Pupletts in Sweden: Denmark and Germany (2-7 Nov) Part 1

When we first arrived in Sweden we saw that one of our favourite bands, Fall Out Boy, were touring Europe in November. We considered getting tickets at the O2 in London again, but then we saw they were playing a few concerts in Germany, so we booked tickets to the Nov 6th tour in Oberhausen.

As the date got closer, we realised that the week before the concert was Höstlov (Autumn school holidays) in Sweden, so we had a look at what else we could do.

We were keen to return to Legoland and to check out Lego House, but at short notice all of the Legoland cheaper accommodation options were booked and the finances wouldn't stretch to staying in the Legoland hotel. We opted for a compromise, booking a cabin in a caravan park in Århus, which was about an hour from Legoland.

We were up early on Thursday 2nd and took the three and a half hour drive over the Öresund and Storebælt bridge to Lego House:

Öresund Bridge

Storebælt

Lego House was built in 2017 in Billund and is designated as "The Home of the Brick". The building sits in the middle of Billund and is 12,000 square meters, housing over 25 million Lego bricks.

The building is designed to reflect stacked Lego bricks and built with the scale of the bricks in mind. It consists of several sections to represent different skills:
Green - Social
Red - Creativity
Blue - Cognitive
Yellow - Emotional.

Kristine loved the sign in the toilets in the carpark:

We were at the tail end of the Halloween theme

After passing through the foyer we came to the Tree of Creativity, a huge tree that filled the centre of the building. Each set of branches held displays of different Lego themes and there were designs built into the trunk. The top was set up to be under construction to show that the hobby and company are still building.

Before heading up the ramp around the tree, we checked out the red brick display. It was calculated that there were 915,103,765 ways to combine six red 4x2 Lego bricks. Each visitor was given a unique combination and the six bricks to build it:

The back of the cards

The Lego moulding machine

Scanning his wristband to start

Once we'd collected our blocks, we headed back to the tree and took the stairs to the top floor:

At the top of the tree we came to the Masterpiece Gallery. This room is at the very top of the building and has circular lights to simulate being inside a Lego brick. It houses three giant T-Rex sculptures, one from standard Lego System (Systemosaurus), one from Lego Technic (Technicosaur) and one from Duplo. We didn't notice at first, but each dinosaur is roaring with pain after stepping on a Lego brick. Around the sides of the room were display cabinets with Lego builds from around the world.

From the Masterpiece Gallery we could choose to take any direction into the coloured sections of Lego House. We chose to follow the red path and came to the massive Lego Waterfall:

Next stop was the blue section. Unfortunately the Robot section was close for upgrades, but the kids had a shot at the Test Driver section - building cars and testing them in a race and jump:

The Jump

My car had some legs impaled on the front of it (it performed terribly)

Ready to test the jump

The race and testing the jump:

I'm sure I would have won the race, but Tomas' car drove mine straight into the wall and we were all beaten by a five year old.

There was also a Train Building zone for younger kids

Next we had the city builder. This was a series of city blocks with projected Lego figures on them. You could select a coloured base, yellow for industrial, blue for commercial, red for residential or green for parks and build a small 6x6 structure. This would be recognised when it was placed on the map and the Lego figures would interact with it:

Next up was the green section and a minifigure builder. You could build a minifig and have it appear on the front of a magazine:

Next up was the World Explorer section consisting of three large Lego displays:

Town and Countryside (24.5m squared)

City Island (21.2m squared)

Tropical Island (11.4 square meters)

While Kris and Tom moved on to the next section, Cameron and I checked out the movie studio and made a Blockbuster of a stop-motion movie:

The next section was the yellow section where we made models of emotions and they were digitally uploaded:

Next stop was the Flower Artist section where we could make flowers in view of the giant tree:

The final section before we headed back down was the Fish Builder, where fish could built and then digitalised to an aquarium:

The boys took a rest in some comfortable Lego chairs while Kris and I built a fish:

My "KP" fish

Our final stop was the underground memory hall. This area housed sets and information from the history of Lego and started with a very impressive Lego sign. The sign is two square meters and made of 1,638,498 irregularly shaped Lego bricks:

Original Lego moulds

Lego Sign

Close up of the sign

The centre of the area housed the "Monolith" a room with displays of the most iconic Lego sets through the ages and a chance for people select what sets they had from a huge list. The displays are made so from one direction you see the completed sets and from the other you can see the original box:

We then passed back out into the foyer and to the Lego store:

We had one last thing planned for the day, and that was to eat at the Mini Chef restaurant. It was booked out all day, so luckily we had booked in advance. To order your food, you built a pattern for the items you wanted with Lego bricks and entered it into the computer. Your order then arrived on a rollercoaster and was pushed to the collection area by Lego robots: