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In December of 2021 I hit SFMM and KBF in one trip; here are some of my observations/suggestions: -I flew in and out of Burbank International Airport (BUR) for substantially less money than flying into or out of LAX, via Southwest. Yes, flight times are limited by comparison, but what they had available worked for me. Rental car prices were also substantially cheaper at that airport. -With Flash Pass Platinum, I would imagine you will only need one day at SFMM. I agree with two days at KBF though, especially if you plan on taking in all of the non-ride things to do there. -Don't forget to check out the Santa Monica Pier and Pacific Park while you're in the area. Only one credit, a so-bad-it's-good Morgan micro-hyper (full scale track and trains but a tiny kiddie coaster layout), but the park has historic value and also plenty of nice dining options in the area. -If you're a credit whore, there's also a few credits to be had at nearby Castle Park, John's Incredible Pizza, Live Oak Canyon Farm, and Apline Slide at Magic Mountain, the latter of which has an honest-to-satan real Apline Slide along with their mountain coaster. -Since you're only doing the LA-area parks (and ignoring the true SoCal parks down near San Diego), I'd honestly get one hotel that is centrally located for the entire time - this will give you a little more flexibility without having to work your schedule around check-in/out times. When I did the trip, I stayed at a mom-n-pop hotel that was in walking distance to the beach and dining/nightlife options. -Double whatever your expected fuel budget is.

and here is the swag from Legoland (minus a few gifts I had bought for people, which I gave out before I took pics) Magnet: T-shirt: and. . . Bananaman!!!

Nothing controversial. It's clear what devices have issues.

Day 10: Mon, June 12th part 3 : Legoland Billund concluded. . Headed over to the Pirates dark ride. .and how neat, the sharks circle the old man on the island. he looks emaciated tho. . why doesn't he eat a parrot? or a Turtle? not as fully immersive as "similar" versions of a Pirate ride, but this one is starting out rather fun. Dead Men Tell No Tales! a bar b queue? looks tasty! and you can certainly tell who's in charge here. . . whadda ya want lady? you seem to be leaning in!! Yo Ho, Yo Ho, a Turtle's life for me. Oh my! this is getting PG-13 yeah.. .we're ALL thinking the same thing. . . . since we're already a LITTLE moist from the waterfall in the Pirate ride. . let's head over to the flume ride. themed to Canoes. this really seems to be the only picture I have of it! I guess it was an ok flume.. not a big one by any means, but pleasant enough. but was able to get some good shots of the Flying Eagle from the flume queue and for some reason, took a pic of the Lego goats in the station., le sigh. . . too tiny for adults to ride (which I knew as soon as I saw it. . so wasn't TOO disappointed), and was happy to see it had people on it at least. the park does have a rapids ride too. .. which if I didn't have this pic of us on? would totally have forgotten about. I guess it didn't soak us! time to head to the very back of the park, for the NinjaGo section! pretty cool statue. . . tho this is a really large area, and it was really pretty empty. Seems like maybe the line isn't as popular as once was? this was tough! It's an interactive ride where you use "ninja moves" by waving your hands/arms over the sensors to fight Ninja/bad guys on screens during the ride. think Midway Mayhem, but instead of having pull toy guns. . you have nothing.. just your hands to figure out what motions might get a reaction and shoot/throw something I can't really say it was "enjoyable" because too much of the ride was trying to figure out how the system works, so you could "play". but it was an indoor seated ride, so there's that. and THIS is right next door in the same building!! we had managed to bump into another group of TPR folks in the Ninja ride, and all headed to the maze together. in all honestly? this was quite a lot of fun. you had to go down the hallway, avoiding the lasers and you could compete for best time. there were two side by side tunnels, so didn't get pics of everyone, only those that came thru this side. I believe this blur is David. Jason Jon hands down, my favorite. . .Caroline just walked thru them and