Dear Legoland’s Chief Executive Officers,

I know, as the people where the buck stops, you would absolutely be interested to know what a truly terrible time lots of your guests have when visiting Legoland. I’m sure not ALL, for example my 6 year old, who is like a little puppy, would absolutely keep coming back for more; ever hopeful that “this time” WILL be the day he actually gets to go on lots of rides. But for so many with sense, it’s just the worst day out EVER!

Now, while Raffie doesn’t mind queueing up for the Ninjago ride, or having to queue up again because the line was disabled after the best part of an hour due to a malfunction, I most certainly do. He is just ever hopeful and wide eyed you see. And he loves Ninjago of course. This, surely can be the only reason you ever have repeat visitors. long suffering families just wanting to please a small child with hope!

I miss the level of optimism possessed by Raffie, it’s been stamped on more and more with every visit. Any ounce of thinking “today might be ok” when visiting you, has all but dried up and been blown into the ether as far as I’m concerned. Like a puff into a handful of dried up dirt. Or, rather, within my Instagram stories where I shared my experiences over the last couple of days and received tremendous numbers of replies from people saying “me too”. So while Raffie still wants Legoland to be what he thinks it is, and believes it can be, we are very much out!

The vast consensus from people who have messaged me over the past 24 hours has been DON’T GO TO LEGOLAND! It’s advice I have uttered myself, Advice I should have stuck to… But… 

So, as the people where the buck does eventually stop, I’m sure you won’t enjoy hearing what I have to say. However, you should know, from someone on the ground, how it feels to be your customer. Especially a customer who has paid handsomely to visit. Not once, not even twice or thrice, but FOUR times now. I know, what a sucker! But I will explain how and why we keep coming back for more punishment.

And then I’ll explain why, despite my 6-year-old still having the blinkers on that next time would be the one, there really won’t be a “next time”. Not this time there won’t!

Let’s start at the beginning! 

We came 6 years ago for my older son’s sixth birthday. It seems to be 6 is when Ninjago really bites them and it was ALL he wanted. My Mum had made him a Ninjago cake when he turned 5 (it was tremendous, I attach a picture – she’s very clever), and for a WHOLE year he’d been asking to visit! So, we offed for a 2 day jaunt to the land of Lego. On the May bank holiday weekend. His birthday usually falls then and we knew it would be busy but woof, it was one of the hardest slogs of a day out ever. And I speak as an experienced Mum of four when it comes to tricky days out with the kids!

We waited, and waited for Ninjago, and then, the ride shut down.

Yep, disaster… Jimmy was OK though, that optimism of the six-ers kicked right in and he said “we’ll go on LOTS of other stuff, THEN we’ll come back!” His hour of queueing to no avail hadn’t dampened his spirits. Ours were on the brink, but we picked it up for him and got on with it. As best we could because there were so many closed rides that day, and it was May the 4th with a Star Wars convention literally taking over the park. Then a miracle, the Ninjago ride had re-opened!

We queued again.

And…

Like deja vu, same outcome! Would you Adam and Eve it?!

That day we got on about 3 rides total. The next day, our second in the park, about 3 more. But despite queueing for Ninjago TWICE more on the second day, to have it break down BOTH times, THEN realising it was working again JUST before the park closed, but being told “No, it was too late to get in the queue” little 6 year old Jimmy’s Ninjago dreams were dashed. 

Of course, I wrote to complain. Of COURSE I did! I’d been to guest services on the day but they didn’t care, “it’s a bank holiday” they said. “What did you expect?!” And truthfully I’d expected big queues, yes. But I’d also expected ALL the rides to be opened, with a distribution of the guests evening out over them all. I’d expected to get on more than about 6 rides all weekend but there we are. Let’s call me naive. 

In reply you guys said “THIS is unprecedented” and “we are SO sorry!” And “PLEASE come back. On us. And stay for another two days!” And you’ve got to remember, I’m a Legoland rookie at this point, I thought maybe it really WAS a blunder that doesn’t happen often. You invited us back, said you’d have someone personally escort Jimmy onto the Ninjago ride and we WOULD enjoy it this time. 

And I believed you!

So it was July the 9th (I remember as that’s my birthday – I was happy to sacrifice it though, for my very sad boy who just wanted to go on the Ninjago ride) and we came back.

