With Garrett and Caroline down, mom wanted to do something fun with all the kids. We decided on Lego Land because we’d never been down there before and we hoped it wouldn’t be as crowded as any of the Disney parks and Sea World. 
I hit the Redbox and rented the Lego Movie for our drive down, and stopped at Walgreens and got all the kids a Lego Minifigure for trading in the park. I didn’t know anything about this until the night before when I was doing some online research and mapping out our day. It’s the cutest thing, though. You take any mini-figure into the park with you and you can trade them with any of the park employees. They wear name tags made from Lego boards and have little mini-figures stuck on them. They also have a couple stations for trading in the park and their collections are amazing! The only mini-figures I could find at Walgreens were “The Simpson’s” themed (yuck!), so of course the kids all traded as soon as they could. We ended up with some fun ones. Mamie and Annabelle got a Mickey & Minnie Mouse and Tucker got a cowboy one.
We knew it was going to be hot. Hello, its Florida in June. We were mentally prepared and we’d decided to keep our expectations at hitting three rides, seeing a show and letting the kids get a prize. If the heat or crowds got too bad, we’d call it a day.
It was so hot, but we ended up getting to do way more than we’d hoped and really had the best time.
We got to the park right at opening and the crowd wasn’t bad at all.
We hit the first ride we came to, which was like a sky view that rotated around in a circle so you could see the whole park. Apparently it was part of the old Cypress Gardens Park. 
We took the kids’ picture with the giant Emmet & Stylus figures made from Legos… 
and were excited to see that they even have some of the Lego characters in the park for meet and greets. I didn’t know how Tucker would do with them, but he loved it! He was high-fiving them, and wasn’t scared at all. 
We hit the carousel next. 
The carousel is the cutest, it’s made to look like the big Duplo blocks. 
Everything in the park is either Lego themed or made from Legos. It really is neat to see and if you have a Lego lover, it’s the perfect park. 
Our girls have a couple sets of Lego Friends Legos and they were excited to see a lot of the Lego Friends themed things, too. 
We spent the morning riding rides and checking out the Lego displays. 
They had the cutest little waiting area for the little siblings who weren’t big enough to ride the bigger rides. And even a washy-wash station, too!
Mom took the littles on some smaller rides, while I took one for the team and rode the scary rides with Caroline. 
They were actually pretty fun, except one. 
We got lunch at the cutest Lego Construction themed burger stand and enjoyed eating in the A/C, even if it was pretty crowded.
Cypress Gardens was famous for it’s ski show, and when the park was converted to Lego Land, they brought the ski show back. 
It’s really cute, and I was so impressed with the skiers wearing the big Lego costumes on skis! 
The show is pirate themed and even has a giant pirate ship. 
They have a section of the park that loops through some of the gardens of the old Cypress Gardens park, but we didn’t walk through.
We made our way to the other side of the park for a few more rides, and driving school. 
The driving school was cute, but took forever. At the end, you have the option to purchase your “license.” Garrett and Caroline chose to spend their souvenir money on them and they were really cute. 
TDW gave in to the heat and caught a little nap in his stroller. 
When we were walking back to the other side of the park, a little boy, about Tucker’s age came up to us, crying. He was lost. It was pitiful and scary. He immediately went up to my mom to hold him, which she did, and we went and found a park worker. The employee said she’d keep him, but he didn’t want to go to her, so mom said she would wait with him while they found his mom. I was so proud of how concerned our kids were and how sweet they were to want to help. The kids and I started looking around for his parents, we figured it was only a matter of time before they realized they’d lost him and we were pretty sure they’d be easy to spot when they realized it. Sure enough, it wasn’t long and a mom started yelling his name and frantically searching for him. We were glad we were there and could help.
After riding a couple more rides, we did our final mini-figure swaps, and then spent a little time in the Duplo Valley part of the park. 
It’s for the toddler age kids, so Tucker was loving everything. 
The big kids rode with him on everything, and really had just as good of a time as he did. 
It was the cutest part of the park, to me, and Tucker really enjoyed it. 
After a while there, we hit the gift shop. The girls (& Tucker) spent their souvenir money from Grammy there. 
They all picked out a Lego set. Lego Friends for the girls and a construction Duplo set for TDW. 
We made one last stop to see a couple of the Lego stars. 
We got in the car around 5:00 and I couldn’t believe we really had made a whole day out of it. 
It was a great day, and we’d love to go back again, just in the Fall or Spring next time!
~amw~
Bless her heart, her little toes were raw from rubbing the concrete. 
We took them to Claire’s and Bath & Body Works after dinner, and I think they both declared it the best night ever. I can’t figure out how to get this pic back to color…???
