Legoland Shanghai arrived a couple of years ago. It’s one of those family fun places in Shanghai that everyone has heard of, but for some reason, not many have been to.
I recommend that you go! It was better than I expected, and very reasonable for the price — two to three hours or fun were had. Here’s my review of the Legoland Shanghai experience.
Photos in the slideshow below.
All Dads will be share a knowing nod when I tell you that the day started very well as I lucked upon a prime car parking spot.
As well as the usual basement parking, there was parking on the ground at Joy City by Changfeng Park, and we had arrived there at 9:30am, in advance of the 10am opening time of Legoland.
Where is it: (Google Map)
On the second floor of Joy City ‘Parkside Plaza’, on Gubei Rd by Changfeng Park. 10-15 mins from Xuhui or Jing’an.
When to go:
I went on the May holiday, which was not that busy. Of course, best times to go would be weekdays so it’s less busy.
I definitely wouldn’t go in prime holiday slots such as National Holiday or Chinese New Year.
You should arrive at 9:50am to queue at the mall’s entrance door so that you get a good place in the queue for tickets.
Otherwise, wait and go after 2pm, sometime before the doors close at 7pm, with it finishing at 8pm.
How much does it cost:
¥180 each. Kids under 1m are free. There is a bigger play area (shown below) for kids 1m and up, so you may not want to get those just about 1m in for free, in case you are told they can’t go on the bigger area, and they want to.
You can save money on Changfeng Aquarium and Madame Tussauds by buying tickets at the same time, and you can save a little on tickets by buying on the official Lego site above.
Layout:
The layout of the place is very good. It’s not big, but they section each area off and limit the people in certain areas, so there are no bottlenecks and it’s not overly crowded.
What is there to do:
They say on the entrance that it’s two to three hours of fun, and it is.
This makes the ticket price reasonable, in perspective of a totally normal kids play area being about ¥120-200 per child.
Entrance:
At first, there is a kind of pretend arcade game, when kids watch a video and use a joystick control to think that they are taking part in the video. Children age 3 to 9 will enjoy this.
Kingdom Quest:
After that, you can turn right to Kingdom Quest – though there will be a queue unless you go on a very quiet day. Kingdom Quest is a great ride that takes 15 minutes or so, and lets you feel as though you are interacting with it. Good fun.
Building Lego:
After that (or just turn left if you are there on a holiday day and there is a huge queue) there are a few Lego building stations. It’s quite fun, and parents will probably also enjoy obsessing over building a house.
But, it’s still probably the most dull of all the things to do there and we move don after 5 minutes.
Little ones play:
After that there is a small area for kids below 1m to play in. It is very small, but, for kids this age it’s still good. They can go down a slide and press buttons that make animal noises, which will keep them happy for quite a while.
Café:
Next to this is the café. We didn’t eat there, but the food looks decent enough for snacks – crisps, drinks, sandwiches, sushi, spaghetti, at reasonable prices. There’s a large seating area.
Merlin’s Apprentice Ridge:
A small, simple but enjoyable spinning ride. It’s more suitable for kids 8 and older, or more daring small ones. Personally I wouldn’t take a child below 7 on this, unless you specifically knew that they do enjoy rides like this.
Ninja Training:
It’s also small, it’s also simple, but it’s still fun. Kids can try to avoid ‘lasers’ at varying levels of difficulty, and there are a couple of small things to do. Because we got there when it opened, my kids could go on these things as much as they wanted. By about 11:30am, there was a queue for this.
The Big Play Area:
A large area with lots to climb on and a big slide to go down. Will keep kids ages 5 to 9 happy for a long, long time.
The good thing is that parents are allowed to go in, which let’s face it, is really fun and you can also spend some time there climbing round with your kids.
If your child is below 6 then I’d advise that you go in with them anyway, because children from all over come here and bigger boys can get pretty boisterous going around inside.
Build and Test:
People numbers are limited in this area, so that you can have a chance to build a Lego car and ‘test’ it on a few fun areas. It’s a fun 10-15 minutes of racing cars down hills. You can also build a tower and then give it an ‘earthquake’ shake.
4D Cinema:
Really good. They play it every 30 mins, so you can queue up at the right time. It’s a random ‘Knights’ tale that takes about 15 minutes, in 3D. The 4D part is that you experience wind, rain and a couple of other fun surprises that everyone loves.
Shop & Exit:
You can keep playing on all of these things more, but at this point we had been there for two and a half hours and it was time to eat.
The mall has lots of local restaurants for noodles and the like. There’s also a Tairyo Sushi place.
We went to the ground floor for ‘Kenny Rogers Roasters’ as all of the other restaurants were too busy, and roast chicken was the easy option. The mall also has a Subway if you just want a quick sandwich, and a KFC.
The mall also has Uniqlo, H&M, C&A and such for some kids clothes shopping afterwards.
Another option for a full day there would be to go across the road to Changfeng Park and take a little boat out on the water, or visit Disc Karting.