LEGOLAND California Resort
San Diego, California
Merlin Entertainment / Blackstone
Park News - (3/7/2025) LEGOLAND California will host the park’s first ever LEGO Festival event at the park over six weekends, between May 3 and June 8th. As part of the LEGO Festival they will create five special themed zones in the park: Dance Zone, Gaming Zone, Creative Zone, Chill out Zone and a Music Zone that will host the ultimate battle of the Lego bands. Follow the link for all the official details.
(2/27/2025) Legoland California has announced that they are adding a few LEGO DUPLO themed hotel rooms at the LEGOLAND Hotel. According to Legoland, the new rooms are, “Designed with the youngest LEGO® fans in mind, the new DUPLO rooms feature bright colors, interactive DUPLO elements and playful décor that brings the beloved DUPLO world to life. From building tables to DUPLO jungle creatures like giraffes and koalas, every detail is crafted to spark imagination and create unforgettable memories.” DUPLO isn’t the only new thing coming to the hotel, as they will also open new LEGO NINJAGO and LEGO Friends themed hotel rooms as well.
The park will also be hosting a few other events over Spring Break, including Dino Valley’s First Birthday (happening through the month of March), the opening the LEGOLAND Water Park for the season on March 28, a LEGO Flower Wall that stands 8 feet tall inside the Awesome Shop, and a variety of other Spring Break Entertainment, including a new costume character named “Surfer Dude”.
(2/20/2025) Legoland California has added an updated Las Vegas section to the park’s MINILAND. Newly added items to MINILAND Las Vegas include the Hard “Block” Hotel, “Trendy” Island Hotel, a Giant Brick Pyramid hotel (inspired by the Luxor of course), The Tallest Tower casino (inspired by the Strat), and the Intergalactic Car Show featuring a number of aliens and Elvis impersonators in the crowd.
(2/1/2025) Last week it was confirmed that Legoland Florida was in the process of laying off over 200 staff members, 75% of which were coming from the park’s Entertainment department and now we are hearing a similar story about Legoland California. According to local reports, the California park is planning to lay off 97 team members, all from the Entertainment department - 87 performers and the rest a stage managers, an events asst. Manager and a “production specialist”. The 97 positions are reported as being a mix of Full and Part Time positions within the park.
Just as was reported with the Florida park’s Entertainment cuts, the plan from park owner, Merlin Entertainment, is to outsource their entertainment needs to a third party company to fit the needs of the park at any given time.
 2025 - New Driving School and Jr. Driving School - (4/25/2025) Legoland California has confirmed that the all-new “Driving School” and “Jr. Driving School” attractions will be ready to open on May 21st, located in Fun Town. These new Driving Schools will be located across from the new indoor coaster now under construction for 2026.
2026 - Lego Galaxy / 3 Attractions - (5/14/2025) The local news dropped by the check out the new driving school attractions at Legoland California, but also shared a look at the new for 2026 indoor roller coaster now under construction at the park, so check it here.
(3/29/2025) It has been confirmed that Legoland Florida and Legoland California will both open “groundbreaking” new indoor roller coaster attractions in 2026. According to the latest update Merlin Entertainment will be spending about $90 million to create both attractions. While Merlin officials had little to say about the theme of the project when it was announced in Florida this past week, previous leaks about the California version from last year indicated that the attraction there would feature a “Lego Galaxy” theme, which seems to be a tie in to the old retired LEGO Space line of brick sets. Since then various “Space” style model sets have been launched in the company’s Icons, City and Technic lines. A quick online search shows that there was a “Galaxy Squad” offshoot of Space style sets created between 2013 and 2015 and a quasi-revival of the Space theme with the release of a Galaxy Explorer set in 2022 in celebration of LEGO’s 90th Anniversary.
So far the old ‘Lego Space’ theme has been mostly ignored inside the Legoland Theme Parks, with the exception of the Benny’s Playship structures inside the California and Florida parks that arrived with the Bricksburg themed landscape and attractions that tied into The LEGO Movie theme, anchored by The LEGO Movie: Masters of Flight flying theater attractions. So with the rumored launch of “Lego Galaxy” themed indoor coasters, it remains to be seen if new space themed brick sets will also be coming to store shelves over the next year.
(9/24/2024) Amusement Today reports that Legoland California will be shutting down the park’s Driving School attraction after this Sunday (Sept. 29th) as they make plans to rebuild it elsewhere in the park in time to reopen sometime in 2025.
