As soon as we walked through the gates at Legoland Windsor we could tell that there was a slight Star Wars vibe in the air. And when I say slight, I mean huge. And when I say air, I mean way up through the stratosphere. Mark Newbold and myself dragged our respective families along and plunged into the park.
Star Wars T-shirts and toy lightsabres dominated, worn and wielded by children and adults alike. All manner of Star Wars costumes wandered the entire park and the Stormtrooper photo opportunity, when they were all waiting in line to get into the exhibition, was priceless. The movie music belted out at high volume all across Legoland and you couldn’t help but get caught up in the excitement. I don’t think I’ve seen so many lightsabre battles since the Jedi got busy on Geonosis.
We didn’t get to see the exhibition until the afternoon – it took that long for the queues to die down. There was plenty to do as we waited, mind you, as this was the fantastic Legoland Windsor after all. Two scary rollercoasters and one damp water ride later we got in line.
The exhibition hall was huge and incorporated a Star Wars Lego shop. And that was a lot of Lego, I’m telling you now, and if you want to get anything related to that particular line of toys then this is the shop to go to. It was amazing, with a life-size Lego Darth Vader and a Chewbacca that had children draped over them for photographs the entire day.
But what of the exhibition? Well, after walking in you’re immediately dunked into a visual and audio assault of all things Star Wars; music, effects, roars and shouts. The Lego models are very well constructed and in some areas simply animated. They cover everything from the six movies and the Clone Wars television show, so you’ve got representations of the key battles, with smaller scenes tucked in. Take my favourite area of the tour, for instance, the Tatooine models. They’ve got Mos Eisley there, with models representing the streets and characters, the cantina scene and, most importantly, docking bay 94. In the docking bay was a huge Millennium Falcon that rose and fell as Lego Stormtroopers looked on. It looked great, with sounds and lights, and with a tiny Han and Chewbacca in the illuminated cockpit. It was definitely my favourite model of the show next to the AT-ATs.
And the amazing Imperial Shuttle on the landing platform on Endor. Oh, and the Kashyyyk battle scene. And the Geonosis battle. And the Hoth scenes. And the Naboo stuff.
Ok, so, I don’t want to go in to too much detail as the exhibition is something that, as a Star Wars fan, you’ll want to see for yourself. The models on show are excellent, but if you were expecting to see the standard models that I was expecting – as in the Lego characters we know and love from the standard sale range, the video games and The Padawan Menace DVD – then you’ll be surprised to find that these models are built on a larger scale and have nothing to do with them. They’re more in line with the miniland models that are on show in the rest of the park. This makes them much larger and much more detailed, which is much better. It’s also a short exhibition, you could walk through the whole thing in ten minutes if you just gave each setup a brief lookover, but there’s enough detail and small distractions to make sure you stand at each one for a lot longer than that.
All in all I was impressed and I look forward to seeing how they expand on the exhibition. Legoland Windsor is in itself an amazing day out and the Star Wars Experience just adds the cherry on top.
So, if you’ll excuse, me I’ve got to go and stop my son from playing Lego Star Wars on the Wii as, to be fair, it’s my turn. In fact, I’ll leave the last word, and the definitive review of the Star Wars Miniland Experience at Legoland Windsor, to my five-year-old son Bruce.
‘Wow, dad. That was really really great.’