Legoland
The action has been continuing thick and fast throughout the Easter holidays. Now yesterday marked a couple of "firsts", beginning with my first ever trip to Legoland.
I used to do theme parks a lot up until the children were born, but with them so young had kind of fallen out of it. So when the opportunity came to go to Legoland, geared especially for the the little 'uns I jumped at the chance!
So off we went yesterday morning, a convoy of two cars containing 9 people. In the driving seats were myself and DJ wobble, 5 assorted kiddies in the back, and my two favourite girls, wifey Claire and bestie Lynda to keep the boys under control.
Now before departure, wifey decided to have serious words with me about my conduct on the day to come, based on past performance. Basically wifey gave me a set of instructions which went kind of along these lines.
"Now listen, Jason, I know how you like to be the best at everything, top of the fantasy football league, top of the tipster tables, king of GT5, haven't lost a game of Monopoly since 1978, etc etc"...
You catch the drift - uh-oh, where's this going, I wondered...
"Well, the thing is Jason, some people might see this competitive streak and having to win at everything, well a bit, you, know, big-headed"
Whhhatt? I'm thinking - me, big-headed...? Surely not...
"Anyway", she continued, "just for once today, why don't you just be a little modest and let everyone else have a look in, people will respect you more for it, you know. Now if you were like that all the time, well, you might become even more popular than you already are?"
Well, I thought, novel idea, but I'll give it a go.
So some time before 10, we arrived at Legoland, got checked in and away we went. After a quick toilet break to change Jamie and so Lt Rim Block could get her customary pictures for the Throne Zone we reached our first ride. Now this was a water rapid ride in one of those boats where several people sit around together. It is possible to get very wet on these things, especially if you rock them from side to side. However, bestie Lynda gave me one of her "stern looks" so I decided perhaps it was best not to get on the wrong side too early and behaved impeccably. We returned relatively dry.
Ollie had refused to go on the first ride and was doing his usual screaming thing refusing to join in. I've been through all this before and knew once he went on something he would change his mind and realise he enjoyed it. So having practically frogmarched him on to this Spider tea-cup style ride amidst many tears, he did in fact decide to enjoy himself and went on many more rides throughout the day. Sometimes you do have to give a gentle helping hand to push the kids through that pain barrier, if I hadn't he would have gone on nothing all day.
The first opportunity for a bit of competitive action came with the fire truck ride, to cut a long story short, this involves pumping a handle up and down to race a track to one end of some tracks, shoot the hoses at some pictures of a fire and then come back. Not a million miles away from the sort of game they used to have on "It's A Knockout". Now with me and Cam in one fire engine and Claire and Duncan in the other I was pretty confident we had the measure of them, but then I noticed a small pedal saying "brake". Now remembering what Claire had said, and unbeknown to Camy, as we were pumping the handle to move along, I gently pushed down on this brake causing our engine to move much slower than the others. Anyway to cut a long story short, we trailed in a long last and I graciously congratulated the others on their fine win.
More competitive stuff came up shortly after that with one of those laser rides where you shoot targets as you travel along in a car. Now Cam had tipped me off that Lynda was very good at these and the last thing I wanted to do was burst her bubble. So off we went, and by about half way I had already amassed 24,000 points. I decided that was probably enough so for the remainder of the ride I pretended I was still firing but in fact I wasn't pressing the button. When we got the scores it turned out Lynda had indeed won with 29,000. She was so thrilled I made the most of the moment and told her how fabulously she'd done. A lesser man at this point might have made some lame excuse like "the sights were out on the gun", but no, not me, I let her enjoy her moment of glory in full.
And so the story continued throughout the day, however, when we came to the boats around the lazy river I had to pull out all the stops to ensure failure. We had 3 boats, and Camy and I left in front, and quickly pulled clear. At this point I suggested we wait for the others to give them a chance, so steered the boat into the side. Now despite this chivalrous action, a certain "bestie" in boat 2 decided it would be a good idea to ram us up the arse at full speed. But we remained in front, until I grabbed the wheel off Cam and spun us round 180 degrees at which point both the other boats captained by "bestie" and "wifey" went past. Such was my expertise at pretending to be incompetent, that even Duncan, watching the whole thing from the bank was fooled.
To prevent us catching up, a bit more wrestling and arguing with Cam over who was steering scuppered any hope of that, and for added effect, just before the entrance back into dock I managed to wedge our boat alongside another one jamming the river completely and leading to a huge tail back that took several minutes to sort out. It was a masterpiece of planning and a complete vindication of my clever scheme to make myself look as foolish as possible.
So much more I could talk about but it really was an action packed day, 8 full hours, good buffet lunch, dozens of rides, and we still didn't do the full park. The last ride of the day was on a rollercoaster, which I very much enjoyed, staying cool as a cucumber throughout, whilst bestie and wifey were screaming, but I think they knew they had nothing to worry about really, not with me on board for reassurance.
And then back to Bicester - and off to Maba which will have to be another blog entry as I must dash now!
I had hoped to put up some piccies but my camera was out of action and Lynda hasn't uploaded hers yet, possibly at a later date I will add some in, so I've just put a couple of generic pictures of Legoland in.
If you have enjoyed reading this blog, please take a look at my books on Amazon (Paperback & Kindle), where you can read lots more of the same! Click here.
