This year, we decided to take a Spring Break staycation, after doing the Disney thing last year. We’d like to do Disney again but it just wasn’t in the cards this year…2015 hopefully! So we were looking for fun things to do close do home when coincidentally, we were offered free tickets to Legoland Discovery Center Chicago in exchange for writing this review. It was on our list of things to check out anyway, so, COOL. Let’s do it!
We headed down there from Milwaukee yesterday and it was an easy drive, about 90 minutes. I didn’t realize that the Legoland Discovery Center is located in the Woodfield Mall, but hey, cool, next to a Jamba Juice and a Starbucks for Mom. Bonus. 
The entrance to Legoland Discovery Center Chicago…LeLa the Giraffe
Once you walk in, you walk past Lego Barack Obama (heh) through mini-land Chicago, which is kind of cool (“OK”, G says). Then you go through the Jungle Expedition, which we liked, enough to go through it a couple of times. The Lego tiger, a hippo with a mouth big enough to fit your head in, and moving monkeys are pretty neat. Then you’re in Star Wars mini-land which G says was “boring” and I’d have to agree. As much I do like me a Lego Vader, it had a lame death star game that held G’s attention for about three seconds and could be waaaaaaaaaay cooler.
Obligatory selfie with Lego Vader
Let’s face it…it doesn’t really matter what I think…this was not for MY entertainment. So here’s the rest of G’s review:
The 4D Chima movie was awesomeness. Pro tip: sit in the middle of the theater for maximum 4D effect. The Kingdom Quest ride and Merlin’s Apprentice ride were fine. (Editors comment: he liked these at the time. Enough that we rode Kingdom Quest twice.) The Factory Tour was not that interesting and the playground area was for little kids. The Lego shop was AWESOMENESS (yelled). (Also: duh. Of *course* the shop is the best part.)
Bottom line from the tough 8-year-old critic: totally worth the drive.
Bottom line from Mom: not really worth the drive/$18 cost of admission ($16 if you book online ahead of time) if you have big kids with higher expectations, but if you have younger kids and/or are in the area for other reasons, I’d recommend checking it out for a couple hours of good solid fun. You can follow Lego Discovery Center Chicago on Facebook too.
As for us, we’ll be looking forward to checking out Legoland Florida next year. I’ll need to work on my theme park endurance before that one…two hours at Legoland Discovery Center Chicago and I was WRECKED. We had fun.
DONE.
