Legoland Discovery Centre, Manchester, October 2024

It’s been a while since we’d been to the Legoland Discovery Centre in Manchester. Elliott always enjoys it but there’s not a great deal to do for repeat visits, plus it’s expensive and you’re only allowed a limited time inside. But we had an ulterior motive for visiting the Trafford Centre: We wanted to try the Shrek Café before it leaves – so we needed to pad out the day with something else.

It was a reasonably cheap trip to the Legoland Discovery Centre this time as we had some Tesco Clubcard vouchers that we could use as part payment, so what should have been a £75 trip only cost us £25.

Prices are usually around £20 per adult and £16.50 per child, plus it’s at the Trafford Centre, so parking is free. The do have ticket bundles with Sea Life Manchester, which is just next door, so worth looking into if you’re ever planning both attractions. We’ve done it in the past and it saves a little money.

Worth checking what time you want to enter too. First slot is usually 10am, with slots every 10 minutes after. 10:10 am was £9 cheaper than the 10 am slot, and you’ll probably have to wait anyway, so get there 10ish but book for 10:10 if the price is cheaper.

Check ticket dates and prices here: Legoland Discovery Centre, Manchester

Legoland Discovery Centre Manchester is located at the Trafford Palazzo area of the Trafford Centre (it was formerly Barton Square, I believe), so aim for there with your satnav, unless you’re planning on going into the Trafford Centre for food and shopping, in which case, park anywhere.

We scanned our tickets, picked up our Halloween masks and activity sheet and walked through the minifigure shaped arch (which had been Vampired-up for Halloween’s Brick or Treat event), and skipped past the greenscreen photo point.

Up the stairs or in the lift and you’re in the Brick Factory. There used to be a fun little pre-show here, which gave a fun reenactment into the creation of the Lego brick, and they gave you a Legoland Discovery Centre Manchester brick at the end of it. Sadly, they don’t do this anymore. No show, no brick. The room is more of a showroom with a few large builds in which we’ve seen before, so easy to pass on by.

Just as you enter here, there is a shooting dark ride called ‘Kingdom Quest’, featuring a mix of screens and practical targets, where you venture through the Kingdom, battle trolls and skeletons to rescue the Princess. It’s a fun ride and a great start to your visit. We had a dodgy gun on our run, which takes the fun out of it. It was quiet at just after 10am on a Sunday morning, so we could have easily jumped back in line for a second go, but we’ve been several times and weren’t missing much.

There are also on-ride photos, and the booth to collect these or your green screen photo from earlier is right next to the ride.

Miniland is great. It’s the same builds every time we go but they always dress them differently depending on the occasion. Today, it was Halloween themed, so spiders, ghosts, bats and aliens(?) everywhere. Plus, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters!

The builds are all locations from around the North of England: Blackpool and the Tower, The Trafford Centre entrance (with a monster face), a working model of Oblivion from Alton Towers, and, of course, The Woolpack from Emmerdale.

Today in MIniland, was the Brick or Treat activity. An easy one for the kids: Find the framed pictures of the Lego Halloween Minifig Monsters in Miniland and write their location on your activity sheet to get a prize at the shop at the end (FYI, some sweets and a sticker).

Walking out of Miniland and into the main room is like one of those ‘Welcome to Jurassic Park’ moments (well, not quite that cool but you get what I mean), where you get to see everything all at once: Build tables, VR Experience, Ninjago play area, Technic Car builds, Lego pits, the café, ride area… It’s all one big room to explore. Watch your feet though, there’s Lego EVERYWHERE!

Entering the main room was a build table and display wall allowing you to build a Halloween Pumpkin model. There were instructions and plenty of bricks and pieces for the kids to conjure up something spooky and display it for all to see.

Just inside to the right is the Legoland VR Experience: The great Lego Race. It’s not something we’ve done, so I can’t say if it’s any good. It’s an upcharged attraction which you can pay when you’re there or book online in advance.

Again, we’ve never done a workshop. The kids are too busy running around elsewhere to sit and enjoy a workshop. It’s another upcharged attraction at £5 per build, where groups are taken into a workshop room and guided by a Master Builder into the creation of a fun and fancy build. It looked like today they were building a Witch. Not sure if you get to keep the build or not.

At intervals through the day, there were meet and greets with some Lego characters. Today was Halloween Monsters. At 11am, 1pm and 3pm, one of the minifig characters came out for photos with the adults and kids. We waited for the 1pm Meet and had the Scarecrow.

Another fun little ride here is Merlin’s Apprentice. Not quite the same as the ride of the same name at Legoland Windsor, this one is a spinning ride where you control how high you go by pedalling. Not as much fun for the little kids though as they can’t reach the pedals, but we all enjoy having a go.