hit the buzzer. Bwaaa-haaa-haaa. . she had the fastest time, but the tunnel was very upset with her, turning bright red! Colllin of course, Daniel was great at it Barry this is listed as an "attraction" in the Legoland guide. . it's a musical fountain, that performs every 15 minutes or so. to be honest? I quite enjoyed it! another look at the Driving school as passing by on the way to the overhead Monorail station. and now the view of the park from the Monorail. . which goes around basically the same area the train does. . . but hey, we're up in the sky now! you can see the Blue "sister" train (we're on red) across the way next to the trees on the right. and there's Yellow. It's a long enough course, they can run 3 trains at once..it was a pleasant ride around the center of the park. . mainly over Duplo Land (kiddie rides) and the Miniatures area. realizing we'd missed the Aquarium. . . cutting thru MiniTown to head over to it. a little (working) street carnival! I swear, this whole area was so neat. and SO much to look at. here's the included aquarium. . which started out with a really odd pre-show room, that had a film that mentioned "if you feel ill raise your hand" so I've got to wonder if at one point, the first room was actually a motion simulator, that took you "undersea".. because it certainly looked like it was set up to admit groups of perhaps 25-30 at a time (what you would expect in a motion simulator) and when the room doors opened, we were in the underwater aquarium. if they removed that at some point, it's a shame, as it would have made the seemingly pointless pre-show room make sense, and added a little fun. tho I loved the theming (even if not made out of Lego) leaving the Pre-show room and into the underwater kingdom of Atlantis. it really is a pretty cool walk thru Aquarium. .just rather small. they do have lots of buttons to push, that make some of the Lego figures in the tank move, or blow bubbles. I shit you not. . .this guy, when you push the button, farts in his suit. He then reacts thru the speakers (lots of "ewwwwww") and then bubbles seep out of his suit. Klassy with a K. . . . but yeah, I stayed and pushed the button a few times I'm sure the Kiddos find it hysterical. Lion Fish photobombed by Big Mike how YOU doin? Jason wonders about the meaning of life. . and yeah, i'm not missing THIS photo op.. tho I was trying to look scared and I have failed all the "major" stuff checked off my list, I broke off to wander about Minitown to check out all the stuff I hadn't seen yet, while the rest went back to ride, Polar X-plorer, I think. some of these are SO damn impressive. so many moving parts. . .the trucks , the boats, the bridges. as I keep saying, so. freaking. impressive. Elissa pointed this out to me, so I had to get a pic too! "DO NOT HUMP" the firetruck pulls out and rescues a kitten from the tree! NEVER in America. . look how close to the tracks those people are standing. . . bumped into Andy also checking out the Miniland Airport it was getting close to the time to leave, but I popped in to check out the "hands on building" area, where there are plenty of bricks for folks to let their imaginations run wild and build whatever they can dream of. the really good stuff gets kept and displayed, while the workers undo the bricks to get them ready for the next day for all the others. what's interesting to me is they have cases surrounding the build area, filled with specialty/custom builds and unique builds that have been done for the park/company that they want to display. some are truly incredible. an example out on the work counter of the kind of stuff Guests can build with the available yellow bricks. Ferrari also had a full Lego Ferrari on display! it was incredible! (and amazingly, most paid attention to the little sign and did not climb on it)! I'm not sure what this big plantation/farm display was near the front of the park, but it too had a lot of moving parts. . . or should I say Moo-ving (cows, get it? wink wink) if you went around to the farm side, there were buttons to push and the animals would come out of their stalls and performed a song. headed back to the bus, and passed this guy and this beautiful dog. asked his permission and he said sure. . love how the dog is looking RIGHT at me. what a pretty doggo, and the perfect way to end a great day at LegoLand ! hope you enjoyed following along. bert

Day 10: Mon, June 12th part 2 : Legoland Billund continued the folks I was hanging out with today kept talking about "Ice Piolts School" and how we had to do that before it filled up. I didn't know what they were talking about (not putting two and two together). So we headed back over to Polar X-plorer, and I was even more confused, when they went to the side of the coaster entrance then up a short path into a warehouse. oh. . this thing. yeah.. this is that INSANE "robot arm" ride, where you can program it yourself, and then the robot does what you've asked it to do. You have to pair with someone, as it's teams of two, and I was feeling rather brave (realize that you can't see the actual Robot Arms. .they're behind the walls), so I told David, yeah, I'll ride with you - after everyone else passed on riding with him because he wanted to ride in *extreme* setting. here are the screens where you pic what actions you want the robot arm to do. then it spits out a card, that you take around the corner to give to the operator - who feeds the card into the Robot, and it does what you've programmed it to do for your "ride" oh my! well, that doesn't look too bad! looks like fun. and then I watched someone ride who had apparently chosen "Extreme" as well. . ..seriously, it looked like the Robot Arm was bashing them against rocks, like a cavewoman doing laundry! LOL too late to turn back now! yeah. .there are people on that arm (in that blur) our turn. .here's David an I ! MBSX9787.MOV and I believe I have Elissa to thank for capturing this. . . . can't really remember, but I *think* we hopped on Polar X-plorer, since it's right next door. before heading over to that Egyptian themed ride I had seen earlier. I wasn't exactly sure what this ride was, but I prayed it was more gentle than Ice Pilots School. . .it HAD to be. . lots of littler kids in this queue. Turns out it was a shooting dark ride. i don't recall much about it, so I guess it wasn't a super exciting shooting ride, but was cool to see all the stuff made out of legos. it was almost time for lunch, so we headed back towards the park entrance. That observation tower - while not super tall - was tall enough for my liking and wanted to try it out post lunch, as hadn't been on that side of the park yet. lunch was in the Pizza Buffet. . which had some wonderfully strange pizzas (as Erik pointed out in his report), as well as seafood salad, and that wonderful tasting "Not Butter, Not Chicken" - which actually WAS butter chicken, and was one of the best things I had at any of the parks we visited. the fountains weren't working, so we got bottles with lunch. hmm. .maybe those Lego polar bears on the way into the park WERE Coke cross promotion? David happy with his small cup of Ice Cream, Me pleased with my larger (not as messy cup) and Jason upset he didn't think to use the drinking cup for Ice Cream. Letting the food settle a big, we wandered towards the observation tower, but stopped to browse in the giant Lego Store at the front of the park on the way. so soft!!! Bwaaa-haaaa-haaaa! I'm a rebel! see?? grrrrrr map of the park. . .it seems SO much bigger when you're walking around in it. it's very spread out. LOVED the Lego store. Even if you're not really into the blocks..it's still amazing just to see what they have on display in there! I went back and forth on if I should get Banana or Hot Dog. it was so hard to decide. Luckily no KISS ones. . or would have been schlepping big things back with me! exclusive to this store? after too much $$ spent, was time to head back into the park and up in the observation tower! We'd be heading back this way shortly, because the Aquarium and the NinjaGo section is back there behind Mini-land. on the left is one of the Legoland HOtels, and I believe way back over there is the Lego Campus (with the yellow brick on top) looking down at part of Mini-land as we head up. that's Lego House in the back with the giant window on top. not sure what the castle is. . possibly one of the Legoland hotels? (one is called the Castle Hotel) better view of the spread out park - that's polar X-plorer way back center right. . . and a better view of Lego campus on the left. and catching planes landing in the airport across the street. back at ground level, checking out some of the awesome mini-land as we walked by. i wanted to spend a lot of time here, but there were other things on my list I wanted to knock out first to be sure I did them. these planes taxiied. . and pulled into the terminals! so freaking cool. Safari time! I might be mis-remembering, but I think it was this line where a park goer got into an argument with the operator because the operator wouldn't let him ride without a shirt. So he threatened to put his shorts on over his head so he could ride, because the rules only said "Shirt and shoes must be worn" but nothing about pants. after he stormed off, we laughed with the operator about it. Pretty sure that happened in this queue. myself and Jonathan shared a jeep on this safari. a picture of Jason and David, taking pictures of us as we passed them on the "Savannah" Big Mike scores his own Jeep! we found our way back! and perfect timing too. . the train pulled into the station right next to the Safari ride. it's a rather tiny/cute train tho. . can a bunch of TPR guys fit in it??? you betcha!! a little "snug". . but a nice slow ride, that goes around the park a bit, tho mainly by Miniland. watch out for Robbers!! Traffic School. . . LOL. . loved this, but was for the littler kids. I could have done the Fire Brigade one, as that's for adults/families. . but the line for it was a bit long, and as mentioned, I still had some "must dos" on my list. some lovely picnic areas sprinkled about the park too. off the train, and we headed across the walkway for one of the most classic Legoland rides (at least one I'd always heard about) the boats! a nice slow moving ride, that you don't actually have to steer, that brings you among the world's greatest wonders. all made out of Lego of course. I recall you COULD sorta "steer". . but it really didn't make much difference where you went. hey, I know that!! I've been referring the Sphinx as "Sfinx" ever since I saw this. . . it's rotted my brain and stuck in it. . LOL I imagine it's what a cat sneezing and farting at the same time sounds like: Sfinx ("bless you") ta-daaaa! what can I say? it's a classic. next up? the Haunted Mansion. . I mean. . . . "Ghost" the Haunted House. which, I will admit up front. .I absolutely loved. doggie ghost? uh-oh. . Frankie's on the Juice again! parts of the walkthru are interactive - say you pick up a flashlight and shine it on something, and the figure moves. or pull a book out of the book case, and a fart noise happens. same thing if you step in the wrong spot on the steps - loud fart sound. yes, juvenile, but funny. and there's a mirror maze in the center of the house! with some mirrors hiding ghosts that appear out of nowhere. but the biggest "whaaaa?" is at the end of the house, when they move you into a room and load you into a small drop tower (think mini version of Mystery Castle at Phantasialand). . where you face across from another row of guests, also about to be dropped. not a huge drop, but fun and had us laughing. and the operator was kind enough to take this picture for us before the lap bar came down over our heads. creepy ass giant spider made of Lego greets you at the exit. to be concluded. . .

...and while I was checking out something else (looking for the date of Original SPAMALOT opening...) at http://www.ibdb.com (great site for everything Broadway), I came across one of the musicals "coming to Broadway in 2024." I know it's a bit of a wait for it to open (Mar-April) next year, but knowing what "the score" consists of, has me Definitely Interested for it. And here's the website for the show. https://heartofrocknrollbway.com/ With the songs of Huey Lewis & The News! I also love this logo for the show. It would make a great pin!

I'd be down for a Winterfest type event with limited attractions open.