Some might say we were mad (I would now). Others might think we were into self sabotage.

Because, you know what?

It was worse!

The only thing that really happened as planned was that Jimmy got escorted onto Ninjago, and he finally got to go on it. The hotel manager himself (I believe) took Jimmy on the ride. AND while they were on it he promised to post him a Lego Ninjago treat, something he reiterated twice more that he would do while we stayed. (Spoiler, even though Jimmy looked in the post for MONTHS after that, it never came) but everything else went to pot after that.

Shame! 

You gave us the wrong room. We had three kiddos in our party at the time, and we didn’t even have enough beds. There was nothing you could do about that. You said. And on the second day, the cleaner took my swimsuit from the bathroom and put it in the bin. We asked where it could be and apparently the cleaner thought we’d checked out so she’d binned it. The manager refused to look for it, and we didn’t get to go swimming. 

But then not getting to do something, well, that was rather in keeping with the visit as a whole. We didn’t get to do much at all!

More queues over 2 days and even WITH fast track passes this time, it was abysmal in terms of numbers of rides we went on. There’s more to the story, little bits and bobs that we shudder about when remembering, but hey, this is just a recap, and this part of the story is not the story of our latest visit – it still irks, I loved that swimsuit, it was new and expensive and it fitted perfectly – but, c’est las vis! 

We swore “NEVER AGAIN!” and we would have stuck to it… I assure you we would have. If it had been just up to us! But Raffie, our youngest son, well, he turned prime Ninjago age in October, and being just as much a fan as his big brother (he also had a phenomenal cake, picture also attached, isn’t my Mum a GREAT cake maker?!) ALL he wanted was a day out at Legoland. So… Again we sacrificed. 

I spent the best part of £200, what with tickets AND parking (which I have to say is a mega beast – even if you built the cost of parking into the ticket price, which is SO expensive already, another few quid would be a drop in the ocean, it would make people feel better about it. Charging extra to park, after charging to get in, REALLY annoys EVERYONE – us included! And WHY?! But anyway, that’s an aside!), we decided we’d come for a day.

Just one day. 

We couldn’t do two again!

We remembered. We knew…

And it was awful. 

Of course. 

We expected that.

But it STILL really ground my gears!

We, again, got to go on minimal rides, I think just 3 big ones and couple of the tiny ones for our fourth child, who’d been born since our last visit.

We queued.

We looked bewildered.

We couldn’t understand why SO much was closed? The Viking thingy, which stuck out like a sore thumb and made it look like one of those abandoned theme parks you see on American YouTube channels, was just sat there like a welcome greeting of epic disgust!

Alongside the ghost town of the Viking ride, the place was noticeably tired. Staff looked disgruntled, and, when you spoke to them, they confirmed they felt the same. One saod to me “don’t name quote me please, because I need my job, but we all hate it here, and we also hate not being able to DO anything to help customers, we know it’s a joke!” This same member of staff told me we’d be best coming back to the submarine ride at the end of the day as it really thins out, in the last 20 minutes so we could, at least, guarantee getting on it before we left. We did that and it worked but boy, it didn’t make up for the rest of the day! 

It just felt like we’d been robbed. You know?! What a waste of time desperstely trying to find the queues which wouldn’t take over an hour, the ones which would give us a CHANCE of getting on something?! Posie was too little to go on lots but that was OK, she didn’t mind. The big kids on the other hand, they were gutted! 

In the afternoon I went to guest services just to say how unhappy I was. It was a long track up the hill but I felt so annoyed I had to tell someone. You’d let so many people in, closed so many rides and it was just so money grabbing to run it the way you do – we’ll not deep dive into the masses of other opportunities to haemorrhage money, the £11.50 glitter, £15 face paints, £6 to pan for gold – unsurprisingly these were the only places where there weren’t queues!

The guy at guest services just sort of shrugged and went through a tick box. Then he said I’ll send you return tickets for £10 each to make up for it.

I was gob smacked, we’d just had a TERRIBLE day (again), spent loads of money for the privilege and he wanted me to spend £60 more, on coming back. I just wanted an apology. A proper one! And an acknowledgement that like the staff of the ground could see, Legoland is run appallingly!

No way I thought.

NO WAY! 

I’d have been happy if we’d woken up the next day to discover Legoland had burned to thr ground. It was all it felt fit for in my eyes!