I used to do theme parks a lot up until the children were born, but with them so young had kind of fallen out of it. So when the opportunity came to go to Legoland, geared especially for the the little 'uns I jumped at the chance!
So off we went yesterday morning, a convoy of two cars containing 9 people. In the driving seats were myself and DJ wobble, 5 assorted kiddies in the back, and my two favourite girls, wifey Claire and bestie Lynda to keep the boys under control.
Now before departure, wifey decided to have serious words with me about my conduct on the day to come, based on past performance. Basically wifey gave me a set of instructions which went kind of along these lines.
"Now listen, Jason, I know how you like to be the best at everything, top of the fantasy football league, top of the tipster tables, king of GT5, haven't lost a game of Monopoly since 1978, etc etc"...
You catch the drift - uh-oh, where's this going, I wondered...
"Well, the thing is Jason, some people might see this competitive streak and having to win at everything, well a bit, you, know, big-headed"
Whhhatt? I'm thinking - me, big-headed...? Surely not...
"Anyway", she continued, "just for once today, why don't you just be a little modest and let everyone else have a look in, people will respect you more for it, you know. Now if you were like that all the time, well, you might become even more popular than you already are?"
Well, I thought, novel idea, but I'll give it a go.
So some time before 10, we arrived at Legoland, got checked in and away we went. After a quick toilet break to change Jamie and so Lt Rim Block could get her customary pictures for the Throne Zone we reached our first ride. Now this was a water rapid ride in one of those boats where several people sit around together. It is possible to get very wet on these things, especially if you rock them from side to side. However, bestie Lynda gave me one of her "stern looks" so I decided perhaps it was best not to get on the wrong side too early and behaved impeccably. We returned relatively dry.
Ollie had refused to go on the first ride and was doing his usual screaming thing refusing to join in. I've been through all this before and knew once he went on something he would change his mind and realise he enjoyed it. So having practically frogmarched him on to this Spider tea-cup style ride amidst many tears, he did in fact decide to enjoy himself and went on many more rides throughout the day. Sometimes you do have to give a gentle helping hand to push the kids through that pain barrier, if I hadn't he would have gone on nothing all day.
The first opportunity for a bit of competitive action came with the fire truck ride, to cut a long story short, this involves pumping a handle up and down to race a track to one end of some tracks, shoot the hoses at some pictures of a fire and then come back. Not a million miles away from the sort of game they used to have on "It's A Knockout". Now with me and Cam in one fire engine and Claire and Duncan in the other I was pretty confident we had the measure of them, but then I noticed a small pedal saying "brake". Now remembering what Claire had said, and unbeknown to Camy, as we were pumping the handle to move along, I gently pushed down on this brake causing our engine to move much slower than the others. Anyway to cut a long story short, we trailed in a long last and I graciously congratulated the others on their fine win.
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| Nice bit of sabotage by me on here |
More competitive stuff came up shortly after that with one of those laser rides where you shoot targets as you travel along in a car. Now Cam had tipped me off that Lynda was very good at these and the last thing I wanted to do was burst her bubble. So off we went, and by about half way I had already amassed 24,000 points. I decided that was probably enough so for the remainder of the ride I pretended I was still firing but in fact I wasn't pressing the button. When we got the scores it turned out Lynda had indeed won with 29,000. She was so thrilled I made the most of the moment and told her how fabulously she'd done. A lesser man at this point might have made some lame excuse like "the sights were out on the gun", but no, not me, I let her enjoy her moment of glory in full.
And so the story continued throughout the day, however, when we came to the boats around the lazy river I had to pull out all the stops to ensure failure. We had 3 boats, and Camy and I left in front, and quickly pulled clear. At this point I suggested we wait for the others to give them a chance, so steered the boat into the side. Now despite this chivalrous action, a certain "bestie" in boat 2 decided it would be a good idea to ram us up the arse at full speed. But we remained in front, until I grabbed the wheel off Cam and spun us round 180 degrees at which point both the other boats captained by "bestie" and "wifey" went past. Such was my expertise at pretending to be incompetent, that even Duncan, watching the whole thing from the bank was fooled.
To prevent us catching up, a bit more wrestling and arguing with Cam over who was steering scuppered any hope of that, and for added effect, just before the entrance back into dock I managed to wedge our boat alongside another one jamming the river completely and leading to a huge tail back that took several minutes to sort out. It was a masterpiece of planning and a complete vindication of my clever scheme to make myself look as foolish as possible.
 |
| The type of boat I completely abused at Legoland. |
So much more I could talk about but it really was an action packed day, 8 full hours, good buffet lunch, dozens of rides, and we still didn't do the full park. The last ride of the day was on a rollercoaster, which I very much enjoyed, staying cool as a cucumber throughout, whilst bestie and wifey were screaming, but I think they knew they had nothing to worry about really, not with me on board for reassurance.
And then back to Bicester - and off to Maba which will have to be another blog entry as I must dash now!
I had hoped to put up some piccies but my camera was out of action and Lynda hasn't uploaded hers yet, possibly at a later date I will add some in, so I've just put a couple of generic pictures of Legoland in.
If you have enjoyed reading this blog, please take a look at my books on Amazon (Paperback & Kindle), where you can read lots more of the same! Click here.
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