor activities. However, the staff is incredibly helpful and if you don't live hours away to where you can visit in person for information it's great. It's not as great during the busy seasons we prefer to visit Legoland when it's at a moderate capacity versus overloaded. I wish the adult nights lasted longer than 2 hours. I don't know how often they change the interior or activities, so you're coming here for a little over a year and are waiting for something new. Still love it still happy to make the drive here. I would not buy a season pass I think other theme parks in the area have better deals and more to do in comparison to Legoland. The food inside is awful, and they don't know how to make Coffee even though they advertise it as a coffee shop. Not only is the food overpriced, we've tried to give the food chance after chance, it's gross every time. I'd rather eat at the food court or the Rainforest...