But then… Oh Raffie was so desperate to actually go on rides in the land of Ninjago, and £60, well, by summer, with time to smooth over the incredibly awful day out it really is, it didn’t seem so bad if we went in knowing what we were dealing with. So we agreed, accepting that it would be ANOTHER day of queues and only getting on three or four rides, but we’d coincide it with seeing family and friends. Make it just about worth it!

We made a plan.

No longer rookies in the world of Legoland, now dis-believing in the magic, we knew we had to be stealth like. We would prioritise 3 rides (after concluding that this is the number you can get on in the holidays – terrible but true, and it would be madness to even TRY and put a fourth into the plan) if we made our 3, and had a bonus fourth, well, that would be a bonus!

We said we’d go: Log Flumes, Ninjago, Submarine! 

Bish, bash, bosh.

We, the grown ups, arrived full of annoyance that we’d had to pay £8 to park (that’s the nugget we always forget, but wow what a downer), however Raffie and the other kids were SO excited (I attach a video) that even we started to believe again. The nerve endings of magic being possible starting to sprout, a little tingle, a tiny notion that perhaps…

Once inside we stupidly allowed that belief to grow… We noticed the derelict ride had been covered up with fences. Not BRILLIANT, it was still behind them, but it looked much more inviting than the stark, empty, abandoned theme park vista of October. And when we got to the bottom, like some sort of miracle, there was a spinny ride that only had a 20 minute queue.

YES we thought, this might actually BE THE DAY IT WORKS OUT! The belief was back in our stupid minds and like a dog that’s been knocked about by an aggressive owner, who goes back for more thinking this time will actually BE a cuddle and NOT a fist, we embraced it.

We had 35 minutes of LOVING Legoland. We’d been WRONG, we thought. The previous visits HAD been blips, they weren’t indicative. We lost all memory of our own jaunts, forgot about all the previous tales friends had shared with us when we’d been telling of ours, and we just soaked up the ride we only had to queue for 20 minutes for…

And you know when something starts of really well, like you begin baking a complicated cake thinking it “might” work out, and then it comes out of the oven and actually HAS risen?! At that point you start thinking “bloody hell, I AM a cake maker after all, pass me the icing…” But… But… But… Well… I won’t attach a picture of the last cake I decorated but you’ve seen “Bake off Extra Slice” right?! Let’s just say I am NOT my Mother when it comes to beautiful bakes!

And as it turns out, or day at Legoland may have come out of the oven early, all risen and plump and perfect after that spinny ride… But… Let’s just call the rest of our day the icing.

Or we could say the words shit, and show.

Either or!

We got into the 45 minute advertised queue for the log flume next, exciting we thought. Three quarters of an hour is a long time but it was one of our 3, and we’d already been on a bonus ride so we were all full of false confidence! We didn’t know if Posie was the right height or not at 94cm. We could see no signs – that doesn’t mean they weren’t there but they hadn’t presented themselves to us, but we knew we could parent swap if she wasn’t, so either way we’d queue up.

Perfect. 

Or so we thought! 

45 minutes later, when we were meant to be at the front, we’d actually barely moved. We were thankful for the play area in the middle, meaning kids can duck in and out of the queue for a play, but it was 12.45 by now and everyone was so hungry! I took Posie to the wagon where we’d left it at a buggy stop, picked up crisp supplies and took them back to the troops where we sustained ourselves on BBQ Pringles and began to REALLY lose the magic we’d thought was back.

Another three quarters of an hour or so later, and we finally merged with the fast track queue. A bit later still we got to the front. No one measured Posie but staff did chat to her and she entertained them while we waited so I assumed she was tall enough (it’s only now, since people on Instagram pointed out the ride is a 1m minimum, have I realised that she wasn’t)!

We were on the ride. VERY hungry, but we were ON IT.

At about half past 1! 

By 2pm we were STILL on it! 

Me, my now 12-year-old Jimmy and Posie (who is 3) in one boat. My husband, 14 year old Florence and 6 year old Raffie, behind us. Before we’d even reached the slope there was a tannoy to say mechanical errors were causing issue and to sit tight. My 14-year-old had just watched “Final Destination” (silly girl) and was having a panic attack, but we were on the ground. It was fine. Stuff happens. We get that! 