Previous plans once in the works for the park during the pandemic had similarly planned the removal of the driving school attraction to make way for what was rumored to be a Vekoma Madhouse attraction that may have featured a LEGO Haunted House / Monster Party theme. Those plans were put on the backburner and eventually replaced with a new plan to use the site to create some kind of new “Lego Galaxy” themed land, that would include a large outdoor flat ride as well as an indoor space themed family coaster roller coaster. Previously those plans were thought to be for the 2025 season, but with a late start, Lego Galaxy could be for late 2025 or even 2026, assuming that is still the plan they are going with.
(1/20/2024) You may recall that back in 2022 some early plans were leaked from Legoland California that seems to indicate that a copy of the Haunted House Monster Party attraction from Legoland Windsor was being planned to move into the LEGO City section of the park, taking up some of the current Driving School attraction space.
Those plans were put on hold and the park went with alternate concepts for 2024 instead, but it seems that the Lego City area is once again the target of an entirely new planned concept that could come as early as 2025. According to local news reports the time has finally come for one of the Legoland theme parks to add an attraction space themed to the popular Lego Space series of toys.
According to the update, the new land to replace both the Driving School and Junior Driving School attractions will be called Lego Galaxy. The new land will feature a large 24-passenger flat ride with three spinning arms, a space-ship themed play structure with interactive play elements and two slides, and a large building that will feature a fully enclosed space-themed family roller coaster. As for the size of the coaster… it was noted that the park has asked for permission to increase the maximum building height from 35 ft to 45 ft for this addition. So far I haven’t heard any rumors about which manufacturer might be behind the roller coaster hardware.
For fans of the Driving school attractions… don’t fret, as the park has also submitted planning applications to relocate the driving schools over to where the Funtown Fire Academy attraction is currently located, which will be demolished.
(10/10/2023) According to a new post at ThemeParkInsider, the City of Carlsbad has been sent a planning application by Legoland California. The project title is “Project 2025”, so now we know that this will have a longer time-frame than anticipated, and will include three attractions:
An attraction inside a 32,200 sqft building that stands 43 feet tall , a 33 foot tall = Dark Ride most likely.
An outdoor ride that will take up a 4,120 sqft site and stand 33 feet tall = Likely a medium to large sized outdoor family ride.
A new outdoor play area featuring a 30-foot tall structure.
Screamscape’s quick take in this… I’d be looking to the new Legoland New York for some inspiration here, and when it comes to Dark Rides, Legoland California has almost every Lego branded dark ride created, with one exception, the new LEGO Factory Adventure dark ride, which features trackless vehicles. At the New York park, this dark ride exists in a land called Bricktopia, which is also home to a few outdoor attractions, like a tea-cup style flat ride and a train ride. A 4,120 sqft site really isn’t large enough for anything more than the smallest of coasters, but 33 feet tall is just too high for a train ride obviously. Something that has a little bit of height and may need a little space to move-about, kind of like a Zamperla Disk’O (or one of the many variants) may fit the bill here, but that’s just a bit of speculation.
One other line of thought may be the previous rumor from 2022 that claimed the park was planning to add what looked like a copyof the Haunted House Monster Party ride (Vekoma Madhouse) concept that was added to another Legoland theme park. (See the entry below for details on those delayed plans).
???? - Haunted House Monster Party - Delayed or Canceled - (5/7/22) While some rumored clearing of old attractions is taking place at Legoland California, according to ParkFans on Twitter, the park’s next major new 2023 attraction will be added on the complete opposite side of the park in LEGO City. Plans they’ve discovered show that the park’s Driving School attraction will be reduced in size to make room for what appears to be a Vekoma Madhouse attraction.
Legoland Windsor opened this very same attraction concept back in 2019 called “Haunted House Monster Party” which would work here with the creation of a creepy Haunted Mansion building on the outskirts of LEGO City. The Vekoma Madhouse concept isn’t one that has been installed very often in North America, so it should be seen as a unique new offering by the guests here, as well as one that is very family friendly as the motion is mild, but serves to aid the optical illusion created that the room you are seated in is spinning upside-down.
???? - Peppa Pig Theme Park - Rumor - (5/17/22) I’m not sure where they might fit it, but Screamscape sources tell us that Merlin may be making initial plans to build another Peppa Pig Theme Park experience, but this time at the Legoland California resort property.
|
