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LEGOLAND California Resort
San Diego, California
Merlin Entertainment / Blackstone
 Park News - (10/14/2024) Legoland California announced that their Holiday event this season will be turned into an “elf extravaganza” during the seasonal event from Nov. 23 through to Jan. 5, 2025.
This year, Santa’s zaniest helpers have taken over Imagination Zone and transformed it into an elf extravaganza. Guests can immerse themselves in the holiday spirit by training to become an elf at the new Elf Training Academy, taking “elfies” with the all-new LEGO® elf characters, Ivy and Frode, or mastering their jolly good dance moves at the new Holly Hype Dance Party. And don’t miss the North Pole Postal Service where guests can mail letters to Santa by dropping them in a special mailbox, where eager elves will ensure they make their way to the North Pole.
The elf fun continues as you stroll through the Park where you’ll be greeted by the iconic three-story-tall twinkling LEGO Christmas tree built out of more than 364,481 LEGO® and DUPLO® bricks. Capture core memories with Christmas card photos in front of the larger-than-life LEGO wreath, sample sweet treats with a holiday twist, and get a head start on holiday shopping at The Big Shop.
Look for the park to hold a Holiday Fireworks show each Saturday night in December and nightly from Dec. 21 to 30th. Also enjoy the Holly Hype Dance party, Brickmas Greetings with the LEGO Toy Solider and Toy Soldier Marching Band, meet and greet with LEGO Santa and Friends, and more!
Then on New Year’s Eve the park will host a “Kids New Year’s Eve” celebration that will ring in the new year early for the young ones with a special fireworks show at 7pm.
(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.
(3/29/2024) I’m really not a fan of the concept myself, but LEGOLAND California has announced that they plan to bring “surge pricing” to the park’s ticket sales in the near future. Surge Pricing, also known as Dynamic Pricing, is something you are likely familiar with when it comes to buying tickets for Airlines, or booking a hotel room for the night. The more crowded or popular a date has become, or based on how popular a date is expected to become, the price will go up. For example, if you are visiting Legoland on a weekend your tickets will likely cost you more than if you had visited on a weekday. Planning a visit on a busy holiday, or on a day where extra crowds are expected due to a special seasonal event taking place, then you can expect to pay an even higher premium for those theme park tickets.
Of course, in theory, the practice could benefit some guests, by lowering ticket prices on days when the park is expecting to have very low attendance. But as i said… that’s part of the theory, much like booking a hotel room, pricing rarely goes below a certain minimum level, regardless of how dead the park is expected to be on any given day. For example, we’ve seen how often parks will simply just opt to close down entirely on days when bad weather is expected.
The switch over to surge pricing is something that is expected to come into play at various Merlin Entertainment attractions and theme parks around the world (SeaLife Aquariums, Madame Tussauds wax museums, LEGO Discovery Centers, Peppa Pig Theme Park, etc…), and not just at Legoland California.
2024 - Dino Valley & Lego World Parade - (5/25/2024) Legoland California has launched the park’s new Lego World Parade, the first ever in North America, as part of the park’s 25th birthday celebration this summer.
“Surrounded by a whirlwind of streamers and waving flags, we proudly launched the nation’s inaugural LEGO World Parade at LEGOLAND California today,” said President of LEGOLAND California Resort Kurt Stocks. “This landmark Parade feels even more celebratory as we honor LEGOLAND California Resort’s 25th birthday this year. Every float tells a story and every step along the way ignites imagination. The Parade is the perfect finale to a day spent riding, climbing, splashing, and building through our 60+ rides, shows and attractions.”
The Parade features a dazzling array of LEGO themed floats including a bright red LEGO City Firetruck, a swashbuckling pirate ship, and floats inspired by LEGO® NINJAGO®, LEGO® City Deep Sea Adventure, and DUPLO®. Accompanying these floats is an exclusive ensemble of LEGO characters and more than 50 performers, captivating audiences as they march through the west side of the Park.
This is a big year for the park which already opened their new Dino Valley area and new attractions earlier this year. To celebrate the July 4th holiday, they will hold the Red, White & BOOM! fireworks celebration, with extra fun, games, and picnic food action throughout the park.
(4/26/2024) Legoland California will be launching North America’s first LEGO World Parade this summer. This new parade will feature a cast of five new costume characters to the park, along with more than 50 other cast members. The characters will include Fire Chief Freya who will lead the parade on the Firetruck float, Scuba Diver on the LEGO City Deep Sea Adventure float, Scallywag Pirate, Lloyd on the Ninjago Dragon float and Hopsy, a bright red LEGO DUPLO bunny. Plus kids will enjoy seeing the LEGO Friends on their own themed float.
(2/23/2024) Legoland California has sent out a great video showing off a ton of the new Lego Dinosaurs being moved by crane into their new homes in Dino Valley. All together there will be 35 different LEGO Dinosaurs that will make their home in Dino Valley, that took a whopping 1.8 million LEGO bricks to create. Check out the video below and look for the new land to open this Spring.
(2/8/2024) Legoland California will be hosting a Dinosaur Costume Party on March 3rd, as they prepare to open the park’s new Dino Valley this Spring. With that in mind, Legoland is attempting to set a world record for having “the largest dinosaur costume party” in the world on March 3rd, 2024.
“LEGO® T-Rex guy will lead this colossal dance party, a new Dino Valley costume character will be unveiled for the very first time, and there will be plenty of fun family photo ops.”
For a chance to be part of history, guests are invited to visit LEGOLAND California dressed in dinosaur costumes. Participants in full head-to-toe dino attire will receive complimentary Park admission for the day! Annual pass holders who are blocked out on March 3rd will also receive complimentary admission.”
One important note… if you want to participate, you have to register for the event on the official website, so follow the link and read all the details.
(1/25/2024) Legoland California’s Master Builders sort of have their hands full right now, as the teams work to create 17 different Lego Dinosaurs to inhabit the park’s new Dino Valley opening this year.
(11/18/2023) In an interesting development, it seems that the two closed attractions at Legoland California really are’t going anywhere after all. The park has announced that “Dino Valley” is coming for 2024, which will take the space occupied by the former attractions and turn it all into one big Dinosaur themed land, with the Fairy Tale Brook water ride becoming the Explorer River Quest and the former Safari Trek jeep ride becoming the Duplo Little Dino Trail. These two newly re-themed attractions will join with the existing Coastersaurus roller coaster to create the new themed land. Look for the space to also include a dino themed LEGO build and play area, along with new themed characters.
Also coming in 2024 will be a new LEGO themed parade in the park that will feature floats themed to LEGO firetrucks, pirate ships, as well as use the LEGO Ninjago, City and Friends brand characters. Apparently this will be North America’s first-ever Lego World parade.
(10/6/2023) Legoland California has announced that a second day-one classic attraction will also close down for good at the end of the month. While the Safari Trek had just closed at the end of September, now the nearby Fairy Tale Brook boat ride will close down at the end of October 2023. The two attractions combined essentially make up the entire south-west corner of the theme park, which will now be open to a potentially rather large expansion project that would fit in between the park entrance Lego Movie World.
(9/22/2023) Legoland California has announced that at the end of month they will be closing down one of the park’s original attractions: the Lego Safari Trek ride. Here guests would climb aboard small jeeps that travel around a guided track past numerous recreations of animals build from LEGO bricks.
Legoland says that the attraction will be removed to make way for a new future attraction project.
2025 - Lego Galaxy / 3 Attractions - (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 - (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.
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