The tannoy kept barking at people to say “we can SEE you, SIT down, STAY still, help IS coming”. Lots of people were told off and when my husband slightly stood up to alleviate his knees which were siezing up I barked at him before the tannoy could, “JONNY! You’re a TEACHER for goodness sake, DO NOT be the one who gets shouted at NEXT and make a spectacle of us!” he just looked at me, mouthed “I hate Legoland” and returned to sitting on his bottom with his knees in agony! See for yourself, video attached…

Then we moved.

And got very excited.

I’d previously looked at the people stuck in front of us, half way up the climb and exclaimed “could be worse, we could be up there!” But now we were the ones on the climb all of a sudden and yes, it did look like we might be going to experience the ride after all…

Before…

All of a sudden…

No!

The ride stopped. Again!

This time people started RUNNING about on the ground (very disconcerting – I have a video of this too but I’m sure you can conjure up the picture) and the announcement once more was “we are having ANOTHER mechanical error, you will be rescued, we are evacuating. Oh! And DON’T even THINK about moving!”

And you guessed it. We were then stranded in the “could be worse!” Leaned back on the incline, with a previously happy toddler who’d been looking forward to her first proper ride, but was now feeling quite the antithesis of her previously jolly mood!

My little Posie was beyond panicked. She cried, she said she was scared. She said her tummy hurt. And she just wanted to go home!

We buoyed her lots, pulled funny faces and constantly did all we could to make her feel safer – see, yep, the video attached. Although I didn’t feel so safe myself it has to be said!

Why, oh why, oh WHY did they not just evacuate everyone as soon as the ride failed and we’d all been waiting for the first 20 minutes?!

The rescuers were very serious. They had carabiner clips and wires and hard hats. It was like something straight from “Go Ape”, where, incidentally, we’d enjoyed the delights of at the Bracknell branch the day before – it was a BRILLIANT day out, it did exactly what it said on the tin and we thoroughly recommend it.

Quite the opposite of how we feel about Legoland in fact.

But at least we knew how to use a carabiner clip!

The rescue team kept walking past us. They didn’t speak, just kept going to other boats. The other boats ahead of us had older children, 8 years plus I’d say, and adults. The boats behind us, apart from our family in the boat directly next to ours, were just adults. ALL of them rescued before us. None of them crying, or shaking, or worried like Posie was.

The people on the ground were led out first, then the people in front, in front and in front again. I asked at one point, as Posie was very anxious, if we could be next because of her upset? But I was told no, told to sit tight, and “we’ll be getting you last”.

There was no explanation as to why last?! Maybe they thought we deserved it simply from having asked?! I’m being facetious, of course. There MUST have been a logical explanation as to why you’d leave a very upset toddler on a ride that was stuck, with her in a precarious position, leaning backwards (one of only two boats on the climb), it’s just that the explanation wasn’t forthcoming!

Eventually we were led to safety. I mean, realistically, we could have got out of the boat and walked down on our own ages prior. Could have and perhaps should have but we were being shouted at to NOT MOVE! But in the end that’s all that happened. For all the hard hatted, carabiner clipped safety of the staff in their garb, we just had to hold hands as we made our way down!

Then, we were led single file through the outside of the park and taken back to the ride entrance to meet our family and all the other disgruntled passengers. No one spoke to us other than to bark that we had to be single file. I did break this rule by holding my scared 3 year old’s hand, but I don’t think they noticed, they were too busy chatting to each other to ask if any of the “rescued” were ok, breaking the single file rule, or, in fact, even following them at all – see video!

I don’t think any of us were disgruntled that the ride had broken down, we live in the real world, things happen – but no one was really doing anything to make it any better. It was past 2pm by now and we were told to “wait because they would compensate us for all the time wasted” but they wouldn’t say how until everyone was together.

This is the first time I spoke to a team member (Gina) and said to her these exact words “I might sound angry, because I am, I want you to know however, that I am NOT angry with you personally. I am angry that this has happened and we are being herded and told to wait. What are we waiting for?” 

And Gina was lovely.

But ineffectual.

It became apparent pretty quickly that she had no authority whatsoever. Gina and the other people herding us, and making us wait for what we’d now been told would be fast track passes, were not any kind of decision maker for Legoland. They were “do-ers as they’re told-ers” with walkie talkies for if the going got really tough. There was absolutely no one in management even anywhere close we found out. I doubt they even knew this had happened!

