Legoland NY Hotel and Theme Park: Everything is Awesome!

Get all the Details on Legoland NY Hotel and More!

Hi everyone! Holly here again! We just got back from our first visit to Legoland NY Hotel and theme Park. And there’s a lot to share! Some of it is specific to the New York location. But some of it applies to all Legolands (did you know this makes their tenth?!). I hope it helps you in your planning!

Legoland NY Hotel and Park Overview

Legoland New York, or LLNY, is 60-90 minutes northeast of New York City. It’s easily accessible to most of New England and the Mid-Atlantic as well, situated right off of Highway 6. It’s in the little town of Goshen, NY, a quiet historical village. (You can see a replica of it in Miniland!)

The park and the resort are side-by-side, meaning you can easily walk from the resort to the theme park. Hours for the park are very manageable, meant for families and children: 10am – 6pm every day, rain or shine. Speaking of rain, Legoland has a Rainy Day Return Ticket policy. If it rains for 120 consecutive minutes, you can go to guest services for a ticket to return within the next year.

How to get help for Legoland NY Hotel and Park

Though the resort and park are neighbors, they are actually not very closely related beyond the branding. For example, if you need help with the resort, don’t call the LLNY phone number – that’ll get you to the North American theme park line. The phone number for the LLNY resort is +1 (845) 410-0290; the phone number for the parks is +1 (877) 534-6526.

Also, the fact that they’re not professionally related means that the employees – or “Model Citizens” – are not related. If you have a question about the resort while you’re at the park – for example, is the Bricks Family Restaurant buffet style or a la carte? – the Model Citizens at the park won’t be able to answer much. (It’s a la carte at lunch and dinner, buffet at breakfast.) If you’re staying at the resort, try to get your answers before you leave in the morning.

You MUST have an advance reservation for your ticket to LLNY. However, if you are staying at the resort, you do not need a reservation, and you are guaranteed entry during your stay. A lot of Legoland publications stress the importance of reservations, but remember, not if you’re staying at the resort!

The Legoland NY Hotel Resort

Our family chose to stay at the LLNY Resort during our stay. We live about 4 hours away. And it was worth it to us to make it a weekend instead of trying to get there, play for eight hours, and get home all in the same day. We stayed two nights. And were surprised to find that, with your hotel reservation, you get a day at the park per person per night. In our case, that meant we got two days at the park per person because we were staying at the resort for two nights.

I made our booking almost four months in advance. I don’t know at what point they filled up. But we know that the weekend we were there in late September, the hotel was fully booked. Somewhere between four months and that day, reservations disappeared!

Is Trip Protection Worth It?

LLNY offers trip protection for your vacation package, but we chose not to get it. Protection is about 10% of the cost of the stay. If you choose not to get the protection, it also means you cannot make any changes to your reservation at all. For example, I added on early check-in, which is an additional $65 to be able to check in after 12:00 noon instead of after 4:00pm. As the day approached, however, I decided it would be fine to arrive later and wait to check in to our room and just enjoy the rest of the hotel. Because I didn’t buy the trip protection, however, I was unable to remove that option.

I had started to regret that I hadn’t bought the trip protection, but then realized that it only covers you until 5 days prior to your reservation. Meaning, if you get sick or have something come up last-minute that you’re unable to make your trip, the trip protection plan will not help you.

Is Arriving Early Worth It?

Also, it turned out to be fun arriving at the resort early! We had to leave a little earlier than usual, but then it was very pleasant having the hotel to ourselves. During park hours, the hotel is nearly empty. And for the rest of our trip, we were at the park as long as it was open. But for that first afternoon, we had the run of the giant play castle in the lobby! in contrast, we found that it was very loud and busy before 10am or after 6pm.

Rooms at Legoland New York Resort

We also had a lot of fun enjoying our rooms during our early check-in hours! There are so many fun touches that only Lego could provide! For starters, it’s highly themed. You have your choice of theme when you book your reservation: Lego Friends, Pirates, Kingdom, or Ninjago. We were in the Kingdom rooms and they were amazing! The floor lobbies, hallways, beds, decor, and every little touch is specific to your room theme.

Upon entering, there was a scavenger hunt provided, with questions like, “How many wizards are on the walls?” The answers to the questions provided a code to get into a kids’ safe. Inside were Lego sets to keep!

There were also a whole bin of Lego bricks under the television in the kids’ bunk bed room. We never did use that TV – if they were there, they were busy playing! However, if you wanted to unwind after a big day at the park, Lego movies were available on-demand: “The Lego Movie”, “The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part”, “The Lego Batman Movie”, “The Lego Ninjago Movie”, and so on. We enjoyed watching some of those cuddled together in the evenings after dinner!

Dining at Legoland New York Resort

Speaking of dinner: What’s dining like at the resort and park? Unbelievably, an amazing breakfast buffet is included in your reservation! Breakfast at the Bricks Family Restaurant is quality food. Reservations are a must for this experience, but it’s free! We made our reservations for 9:00 each morning, and found that was a great amount of time to eat, brush our teeth, and get to the park right at 10:00 when it opened. I noticed the line to get into the restaurant at 9:30 one morning, it was extremely long. And remember, all those people had reservations for 9:30, but it’s a lot of people to process for the same reservation time. I would definitely recommend eating a little bit earlier to avoid that crowd.

