Matt is a long time MiceChatter and father of two adorable theme park loving kids. His daughter Laura reviewed LEGOLAND California’s newest attraction for us today as well HERE. Here’s Matt’s version of the new offerings.
LEGOLAND California is opening their newest land, LEGO Ninjago World, to the public on May 5th and we were able to get an early look at all the offerings. The land is small but packed with little details, play areas, an eatery, and one E-Ticket attraction.
Before I continue, a quick tutorial on Ninjago. Ninjago is LEGO’s most popular original IP. First launched in 2011, Ninjago built upon LEGO’s previous Ninja theme, adding technological and supernatural elements, resulting in a tasty cross genre stew that has been going strong ever since. The plot of Ninjago concerns a group of young ninjas (color coded for your convenience) who fight evil in its various forms. What forms you may ask? Well, snakes, snake men, ghosts, ghost ninjas, djinn, sky pirates, robots, and robot ninjas. How do they fight evil? Why, color coded elemental powers and high tech vehicles and weapons of course.
Like many children’s properties, the Ninjago fiction exists to make kids want to buy toys. Twice a year or so LEGO puts out a new wave of sets and Cartoon Network releases new episodes of the show. This has been going since 2011 and LEGOLAND is finally getting in on the cross promotional action.
Ninjago World is located close to the LEGOLAND park entrance. It’s where they used to have a tent set up with sale items, if any readers can remember back that far. It’s also the space where the life size LEGO X-Wing fighter was displayed a year or two ago.
You enter the land through an archway guarded by two dragons.
In the center of the land is a seating area around a LEGO sculpture of The Monastery of Spinjitzu. Built over 9 feet tall and made from over 850,000 LEGO bricks, guest will be able to add their own building creations to the lower reaches of this display.
To the right of the entryway is the area’s lone food offering, Ninja Kitchen. Ninja Kitchen serves crispy pork belly, lemongrass chicken, or baked sweet chili tofu on your choice of steamed bao buns or fresh baked baguette. My family tried all three proteins on the baguette and the pork belly on the bao. All were tasty and filling. There was no production menu on display so I can’t comment on the prices. That will have to wait for a follow up visit once the area opens.
The area is decorated with statues of the various ninjas and a dragon made from over 48,000 LEGO bricks.
The play activity areas were not completed for this preview but there are several
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Zane’s Temple Build – Build NINJAGO inspired LEGO models.
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Kai’s Spinners – Practice your balance on spinning platforms.
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Cole’s Rock Climb – A small rock climbing wall.
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Jay’s Lightning Drill – Test your speed by pressing a lit up button in the speed cage.
The opening ceremonies started with a Japanese drum performance.
Moved on to an exhibition of Ninja skills.
And ended with a storm of confetti and streamers.
After taking a few photos with the ninjas we headed onto the main attraction, LEGO NINJAGO: The Ride.
There is an extensive outdoor queue area and an indoor queue that manages to hide a pretty long line. The indoor area is decorated with various ninja weapons, information posters, and screens which demonstrate the ride.
The loading area has gates for four ride vehicles.
I’m told the ride vehicles are basically the same as those for Knott’s Berry Farm’s Iron Reef attraction with some additions. The sliding doors open and close automatically, and the lap bar lowers by itself.
The similarity to Iron Reef doesn’t end there. LEGO NINJAGO: The Ride is a 4-D projection shooter similar to Iron Reef or Toy Story Midway Mania. You fire color coded elemental projectiles at the various enemies that appear on screen.
The lap bar is where the ride’s innovative technology resides. On this ride you use your hands to fire the elemental blasts, as befits a ninja. This is where things get a little dicey. The tech that senses your hand motions can be hit or miss (no pun intended). One ride through I got almost no hits, the next, I had the highest score in the car. So it can use some work. Hopefully the week until the public opening will give them time to iron out most of the bugs.
Here’s a look at the ride in action.
A few other nitpicks
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Sometimes our scores didn’t appear on the counter in the ride vehicle.
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Sometimes our picture didn’t show up at the end of the ride.
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Sometimes the in vehicle score didn’t match the score that was in our picture.
Hopefully these will all be fixed once the ride opens to the public.
The ride exits to a picture station, which was hit or miss whether the picture appeared. I expect that to be fixed. And, of course, the obligatory exit into the gift shop, Wu’s Warehouse.
All in all, NINJAGO World is a fun addition to LEGOLAND.
It is well themed, has lots to do, and a fun main attraction with innovative technology. Given the massive popularity of the NINJAGO IP it should be a hit with kids and parents this summer.