Finally Gina told us that we were indeed being given fast track passes for the inconvenience we’d experienced!

One.

Per person.

That meant each of us could get into a fast track queue for ONE ride.

Well, if I’d been angry before then, I was fuming now. Not with Gina, but that was a preposterous offer. I told her so and she upped it to two per person but not without great deliberation amongst colleagues.

I said no.

It was now nearly 3pm, we had 3 hours left, if we hit queues like this one we’d have got on probably only one or two more rides. most of our day had been taken up with this log flume and its breakdown. So I told her, in agreement with all the others (we were a band of brothers now) that we wanted at least 6 each so that we can go on at least 6 rides before we went home.

It was THREE PM now, THREE PM!

I don’t think it was unreasonable. To expect, after all that delay, to go on 6 more rides (we’d only been on one remember) in a theme park who’s primary reason for being is so that people can spend all day going on rides.

But Gina had no authority did she… So she called her manager, or her “three zero” as she called her. Gina said she wouldn’t give me her name as her contract forbade giving out personal details! I wasn’t actually asking for her national insurance number, just her first name but still, she was unrelenting. At least she was friendly.

When the three zero (wearing her name badge to state she is actually called Emily) arrived, she was like a viper. She stomped in (no other way to describe it, she was angry she’d had to come and see us I’d guess, but whatever the reason, she was NOT pleased), looked beyond bored, rolled her eyes as I introduced myself, and looked furious when I began how I began to everyone I spoke to “Hello, my name is Ruth, I’m here with my husband and four children and I want you to know that after what has happened today, I am very angry, but not with you personally.”

She proceeded to patronise and shout at me, and tell me the reason she was being aggressive was because I was raising my voice. 

In honesty, I was animated, but I was smiling with it, jovial, pointing out the obvious, that “if you make mistakes and rectify them well then that’s all people remember” I explained to her this theory in very simple terms but she didn’t want to hear it so she basically refused to answer. I was not aggressive, even though I felt attacked. Emily on the other hand, was beyond rude and I will fully admit I didn’t like her.

But I’m not easily beaten when people behave badly like this. I kill them with kindness until they HAVE to be nice back.

Emily was un-waivering.

She’d made her mind up and I could almost see the steam coming out of her ears as I very clamly and kindly asked her question, after question she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, answer.

In the end I asked her to call her manager (the SILVER, she called her) as clearly we were getting nowhere, and after Emily had done this, she stomped off never to be seen again, having refused to let me take a picture of her badge so that I could explain who I’d spoken to when I made this complaint. I’m not sure why?

The SILVER, or Levi, as she turned out to be called, was much more friendly. Still pretty unwavering in a “computer says no” sort of way, and I do wonder where the buck really stops on any given day at Legoland if the manager’s manager can’t make individual human calls, but she was friendly like Gina and seemed to care in a way that her eyes told me she got it, but her words were following a manuscript. She did let me take a picture of her badge so I can pass that to you if needed, and she gave us 4 passes which with time ticking on I had to accept.

I assumed the 4 passes would be gone in a jiffy, then we’d be back to queueing for the hours that we no longer had. It was just under 3 hours till close now, so we thought we could whip on four rides with fast passes, and then queue for one last one. We’d forgotten that fast passes have a fast pass queue too and with lots of broken rides, including ours, I suspect the world and his wife had a “fast pass!”

At least the children had eaten their picnic lunch while I argued the point.

We headed to Ninjago.

And guess what?!

I know, I know… You couldn’t make it up! Ninjago’s fast track was almost as long as the normal queue. We waited absolutely ages, about 45 minutes in fact AND, to add insult to injury, it broke down just at the end. With us on it! 

We were just resigned at this point.

However, a fast fix meant we were off shortly after, and headed to other rides.

Any rides.

Absolutely anything at this point!

We found the horses in Heart Lake City. CLOSED!

The submarine. CLOSED! (oh no, that was our third pick of the day!)

And then when I said the big kids should go off with Daddy, and do ANYTHING they could, because Posie didn’t want to get in any more queues, she was frightened after being stuck on two rides and only wanted to go on the cars now. We discovered she’s not tall enough for the big “little” cars as it goes. They were VERY fastidious about measuring (clearly a different team to the log flume bunch) but she got on the diddy ones (see picture, she actually smiled, the ride lasted about 2 minutes but she LOVED it and she deserved that after her ordeal)!