Skyline Bar

There is one other restaurant at the Legoland New York Resort, and that’s the Skyline Bar in the lobby. It’s right next door to Bricks Family Restaurant and has a slightly abridged menu – better for lunch than for dinner. But the big advantage is that you can watch your kids play at the lobby castle while you order, wait for your food, and eat. We did that upon arrival the first day and it was great for kids and adults both. We had a chance to sit and visit, while the kids were able to play with the Lego bricks to their hearts’ content! There were also display areas, and while not all of their builds survived long, we saw one lifted high and out of reach of children the next morning!

Bricks Family Restaurant

We ate dinner at the Bricks Family Restaurant one night of our stay. There were some nice salads, appetizers, and entree options. The kids’ menu consisted of staples: pizza, pasta, chicken fingers, or cheeseburger. Expect to pay theme park prices: $42 for a salmon entree, $9 for sides, $22 for sandwiches or pasta for adults. Also, it’s pretty busy. We really enjoyed our meal, but it took a while to order or get our food.

Tip: the town of Goshen is within a mile and offers a lot of dining options. Our first night, we had dinner out in the town. If you are staying at the Legoland New York resort, parking is included with in-and-out privileges (it’s $20 to park otherwise). Treat yourself and go out on the town one night!

Dining at Legoland New York Theme Park

If you have researched anything about the food at LLNY, you’ve heard about Granny’s Apple Fries! And yes, they are as amazing as everyone says! I rarely feel strongly about food, but I even wanted to get them our second day at the park! And here’s a tip: I’d heard you need to have them with whipped cream, but the caramel sauce seemed optional. I’m here to tell you – it’s not! We added it after trying them without, and the sauce really elevates them to another level.

The first day, we opted to have a lot of fun snacks in place of lunch: popcorn, soft pretzels, and funnel cake. There is a buffet in the Pirates land called Brickbeard’s, serving pizza, salads, burgers, and rice bowls. We passed a taco stand called Everything Taco and were impressed to find vegetarian options. Smokey’s BBQ, located near the entrance, came highly recommended. Brick Street Cafe, also right near the entry, had coffees, lattes, cappuccinos, and breakfast pastries. Royal Feast was a counter service option in the Lego Castle land, which had a long wait while we were there, but there are a lot of rides nearby, and we ended up spending over an hour in that area anyway.

All of the food options offer a mobile, contactless ordering service. You also have the option to order at the window. Also, the entire park is cashless. Only credit cards are accepted. If you order via the mobile option, you’ll also have to set up an account on the Legoland app to pay.

The Legoland App

The Legoland App is helpful while you’re in the park. It provides a map of the park and your location. You can filter points of interest by rides, attractions, shows, food and drink, shopping, restrooms, meet and greets, or services. And you can also check the status of a ride or the wait times.

You can research and reserve different services on the app as well. And you can set up your ride photo account and link your photos with the Imagic offer. You an also rent phone chargers for $10 per day. Another option on the app is to purchase a Reserve ‘N’ Ride pass. It’s only good for the day of purchase, so wait to buy it until you’re there. There are two tiers that are either $55 per person or $100 per person. It allows you access to a different and shorter line that guests without the pass.

But is it crowded?

When we were there, we were told that the park would be very busy, that the parking lot would be full and people would bus or walk in. However, we did not find it to be very busy at all! The weather was forecasted to be in the 50s and raining, so maybe that deterred people. But the longest wait we saw either weekend day was 20 minutes. We found lines were also much shorter in the morning, between 10am and 2 or 3 pm. At that time of day, we were able to do even the most popular rides over and over again without hardly any wait at all! My son and I even rode one of our favorites at 11:00 and were the only riders!

Rides at Legoland New York

We traveled with children ages 4-10. We were able to do every ride, and our 10 year old (who’s a little shorter than average) could ride anything by himself. Even our 8 year old often was able to ride alone. There was nothing our 6 year old could ride alone. There isn’t much in the way of a parent swap option (like the one Disney offers), so be prepared to have your riders and accompanying adults figured out. A supervising adult is considered anyone over the age of 14.

There are riding height guides posted at the front of every ride, so you don’t have to wait in line before you know if your child is tall enough. And they WILL check heights! Every. Single. Ride. And every. Single. Time. One morning, we rode the Dragon Coaster five times in a row – all three children were measured at the start of the line and before being assigned boarding every time we rode. I appreciated the attention to safety, but know that they will be consistently checking.

I noticed that many of the rides required a height of at least 34-36″ to be able to ride at all. There are six rides that children under the age of 2 can do, and 8 rides that children under 34″ can do. The Legoland App helpfully has filters for the rides so that you can see what your child is able to do.

