We recently stayed at the Legoland California Hotel and had a great time. While staying there, I was able to take some 360 pix to showcase what makes the hotel a fun place to stay!
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The Legoland California Hotel is an amazingly themed hotel and on full display from the moment you drive up to the baggage unloading and valet area.
Seeing all the wonderful Lego creations around the front of the building let’s you know right away, you’re in the right place for LEGOs!
When first pulling up to the hotel, you’ll be asked if you want to self park or use valet service. Valet is about $5 more than self park. If you go on a busy weekend like we did, you’ll want to pre-pay for valet if you plan to use it, otherwise, it may not be available.
Also, the luggage carts are managed by the valet team. If you have a lot of luggage, be prepared to tip for them to handle your bags, or you can take the bags to your room yourself with no cart.
Something unique about the hotel, which could be seen as a negative, is that the hotel pool is in front of the building and just off the baggage drop location. Unfortunately for us, the pool had a closed sign during our stay, so no swimming in the hotel pool.
Going into the hotel for the first time is a bit chaotic. There are a few places to play with Legos, so lots of kids playing and being kids. Once you get used to it, not a big deal, but was just rough after waking up at 4am, 6 hours of flights and layovers and another hour driving, I was a bit tired for the noise when checking in.
In the 360 pic above, the front entrance is directly behind me. There’s a couple of desks on either side to help people with check-in. There’s also a LEGO shop that can provide some necessary items for your stay as well as more opportunities to buy LEGOs.
We arrived at 2:30 and they let me know they usually don’t start check-in until 4pm. However, when you’re booking your reservation, you can pay a little extra to get an early check-in at 1pm.
As I mentioned above with our travel schedule, I knew my family would need rest before anything else, so I did purchase the early check-in. I informed the gentleman helping me and we were on our way to checking in. At first he had me put in my info on a computer screen, which was then supposed to spit out our room keys. It did not work, so then he had to do it manually.
Here’s a couple more looks around the cool pirate ship play area. In the picture below, the area to my right was used as a storytelling stage and seating area at around 730 or 8pm Sunday night. There was 3 or 4 Legoland hotel employees improving a story that became Cinderella as a Monster Truck. The kids got to help add on to and advance the story while the employees told the story, acted it out and asked leading questions for the kids.
There’s also a bar and lounge area for adults to relax while the kids are playing.
In the picture below, we head out the back door to see all the decorations lining the back of the building. If you turn to the left, you can see the restaurant check in line. The hotel restaurant, called Bricks Family Restaurant, serves breakfast and dinner every day.
Both meals require reservations to dine and can be done through the Legoland app or open table app. Breakfast is free for hotel guests or 15/adult and 10/kid for offsite diners. Dinner is 29/adult and 16/kid. You can save 20% by pre-paying when you book your room. The dinner meal is considered a character meal, though we only saw the LEGO Policeman.
One more outside shot, this is between the Legoland California Hotel and the Legoland Castle Hotel with the entrance to the parks being right behind me and the Sea Life Aquarium entrance off to my left and slightly behind me.
The Legoland California Hotel has 5 different types of themed rooms as well as varying degrees of theming. The 5 different themes are Ninjago, Pirates, Lego Friends, Kingdom, and Adventure. The levels of theming include partially themed, fully themed and family suites. Each level also includes a balcony option as well.
We, or rather I, chose the Kingdom fully themed room. I thought it might be something we all would enjoy as it’s more generic, but still fun. The theming begins in the hallway.
In my main lobby picture above, there’s a ramp to my right, that leads down to the front doors, but also at the end of the ramp, if you turn left, you’ll be heading towards the restaurant. Keep going down the hallway and you’ll get to the elevators and hallway to the pool. We were on the first floor, so we just kept walking.
As you get to the hallway with the rooms, the carpet and walls change based on the themed area you are in. It starts off with LEGO friends, followed by Adventure, then Kingdom. We did not go past our room, so I’m not sure if Ninjago or Pirates was next, but one of those would be the furthest down the hallway, ie, have the longest walk to get anywhere in the resort. I didn’t see any additional exits, especially to go out back towards the park, which could be helpful to avoid crowded hallways in the morning.
The kids get a fully themed mini room with a bunk bed and trundle bed, so you can easily sleep 3 kids in a regular room. They also have a TV and small box of LEGOs available to play with. Even the bathroom gets involved in the theming with the shower curtain, cute bathtub wall paper to stick with the theme as well as LEGO sculptures.
One thing I forgot about and we didn’t have much specific information about, is the LEGO treasure hunt for kids. There’s supposed to be some sort of scavenger hunt that provides clues to open the safe in the room which contains a special LEGO surprise.
Along with the theming of the room, each room also contains unique LEGO sculptures. I found the 10 sculptures below throughout our room! Be careful with these, there’s a note in the room stating these sculptures cost between $100 and $1,000 USD, so make sure your kids don’t go straight to destroying them to remake whatever they want.
Overall, we had a really great stay in the hotel. The Pros of a Disneyland California Hotel stay include comfortable beds, tvs with a great selection of channels to watch, plenty of opportunities to play with Legos, the restaurant has really good food, even the free breakfast buffet. Early park entry to get on some rides before offsite guests Plus with the proximity to the park entrance, it is so convenient to spend a couple hours in the park, then head back to the room for a break. If we get another opportunity, I would definitely love to go back and check out a different themed room.
The biggest Cons would be the nickle and diming of everything. $65 to check in early or check out late, $25-$30 per night parking, $30/night resort fee, not being able to cart your own luggage into your room, a birthday package for $100-$150, VIP package for over $1,500 for a party of 3, a Photo package for $85 and a Coke freestyle Souvenir cup for $15. Of course, some of these that are required are also similarly charged at other places, so can’t really avoid those charges.
Thanks for reading along with me on this long post! I will have some additional Legoland California posts soon to highlight some of the rides we went on.
If you have any questions about a future Legoland California visit, please feel free to ask in the comments below.
If you’re ready to start exploring a Legoland California family vacation, I recommend checking out Undercover Tourist for your ticket options. I’ve already used them a few times, twice at Disneyland and once at Disney World and will plan to continue comparing their prices with other sites, however I usually come back to UT because they have the best deals and their instructions make it easy to add your tickets to the Legoland and Disney apps.
The 360 of Disney 