Then we headed to the splash park.

I mean… What a crock of you know what!

There’s a small area in the splash, the rubbish bit, that was open. But the big bit, the exciting bit, the bit that isn’t exactly the same as the splash area in my local park, was, you guessed it, CLOSED!

The chap working on the tiny bit of splash that was open, told me, when asked why, “we haven’t got enough staff to man it”. So, Emily, the three zero, or “rides and attractions duty manager” as she had explained in real words, obviously hadn’t prioritised the one thing that smaller kids can do, on a hot day, in the height of the summer holidays, without flaming queueing and had CLOSED it!

I want to ask why, because it stands to reason if you let the same amount of people in, but close half the attractions, then the queues are going to be even worse. But really I know the answer… No one at Legoland actually cares!

We manged to take the boys on the racers when they got back from the haunted house where they’d again queued for ages (even with a fast pass) and then we only had half an hour left. We headed to the lion ride where we waited for the full half an hour, in the fast-track queue, but did get to enjoy it before the park was closed. 

Getting out of the car park was another queue, we left the park at 6pm, we were in our car shortly afterwards, we didn’t get out of the car park until gone 7pm. I have NO IDEA WHY?! It’ like they just want you to have one more moment of that Legoland experience you’ve become accustomed to before you go out into the real world and don’t have to stand behind someone else anymore!

And you know what else?! We came home with the majority of those fast passes unused. We just hadn’t had time to use them with the “fast” track queues being as long as the normal ones – I can’t believe I’d actually assumed they would actually get us on rides faster! I’m not a rookie but I still fell in the trap!

All in, this was our worst visit to date. Ever!

And that’s saying something.

So I wanted you to know.

I know you’ll apologise. And I know you may very well offer us tickets to come back. But let me be very clear here, I do not want them! And I would probably say something very rude about sticking them somewhere unpleasant.

So please don’t do that.

I don’t like being extremely rude, it wobbles my equilibrium.

IF you’d taken us off that ride and immediately said “we’re really sorry about that, it’s not nice at all and we want to make it up to you, here’s a fast track pass for the whole day for your family, and a voucher for a coffee” we’d have come away thinking yes, that was rubbish, but at least they’ve really tried to make it right, and they didn’t HAVE to do that, they could have been arsey about it, but clearly they do prioritise their customer care”, IF you’d said that then the perception, the lasting memory, it would have been a good one.

I explained this theory, in exactly these words, to your horrible “three zero” / “Rides and Attractions Duty Manager” Emily! 

I don’t understand why she hasn’t had training to ensure she delivers just this sort of service. If she were an employee of mine I would absolutely be going down the route of making sure my customer facing staff members knew how to be polite, how to react, and most importantly, how to make people happy. Especially when making customers who’ve had a bad experience, would cost, financially, very little.

But each to our own, and I guess Merlin’s way must keep on making you money. So why would you change?!

Instead, after the way she treated us, we’ve come away thinking “why were they so arsey? Why don’t they care? Why does it feel like we’ve been robbed. AGAIN?!” and most importantly, “why wasn’t our safety paramount?!” (because there were many errors when it came to keeping us safe while we were at Legoland this week – and we couldn’t help but wonder, if something really bad did happen, and Emily was on hand to deal with it,

Who knows the answer to all these questions? YOU!

Who can do something to make the visitor experience better at Legoland? YOU!

Who’s got to WANT to make their business, and its staff, somewhere people want to go with people they feel confident will run it well? Well, that’s YOU again!

Sadly WE don’t have the optimism of our 6 year old, and, frankly, as my husband mouthed on the log flume “I HATE LEGOLAND!”

Which is not the way you want to feel when you’ve spent so much blooming money on trying to like it!

Ruth Davies Knowles

P.S, Just so that gorgeous snap of Posie doesn’t cat fish you into thinking our day was as beautiful as her smile, I would like to ask you to watch my Instagram story highlights where i documented the whole day (as is my wont) and saved them all to a highlight. Regular stories disappear after 24 hours but these ones will stay forever and I really do want to be able to remind myself, should I ever feel deluded enough to come back again one day, that I really, really do not want to do that)!