Legoland Discovery Center, Great Lakes Crossing, Auburn Hills, Michigan, USA
LEGOⓇ bricks. Do you love them or loathe them? 
As long as I am not stepping on them with bare feet, or begging children to pick them up, I love the learning opportunities that they provide. As a teacher, I have loads of loose bricks that my kids could explore with, but my kids had never really taken a real interest in free form building with them.
We have visited the LEGOLANDⓇ Theme Park in Florida, and all really enjoyed our day there. This park is a full-blown theme park with rollercoasters, movies, and water ski shows on the lake capped off with nightly fireworks. It is not always possible to get to Florida to indulge in a little family fun, so we headed to one of twelve indoor LEGOLANDⓇ Discovery centers in the US, in Auburn Hills, MI, at the Great Lakes Crossing Mall.
Tickets were provided by Legoland Discovery center for us to explore. As always I do my best to represent the opinions of each person in our crew that attended.
It still amazes me that right there, just steps from the food court, hidden behind a regular mall sized gift shop, is a pretty elaborate amusement zone of fun for all ages.
Upon checking in, you will be tempted to purchase a lanyard with activity cards. The cards are cute, and they can help guide your visit to make sure that you explore each area within the facility with the embossing stations that correspond with each page of the figurine shaped lanyard cards. They are however not a necessity, and if you can make it past the cashier without your kiddos seeing them, you are probably in the clear. If you do purchase them, my understanding is that with each additional visit, your kiddos can collect the colorful pucks that clip onto the lanyard, and show me a kid who doesn’t enjoy collecting things like this. If you were planning on visiting repeatedly, then I would see the lanyards as something that you could use to keep your visits fresh and challenging. Buggie very quickly found it to be heavy and cumbersome, and Mama ended up wearing it for her.
For those not interested in the lanyards, they did have an activity that the kids could participate in as a prize drawing entry. Since we visited in December, there were tiny LEGOⓇ wreaths hidden all around Miniland, the LEGOⓇ city, and the kids were challenged to count the wreaths and fill out their answer on their entry form. Honestly, Buddy and Buggy were more interested in counting wreaths than they were in the lanyards.
Before entering the fun zone, there was a photo opportunity with props. The photo diversion was a clever way to kill some time while you are in the holding area before the pre-visit experience. This is a great way to stagger the number of people who are entering the area at any given time. There are about 20 stations in the round where you begin by experiencing a virtual tour of the LEGOⓇ factory where you encounter a few video game style challenges. Once your tour is finished, the doors to the discovery center open, and you are free to explore for as long as you would like to.
Immediately Buddy and Buggy were delighted by the Kingdom Quest ride. This ride is one of our favorite ride genres: ride vehicle on a track guiding you through rooms of targets with laser type guns to try to individually score as many points as possible. We rode it three.times.in.a.row.
Excitedly, we moved onto Miniland that was delightfully created to local specifics. Buddy was thrilled to see the mini Little Ceasers arena, where he has spent a good deal of time playing hockey the past two years. This is where we got stuck for a good deal of time while we counted and recounted hidden wreaths.
Around the next corner was the next ride opportunity, Merlin’s Apprentice Ride. This ride had a height requirement of 36″, which meant that Bubba couldn’t ride, which didn’t go over well at all. This ride loads slowly, and there are limited seatings considering that almost every child needs an adult to ride with them. Buddy gave up on riding and took off to some of the building areas on his own. Buggy, however, rode one time with Mama, and one time with Daddy. Both adults agreed that it was an incredible amount of work to keep pedaling hard enough to keep the ride vehicle in the air to her delight. Of course, her legs were not long enough to help with this manual labor, so she was along for a free ride, so no wonder she wanted to ride twice.
Bubba should have been more entertained by the toddler DuploⓇ Farms area of the center, but he suffers from “keeping up with his siblings,” so this area did not keep his attention for long.
The 4D movie theater shows LEGOⓇ short films on a rotating basis. As our luck would have it, we happened upon the same exact movie that we had seen at LEGOLANDⓇ Florida, however, neither of the big kids remembered, so I suppose it didn’t really matter. What is 4D you ask? It is your standard 3D movie, where you get to wear the yellow plastic glasses, but you are also treated to other sensory delights such as rain falling down from the ceiling or skunk smell pipped into the theater. Makes you glad that not all movies are 4D.
Periodically throughout the day, they offer building classes in the Creative Workshop with a Master Builder. This class features the kit of the month, which can be purchased for a very reasonable price at the Cafe. Buddy was very interested in this opportunity and was happy to have a few sibling free moments where he gained some confidence in his LEGOⓇ brick building skills.
While Buddy was off building, Bubba took his turn admiring the older kids who were enjoying the challenge of the LEGO Racers: Build & Test. He also enjoyed the Earthquake tables – because they have buttons. Enough said. Buggy met a few new friends and wanted to climb around inside of the LEGOⓇ City Play Zone.
If you are a nursing mom, they did have a small partitioned area for you to sit for either some privacy or to allow your baby to eat without being over stimulated by the vibrant colors of this facility.
Free WiFi is also available so you can post all of your cute photos on social media.
Though we were not there during meal time, we found the prices to be very reasonable. The food was of course very kid friendly, including a make your own pizza option. Honestly, I’m not sure we could have gotten your kids to take a break long enough to eat anyway. It will come as no surprise that they have private party rooms for you to include in your child’s birthday bash. If we lived closer, I know my kids would love to have a party here.
If you are thinking about visiting during a time when you know it will be busy, make sure you purchase your tickets online 
at least a day in advance. Not only will it provide you with a lower ticket price, it will also allow you to skip the line, guaranteeing your admission. (No disappointed or impatient kids that way!)
We stayed close to three hours – which is twice the “average” stay. Even then, we had to give a countdown from 5 minutes to get Buggy out of the city playscape. We agree that if you were visiting Great Lakes Crossing Mall as a destination as a family, the LEGOLANDⓇ Discovery Center would be an amazing place for the kids and the non-shopping adult to hang out for quite a while. Be aware: eventually, you will have to exit through the gift shop. This was a bit of a challenge, since this trip seems to have finally sparked a LEGOⓇ interest for Buddy. That’s ok, it gave us some future gift ideas during an age when “toys” are getting harder to buy.
Thank you LEGOLANDⓇ Discovery Center, Auburn Hills! Buggy and Buddy are already planning the next trip when Bubba is tall enough to do everything! We will be back!
