“How lovely, Denmark is beautiful,” people exclaim when I tell them that we will be spending four days of the school holidays in the Scandinavian country. It is invariably followed by enthusiastic recommendations of places to visit and things to do. I nod and smile, reluctant to reveal just how little of the country we will actually be seeing. Two days at a friend’s wedding are to be followed by two days in Billund, the home of LEGO; it is just one of those holiday sacrifices that comes with being a parent, I remind myself…
Describing itself as Denmark’s Capital of Children, in 2020, Billund became the first Danish city to become a UNICEF Child Friendly City, one of almost 1,000 cities in 50 countries. It was here, in 1932, that carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen founded the LEGO group, and today, around two thirds of Billund’s population of just under 8,000 people are employed by the world-famous toy company, be that at the company headquarters, the factory or at one of the various LEGO attractions. LEGO is evidently life here: at the airport we discover intricate sculptures in the baggage reclaim area, and as we leave, a life-sized character built from bricks greets us in the arrivals hall, holding a ‘welcome to Billund’ sign. It is a taste of things to come – at Hotel LEGOLAND, we step into a fantastical children’s wonderland. In the foyer, steps lead up to a treehouse held aloft by a huge LEGO dragon, and a LEGO wall allows guests to get creative with bricks. In our room – which looks out over the original LEGOLAND theme park – the walls and ceiling are adorned with huge replica bricks and everywhere is decorated in a palette of eye-popping primary colours. The kids are in heaven; it might not be the understated boutique luxury I usually prefer, but I have to agree that there is simple joy in this aesthetic.
Everyone is a winner come dinnertime in the Panorama restaurant. The youngsters are delighted by the kid-friendly buffet, polishing off a couple of plates and disappearing to the adjacent playroom – complete with Nintendo Switches – before our à la carte starters have even arrived, leaving us free to enjoy a grown-up dinner in peace.
LEGOLAND might be on the doorstep, literally, but the next day dawns rainy, so we decide to save the theme park for tomorrow. Instead, we head to LEGO House, where we are promised the ultimate LEGO experience. Billund is only small, and the walk into the Old Town, marked out by a colourful route on the pavement, is short, even for little legs. And the LEGO House is easy to find when we get there – built to look like 21 giant bricks stacked on top of one another, it is certainly a landmark.
Known as the home of the brick, the LEGO House boasts 12,000 sq m of interactive play zones and exhibits, not to mention 25 million LEGO bricks. We’re all issued with wristbands; featuring a unique QR code, we’re told they’ll allow us to record our adventures and creations here at the various cameras dotted throughout the building, with the photos and videos available to download when we get back home.
It’s hard to know where to start describing what we discover inside, but know that we utter the word ‘wow’ more times than we can count. Some of those 25 million bricks have been used to build things – a breath-taking 15-metre-tall tree created from 6,316,611 bricks reaches up through the main stairwell, waterfalls cascade down walls, and we discover intricate worlds that reveal ever quirkier details every time we look at them. And in the Masterpiece Gallery, there is a display of mind-blowingly creative models built by AFOLs (adult LEGO fans, for the uninitiated), with not a kit or an instruction book in sight. The rest of the bricks are there to be played with – as part of various activities, or in huge troughs in the red zone that inspire children and adults alike to get creative.
In the green zone we choose hairstyles, accessories and props, and create minifigures, using the computers there to capture them for the cover of a magazine. It is fun, but better still is shooting our own stop motion movie, giggling as our poor LEGO movie stars come to a soggy end after their boat dramatically explodes.
In the blue zone, we build racing cars, cheering as we let them zoom down racecourses. Noting which features make the cars go faster, and which cause them to smash into pieces, we return to the bricks to perfect our prototypes. And we test our technical skills with simple coding in a beekeeping task, where we are responsible for guiding LEGO robots to water flowers in a computer-generated garden.
Amazed to discover that it is already 1pm, we head to the Mini Chef restaurant for a lunch like none we have experienced before. We’re given bags of bricks, each size and colour relating to a different item on the menu. Choosing our bricks, we arrange them onto a tray and feed this into a machine at the table which sends our order to the kitchen. The food, when it arrives, is delivered in a brick shaped box that descends a conveyor belt, to be received by two human-sized robots built from LEGO. Jerkily dancing around behind the counter, they wave cheekily, before pushing our boxes across to us. The food is delicious, but it is the experience that will stay long in our memories. Fed and watered, we go back upstairs for more fun with bricks. Spending another couple of hours creating in the various zones. I particularly like the calm space where we sit and make papercut-like LEGO shapes that we hang from strings across the windows, and afterwards, I spend half an hour making LEGO blooms to plant in the yellow zone’s flower meadow. It is surprisingly meditative. While I do that, the kids create fishes that are brought to life on screen in a giant computerised aquarium. And we all love learning about the company’s humble beginnings in the museum downstairs, where I am delighted to point out some of the 1980s sets I owned as a child. There really is something for everyone here.
Outside, the sun is now shining, and we race up the steps that traverse the building to discover the various rooftop playgrounds, and ooh and ahh at the views. It has been a day full of surprises.
LEGOLAND itself has much to live up to, and it does not disappoint. The park is small enough to try everything once, and the queues are much more manageable than those in the UK. We scream with joy as we ride the Dragon rollercoaster, get happily soaked on the Canoe log flume, and swoop high above the park on the Flying Eagle. And the kids are delighted to be presented with their own driving licences after a lesson at the Driving School. Having had our fill of thrills, we end the day with a stroll around Miniland, where we discover some of the world’s most famous buildings recreated in miniature using a staggering 20 million bricks. It is a good day, but we have to agree that it does not top yesterday – and that, from a family of theme park lovers, is saying something.
Back home, when people ask about the trip, I’m not ashamed to tell them what our Denmark sightseeing actually entailed. Everything truly is awesome in Billund, as the LEGO folk would say.
