What a strange year 2020 has been! Here we are in the middle of a pandemic going to a theme park… strange… I know.
But we went, armed with our allergy friendly hand sanitizer and enough Vitamin C for a large family and we enjoyed our trip at LEGOLAND!
I’m sure you have a ton of questions- I know I did. Like what precautions were they taking, what was everyone’s attitude, and most importantly, would being ‘safe’ during a pandemic negatively affect the overall vacation and theme park experience? And of course, was there still allergy friendly food?
Let’s chat about the changes LEGOLAND orlando made, what it was like with a preschooler and younger kiddos, and if we plan to go back anytime this year in 2020!
First Up- Was the Vacation still worth it?
I’m a big theme park mom- really my whole family loves them and we choose them as our vacation 90% of the time.
So it was weird, at least that first hour or so, to go to LEGOLAND with some pretty drastic changes. But,after being cooped inside for months on end and telling my kids no 100x a time, it was incredible to be somewhere like LEGOLAND where cleaning was a priority and fun was had by all. And apple fries? Always apple fries!
Was the fun the same? No- many of the options at LEGOLAND were closed or modified- at least 50% of the options.
But the lower crowd made it easy to navigate the park and enjoy everything that was open. In fact we were able to do some things several times.
My kids, especially the middle 2 year old, didn’t understand what was going on, and why we had to stay distanced and wait for rides to be cleaned, so I was extra appreciative of the staff being so kind and understanding (and helping me explain to a two year old why we were doing certain things!)
What changes were made and what precautions can we expect at LEGOLAND Resort?
Since many of you will be coming from out of town, let’s first talk about lodging.
The only resort open at LEGOLAND is the main Hotel and the NEW pirate hotel. The Beach Bungalows are currently closed.
When you walk inside you’ll be greeted by a Medic (yes, an actually certified medical professional which I appreciate 100%) and you’ll have a temp check and a paper wristband stating you passed your temp check for 24 hours (universal did the same thing when we stayed there!)
There are some signs, like in the bathrooms, in the hallways, and at the elevator. The fun disco style elevators are now one family only, and there were a few times we took the stairs as the line got long and spacey.
Once inside our room, we found a sign stating that the room was certified monster clean- and indeed it was quite clean!
Since things are being modified for the pandemic, they recommend making a reservation at the restaurants, and they are not operating at all times. Definitely make sure you speak with a hostess or the lobby staff to reserve times and see what options will be opened!
Both of the pools were open with lifeguards, the putt putt golf was still open, as was the cypress tree boardwalk.
Legos were still in the main lobby- and we personally saw them being replaced with clean options in the morning before breakfast. I asked about it and they told me they did this BEFORE the pandemic (who knew!) and had just increased it.
What changes were made and what precautions can we expect at LEGOLAND Park?
Now let’s get to the meaty part- I purposely started with the section above because I wanted you to understand that we had a great safe time despite some pretty drastic changes.
So before you enter the park you now go through security and a temperature check- unless you have a wristband and come from the resort in which you’ll only do a security check.
You will be offered a mask here, but masks are not required, only recommended.
Masks ARE required for all of the staff, and many of the staff also had face shields as well.
Once inside you’ll see a LOT more signage. Signage for masks to be warn, tons of reminders to use sanitizer with bold signs, and signage at all of the bathrooms.
There’s lots of opportunities to wash your hands (because that’s the one thats really effective when reducing transmission of unwanted hitchhikers!) And I LOVED that there was a smaller sink in almost every single bathroom we went in to (plus it’s ADA friendly and that makes my heart swoon with happiness). It makes a huge difference for the kids to see signage to wash hands and have it be fun for them! I wish Disney would do something like this in some of their restrooms!
For the rides, I was VERY happy to see that they didn’t just wipe them down, but instead used commercial grade disinfectant that required a wait time of 5 minutes. Yes, it meant more wait times for us, but I knew that the ride was actually sanitized, and it wasn’t a false sense of security like at another well known theme park that ‘wipes’ after rides.
Beyond that, there was some limitation with spacing (and markers on the floor) and some of the rides and attractions were closed.
Overall, the response to this has been impressive, we plan to go back, and I’m hopefully that come flu season, I might not get theme park sick this year!