Legoland

Last year we finished the summer holiday with trip to Legoland. This year we pretty much started with one.

The rain meant that there were fewer people, but that the rides were pretty wet affairs. I got drenched early on (in part because of the Viking ride) and spent a lot of the day drip-drying. However, it wasn't too cold, so this wasn't too bad. On the plus side, it made the queues rather better; also we were more cunning with our choice of order. Consequently we managed nine rides this year compared to seven last year. The main down side was that whilst last year the duo were spell-bound by it all, this year there was a certain amount of whinge from the Bea (on grounds of wet and cold plus some general grumping). I think she still enjoyed herself, but was rather more vocal than last year with her complaints (plus this time it suffered from rather too much anticipation). Ryan still enjoyed himself muchly though.

Our rides and stops were:

• Hill Train - Really just a ride from one part of the park to another, but it meant we started other than at the entrance for rides.
• Spinning Spider - One of those "teacup" rides, only slightly faster.
• Vikings' River Splash - A water ride in round boats which finished the job of soaking us! bateleur's favourite)
• Dragon's Apprentice - The baby roller coaster that we went on last year (Ryan's favourite).
• City Walk - Not a ride at all, but a food spot for pizza and pasta. The food was pretty good (the female half of the family had ham-and-pineapple pizza whilst the male half had spag bol).
• Chairoplane - Another ride from last time (chosen for the lack of queue); fairground swings.
• Ferris Wheel - Requested by Ryan, and again with the short queue.
• Revenge of the Aztec Queen - This was really our candy floss stop (Bea had never had it and wanted some and Ryan took a long time to be convinced it was food) but we saw some of this year's show by the lake (it was remarkably similar to last year's).
• Driving School - Bea and Ryan got to drive cars around their mini road system; Ryan spent most of the time shunting Bea's back end! They got lego driving licences at the end as souvenirs.
• Balloon School - Spotted by Bea from the Ferris Wheel and later named as her favourite ride. It had the odd characteristic that you could pull you particular "balloon" higher as they went round and round.
• Fire Academy - Last's year's favourite (of Bea's) was requested by both twins so we braved the (still awful, but not as long as last year's) queues and did the whole "put the fire out" again.
• Fairy Brook - Our final ride was also from last year and requested by me - I like fairy tales and it had the shortest queues (about five minutes).