After passing through the Ninjago arch, a large section of Legoland Discovery Centre is dedicated to the popular Lego property. There’s a large build table with a mountain scene to add to, a moving climb wall and a large soft play area with climbing areas, slides, tunnels and a ball pool, plus a small area with some puzzles and interactive fun and games.

Along the left side is a Lego Police area for the under 5’s. This used to have powered cars that the kids could drive around the track in, but post pandemic they’ve been replaced by push along cars and trikes that they can zoom along the village streets and around the trees on. Evan used to zoom Elliott around in here but they’re both too big now.

In the middle of the room there are a set of ramps of different sizes where you can build and test your Lego car creations and see how they fair. It’s all Lego Technic pieces so can be fiddly and difficult to put together for the smaller kids but they all love launching a car down the ramps.

At the back of the Discovery Centre, there is a small toddler soft play area with some slides. This is gated off so the little ones can’t wander away. Across the other side there’s a slightly larger soft play slide, the farm corner, piles of giant building blocks and a Duplo pit. One of the fun things in this area is an earthquake table, where you can build a tower, press a button and see if it can withstand the shaking table.

We always try and catch one of the shows at the 4D cinema. They usually alternate between a couple of different options across the day. We’ve seen Lego City Chase and Ninjago before. Today was Halloween themed, so it was Lego Monster Chase and Lego Friends Alien Invasion. We chose monsters. So, you head in, take a seat and put on your 3D glasses to enjoy the film. There are some water or foam effects but it’s usually a light spray. I think they’d fixed the machines today however as there was plenty of water and foam. We were covered!

The café is pretty good, and prices are fair considering its an indoor attraction owned by Merlin – so kinda theme park prices. They sell kids meal deals for £5.95 (drink, snack, crisps, fruit), Adults Paninis and sandwiches from £4.50, Lego brick shaped chocolates, Minifigure head shaped biscuits, slushies, cold drinks and Costa coffees. There’s seating indoor and out. Well, inside the café room or outside on the tables in the Duplo area. It’s all indoor.

For the Halloween event, they were doing a trick or treat roulette wheel. Kids could spin the wheel and depending on the outcome, got to select from the trick bin or the treat bin. The Treat bin had a selection of sweets, stickers and Lego minifigure top trumps cards. The trick bin was full of single Lego bricks. Personally, I thought the trick bin was better than the treat!

In one of the birthday rooms they were creating a giant Lord Vampyre minifig build which everyone could take part in. The staff member assigned you a table with a tub of blocks on and gave you a pattern to follow to create large blocks to add to the build. Once complete, you could help add them to the Vampyre build. We made and added 4 blocks, and Elliott accidentally subtracted a few too! Oops!

With all of the main room complete, we walked the corridor into the Space room. In here there’s a table set up like a space station with blocks and pieces for you to add to, a computer station with screens and buttons, and another table with a brilliant build of a rocket. Wait for the countdown to hit zero as the rocket launches! Also a great Buzz Lightyear model and photo op.

They’ve randomly added a Lego Friends area in the space zone too with some models of Lego Friends characters and a small build table.

You make your way out of Legoland Discovery Centre via the disco corridor. A crazy little dark corridor with fun lighting, party pictures on the walls, a Wyldstyle model from The Lego Movie, coloured witches’ hats hanging from the ceiling and a large Lego Batman minifig statue. There’s a photo op carriage in the next room, covered in webs and pumpkins for the event, some Lego Dots items, mosaics and a “Thank you for visiting” brick-built sign.

The gift shop is just a massive Lego shop. They’re not the same as a normal Lego shop as they’re owned by Merlin, but they do seem to be joining together as you now have the ability to collect and use Lego Insiders points. Merlin pass holders, however, do get discount here. There is also another Lego shop in the Trafford Centre now too. The only real difference here is you might find some older sets or polybags for sale that you can’t usually pick up in the regular Lego stores, or some of the Legoland exclusive sets. You can get bricks engraved (for an additional £1.50) and they did used to offer engraved lunchboxes too.

It’s a fun morning out, but a bit steep at £60-80 for a family of 4 for 3 hours, but it is a Legoland thing so not unexpected. There are some fun builds to see in and around the shop area too, like Kylo Ren & Yoda from Star Wars, Hagrid from Harry Potter, and some Ninjago characters, plus plenty of things to see and do for the little ones inside, so worth a trip if you can get it cheaper or as the combo deal. Nothing really changes inside, same builds, same play areas, so it could probably do with a refresh in some areas, but if it’s your first time going, it’s all new and exciting. I think we’ve just been too many times now and seen it all before, so we probably wont rush back anytime soon.

Although, they do adult sessions too, which I keep meaning to look in to!

Anyway, Legoland Discovery Centre was done, and we were off to a café Far, Far Away…