Rather than spending only 5-6 hours to try and do a lot of the main Disney attractions, I decided to head south to Winter Haven with my grandparents for a day at Legoland Florida. The recently opened park, formerly known as Cypress Gardens, is mainly geared towards children, as evident by the Lego theme and scenery that is frequently placed about the park.

The park as a whole has a few decent shows, multiple 4-D movie experiences, multiple Lego shops, and 4 smaller roller coasters, the first of which was the Dragon. It starts out by slowly rolling through the castle in which the station is housed, passing by scenes of Lego knights before encountering the dragon himself. The coaster portion of the ride is outside and is very similar the Flight Of The Hippogriff at Universal.

Next was the former Triple Hurricane wooden coaster, now the Coastersaurus. Although it is smaller, don’t let the size fool you. This ride is certainly not a kiddie coaster by any means, especially in the back seat, where ejector air is frequent on the drops. The small size prevents it from being rough while still giving the ride of a bigger wooden coaster. This was the only ride that I waited in line for twice, as lines did get lengthy during the day.

Flying School is a Vekoma family suspended offering pretty much identical to the ones found at Kings Island and Carowinds. This version was actually smoother than those two, and didn’t feature the rattling the others do. It is a bit newer, so perhaps there are some slight modifications. The LEGO TECHNIC Test Track coaster is a standard Mack wild mouse coaster like the Fly at Canada’s Wonderland or Kings Dominion’s Ricochet. The first half of the ride is very exciting, as the brakes did not trim down the speed at all, but they do hit pretty hard during the second half of the ride. I waited about 20 minutes or so, which is worth it for the one ride, but I would not be waiting in line again for it.

The park is very beautiful and will open a water park in May, something the park desperately needs with such a lack of water rides in central Florida. There is lots of room to expand as well, and the Miniland section of the park with models of numerous famous cities is a special site. Overall I give it a 6/10 for a park that has very short hours and middle of the week closures during off-season times. I would not be surprised to perhaps see Legoland expand in the coming years and push towards becoming another player in the Central Florida amusement battle, especially with the focus on attracting kids ages 2-12 or so and families.