My family recently returned from a fun visit to LEGOLAND® Discovery Center in Grapevine, just north of Dallas. If you have preschool to early elementary brick fanatics at home, you'll want to consider a visit to one of the ultimate LEGO® playgrounds! Smaller than the LEGOLAND® theme parks, the Dallas/Fort Worth LEGOLAND® Discovery Centers features over ten attractions - from rides to building opportunities to amazing showcase displays - all included in your ticket price.
There are three ride attractions: Kingdom Quest, Merlin's Apprentice and LEGO® City: Forest Ranger Pursuit. Kingdom Quest is the most family-friendly with no height restrictions (other than 51" to ride without an adult). A chariot smoothly glides you through a dark adventure to rescue a captured princess, shooting trolls and skeletons along the way. You're challenged to shoot at actual targets and at interactive movie screens. Unfortunately several of the screens weren't responding to shots on our visit. Merlin's Apprentice has a 36" height minimum. The ride requires passengers to pedal, as if on a bike, to raise their enchanted carts higher into the sky while the ride spins. At LEGO® City: Forest Ranger Pursuit, kids ages 4+ are able to drive their own LEGO® police jeep vehicles along a path in "pursuit" of scheming robbers that have stolen gold. We previously visited when my kids were 2 and 4 and the 2 year olds weren't able to enjoy all of the rides. Now that they are 4 and 6, everyone was able to fully enjoy the ride experiences.
There are several areas to view impressive builds, such as Space Mission and Miniland®. Miniland® is a spectacularly built version of Dallas with all of the major attractions show in miniature, using over 1.5 million bricks. Interactive displays of the Cowboys and Rangers weren't working but still fun to marvel at. Space Mission had models of alien planets and spaceships and is on display through the end of 2018.
New to us at this visit was the rebranding of the indoor play structure as LEGO® NINJAGO City Adventure. The play structure looked like it received a complete overhaul with plenty of obstacle course-type challenges for kids to whiz through. Just outside of the play structure was Master Wu's temple which contained interactive training exhibits that challenged hand-eye coordination.
To take a break from the crowds, we enjoyed three mini-movies back-to-back in the LEGO® 4D Cinema. Four films were on rotation, themed around NEXO KNIGHTS®, NINJAGO®, The LEGO® Movie" and LEGO® City. These 10-15 minute movies were pure fun - cute stories, great 3D visuals and 4D effects like wind, sprinkles and bubbles.
If your kids just want to unleash their creativity with an endless supply of LEGO® bricks there are plenty of opportunities all over the Discover Center to sit or stand at a table with a bowl of bricks and build. There are also unique building challenges, like LEGO® Racers: Build & Test, Earthquake Tables and Duplo® Village (which also has a small tot playground). My husband's main complaint with the LEGO® Racers area was that there weren't enough tires and axles provided to even attempt to build a proper vehicle to test. Did my kids mind? No way. They were happy to launch their crazy creations down the race ramps. New to us on this visit was LEGO® Friends Heartlake City. There was an amazing display build of Olivia, Emma, Stephanie, Mia and Andrea ready for photo ops, but I was disappointed that the pieces available for building in this area did not really match the LEGO® Friends color schemes.
If your kiddos love minifigurines, bring a few with you to trade with employees. We had so much fun trading at LEGOLAND® Florida (see my review here) but found that employees in Dallas had only 1-2 (if any) on their name badges to trade with. Still fun for the kids, but a bit disappointing overall.
Two attractions were closed during our visit: Pirate Beach and the LEGO® Factory Tour. We had seen the LEGO® Factory Tour
on our previous visit and it involved an employee guiding kids through a fantasy LEGO® Factory with a souvenir LEGOLAND® Discovery Center Duplo® block at the conclusion. Pirate Beach is an outdoor sprayground with water jets, fountains and slides that closes for the winter as of October 31.
LEGOLAND® Discovery Center is located at 3000 Grapevine Mills Parkway in Grapevine. Tickets start at $15.99 online with combo tickets available for the adjacent Sea Life Grapevine Aquarium. The Grapevine Mills Mall is also home to a Rainforest Cafe and an AMC Theatre which can help extend the fun at your visit!
My family was provided complimentary admission for this review. View our full FTC Disclosure Statement here.
