Camp Rogers goes to Legoland! Grandma stayed home with Carigan (
who can ride absolutely nothing at Legoland but the carousel. Have I complained about that yet?? Well add a tally mark, then...) so we got to ride all the big rides!
Had to show off the back of our t-shirts with our names and ages. We got a lot of comments about the shirts, but people thought they were part of a real camp ~ workers kept asking the kids if they were having fun at camp. :o) By the time we realized the weather was turning rainy for the rest of the week, it was too late to go to Legoland earlier in the week. So we went on an overcast day but it turned out to be a blessing because the park was the emptiest I've ever seen it. We walked straight onto rides for the first hour and a half we were there and could ride them again and again... often without having to get off! We rode Project X (
below) 3 or 4 times, and poor Wesley had to wait in the "kid pen" each time. Poor guy... you could tell he
really really wanted to make himself ride, but he was just too scared! By the time we left the park though, he had built up his courage and was begging to go back so he could ride it.
Wesley breaking all the rules in the Driving School... driving into oncoming traffic to pass Abby. For the record, I'm
SO not teaching this kid to drive. I call "
Not it!" and am giving Michael fair notice.
Wesley is so unpredictable. After flat-out refusing to ride that first coaster, he agreed to ride
the suspended coaster, which I totally think it the scariest coaster in the park! He said no the first time, but after only one shift in the kid pen he had mustered his courage. I was fully anticipating him to freak out as they strapped him in or crying the whole way, but he did great and at the end he declared that he "
triple-loved it!" But later in the day when we rode the wooden roller coaster and the
mildest of mild Dragon Coaster, he once again flat-out refused. He's a tough nut to crack.
Gabe the babe being eaten by a shark. Now I know why they had the ride operators hop in with my kids last time for the Boating School ride when I had to wait with Carigan... those boats are super-hard to control! If you barely bump the side of the course or another boat, you'll suddenly find yourself headed backwards. Much harder than driving a car! Caleb picking a winner with Einstein:
The Safari ride ~ another ride my kids had never done before. We rode more rides in our first two hours that day than I think we have in all of our previous Legoland visits combined! Can you tell we'd been riding a lot of roller coasters?? ...
Love this picture of Caleb! This was his first time on Wesley's beloved Beetle Bounce. Next the whole crew got to ride together (
minus the Camp photographer). Wes got upset that he didn't get to sit by Gabe. It ain't an amusement park if someone's not throwing a fit!
I dared Wesley to keep that frown on for the whole ride but he didn't make it past the first bounce. The rain held off a lot longer than we expected, but it was starting to catch up with us... we ducked into a 4-D movie when it started to sprinkle. It was my kids' first time to catch one of the movies. They loved the snow. :o)
The sprinkling had subsided when we got out of the movie so we were able to squeeze in more rides. But they closed the Island in the Sky as we were headed to the entrance due to lightning in the area. They also canceled the ski show, which was bummer, but we can't complain because I don't think we'll ever be able to ride as many rides in one day as we did at Legoland Camp Rogers!
Aunt Erin was so sweet to ride Merlin's Challenge with them again and again... I can't do going in circles very much anymore! After this we rode the Dinosaur Coaster three times in a row without ever getting off. We never could coax Wesley to join us, but the ride operator let him come up to his little booth and watch us on the security cameras (
the ride starts with an indoor portion going by Lego scenes), so he thought that was pretty cool. Anna Kate rocked all the coasters.
Abby's a natural performer. Notice that my kids don't know how to do anything but stand there and smile. It's a side effect of their
life-in-front-of-Mom's-camera-lens condition. After this we went to the Lego Factory where they have a pick-a-brick wall like at Downtown Disney. But unlike the Lego Store at Downtown Disney where you pay by the container (
and can stuff it at tight as you want!), you pay by weight. It was MUCH more expensive, but we spend just a few dollars each getting parts they didn't have at Downtown Disney like steering wheels and windshields. And then all the kids bought a minifigure to trade. Wesley opened his minifigure and it was a bride, and both Abby and Anna Kate were eager to trade with him. So we went back inside to try to buy another bride, and the two women working the counter spent probably 30 minutes feeling every packet of minifigures in the whole bin until they felt one that they were fairly certain was the bride. And they were right! So both girls got a Lego bride. So big props to the either severely bored or out-of-their-way helpful workers at the Lego Factory!
The carousel ended up being our last ride before all the rides shut down due to lightening. 6/20/12
With all the rides closed down and rain looming in the sky, we decided to try to catch this show. They said that they would have to close it down mid-performance if lightening got too close, but they ended up doing the whole show. The problem was that it started to monsoon in the middle of the performance (
I give them credit... they just kept going!). And what we thought was an actual water-proof covering over the amphitheater turned out to just be a sun shade, so it held the water for a little bit and then just started to DUMP it on all of us sitting underneath. Everyone went scrambling! I had two towels for us to hunker down under and two kids hid in the stroller. We looked at the time and the next 4-D movie started in 5 minutes and we decided to make a run for it. They shut the doors at showtime and won't let anyone else in. We made a mad dash across the park in the pouring rain and
barely made it! I've never seen Anna Kate's little legs run so fast!
We watched one more movie and then Erin and I pow-wowed and decided to take the kids to Downtown Disney one more time to fill a tub of Legos to complete the day of Lego awesomeness. That made them much less disappointed about leaving the park as we ran through the rain! We stopped at Crisper's to dry off a little and eat dinner and it was just sprinkling by the time we got to Downtown Disney. The main guy working the counter recognized us from having spent so much time there two days before. The kids had the best time absolutely
stuffing the large container with a gazillion Legos. We couldn't even come CLOSE to putting the lid on (
Erin and I were both a good two inches off!) but the workers were waving us over and telling us it was fine. I pulled out my tiny bag of weighed Legos from Legoland to show the workers how expensive Pick a Brick was at Legoland and they were passing it around and encouraging me to squeeze a few more bricks into my already overflowing container. The kids have had the BEST time playing with their treasure trove of Legos. It was money well spent and a day full of special memories!