Active Fun for All

We found that many of the rides at Legoland New York were very active for the rider! For example, they had a tower ride in the Lego Castle area. Instead of the traditional motorized up-and-down version (like Unikitty’s Disco Drop at Legoland Orlando), the riders have to pull themselves up! It’s weighted so it’s uniformly the same difficulty, and easy enough that our 8 and 10 year olds were able to pull up themselves and an adult. But is also considerably difficult! The adults enjoyed it a lot, but after three or four rides, our hands got tired!

The Fire Academy ride was very active! Riders have to work together in teams of 2-4 to pump their firetruck down the street to a burning building; run out and pump and aim water at the fire; and return their firetruck to the starting point. I’m a pretty fit adult, and was exhausted at the end of one round! It helped that we had some fierce competition going between our party members!

ADA Accessibility

My parents were able to join us for our weekend, which was a lot of fun for us! My mom had surgery recently and wasn’t able to walk the entirety of the park, especially two days in a row. The park is very spread out, which is nice for kids and crowd control, but means you should definitely rent a motorized scooter if you have mobility issues. Electric scooters are $60 for the day, and are available at guest services immediately upon entry.

Legoland New York is built on a hillside. There are gentle ramps throughout the entire park, meaning my mom was able to go everywhere we went, with one exception. The park is laid out in a circle, so following the outside route gets you to everywhere. There’s also a “hub” in the middle of the park, allowing quicker access to areas of the park across the circle from you. This hub is only accessible by stairs. It wasn’t a problem, but it meant our smaller kids did more walking than necessary because we didn’t have access for the entire party to use the hub and shortcut across the park.

Most rides, she was required to leave her scooter to access the ride, which wasn’t a problem for her. A number of rides allowed full access, scooter or wheelchair included. All of the lines would allow her to bring her scooter all the way to the point of entering the ride, or she had the choice to leave it adjacent to the start of the line.

Legoland New York offers a guide for guests with disabilities on their website, including which personal devices are allowed and which allow access with a wheelchair.

Birthdays at Legoland New York

We were there over the weekend to celebrate a milestone birthday in our family! My son was turning 10, and all three boys had been asking since Lego Masters season 1 if we could someday go to Legoland New York since it was (relatively) so close to us.

When I made our reservation, there was an option to add on a birthday package. This included a drawstring bag with a water bottle, teddy bear, birthday banner, lanyard, and pillowcase. The cost for this package was $75. Also, it will not be waiting in your room. You have to pick it up at guest services upon arrival, or ask about it at check-in.

He was delighted to have it presented to him! It’s worth noting that none of the items in the bag were available for purchase in the gift shops. They were all Legoland New York birthday themed. In a way, it made it simpler for us as parents. I had considered letting our child choose something from the gift shop, but we have multiple children and thought it might feel unfair to them. And when a sweatshirt is almost $50 and a stuffed animal $30, it didn’t seem like too bad of a deal for so many items!

If you are celebrating a birthday, be sure to stop at guest services on your way into the park! We forgot the first day, and were chatting with a Model Citizen (Legoland employee) when we mentioned it. She was able to get a birthday button for us and write our child’s name and age on it for him! From that point on, he was called out by so many Model Citizens throughout the day! They would be so nice to him when they saw the birthday pin.

Legoland New York Summary

We had tickets for two days, which I thought we wouldn’t really need, but it turned out that we enjoyed the chance to take it easy the first day, and then really go for our favorite rides early on day two. It also meant we had time for a workshop at the Creative Workshop. As stated, our kids LOVE building, and the Creative Workshop had classes throughout the day. We happened to arrive just as one was starting and were able to join immediately, but you should plan on signing up for a later time. Our workshop was getting to play with Lego robots connected to iPads. There were coding challenges, or else you could just see what you could get them to do yourself! It was recommended for ages 7 and up, but they allowed our 6 year old to join too.

There is also a Build & Test room. And there were Lego and Duplo bricks, and you could build and test in a variety of ways. There were multiple grades of ramps to test vehicles with wheels, or shaking pads to test your build’s durability in an earthquake. There were also Duplo pits, stud walls, and interactive aquarium walls for younger children to enjoy. We spent about half an hour there, and they easily could have spent longer!

Don’t forget about MInifigure trading!

Don’t forget about Minifigure trading! You can bring (or buy) any complete Minifigure and trade with any Model Citizen. They all have a Minifig attached to their Lego nametags. There are also trading posts, which we didn’t find until day 2 – be sure to ask about locations! As long as your Minifig is complete, you can trade for some super-cool Minifigs, even with accessories! One of my younger children lost his guy’s legs, and a Model Citizen even generously allowed him to trade when he realized they were missing.

It was late September when we went, and it was unseasonably chilly. The temperatures only got to be in the 50s, and rain threatened constantly both days. It made me wonder if it’s open all year long. I checked their calendar, and it’s open 6 days/week in September, and it decreases by month until they’re open only on weekends in December. I bet the crowds are pretty low then!

We had a great time at Legoland New York this past weekend! The crowds were low, the Model Citizens were all so nice and went out of their way to be helpful, and our entire family had a wonderful time. I would highly recommend a trip if you can!

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