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Back in December of 2005, my family and I went to visit Legoland (corporate slogan - “Even Our Food Is Made of Legos!”). During our stay there, we managed to con them out of an extra day pass by casually walking up to the customer service booth and saying, “Hey, can we have an extra day pass?” Evidently, Legoland employees were falling for this line left and right, because everyone else we saw there also received extra day passes. Either Legoland is extremely susceptible to suggestion, or they were throwing some kind of promotion. I like to think it is the former and that I have incredibly awesome mind control powers.

We had initially planned to spend only two days at The LL (that’s ultracool talk for “Legoland” spoken by us sophisticated theme park patrons). However, this exta day pass allowed us to plan another day. The pass didn’t expire until the end of March 2006. We did attempt to use the pass again during our initial stay, but our uberpowers of organization prevented us from actually finding the passes on the day we were going to go. So we came home, quite content that we wouldn’t make it back to Legoland for at least another few years.

Now, I think this is probably a good time to mention a small bit of history regarding Legoland and me. Legos have been around for a while. I don’t recall the actual moment when I received my first set of Legos, but let me tell you that (like many male guys) I was heavily influenced by the plethora of imaginative possibilities fueled by these little plastic blocks. I used them to build all kinds of useless contraptions. Robotics, avionics, even movie props were built brick-by-brick out of Legos. My imagination as to what could be built was literally limited only by the number of blocks I had and how much money my parents could spend on them.

So when I learned that Legoland existed, I was enamored. I so wanted to see what the profeissional Lego builders came up with. I wanted to see this so-called “miniland” with all kinds of models built from these colorful polymers. Scale models of New York City and Mount Rushmore, and so forth. So I couldn’t wait, even as an adult, to get to this theme park and see all of these things that have only existed as theoretical constructs from my youth.

Imagine, then, the irony when, on my way home from our first trip, I realized that we never actually visited Miniland!

Which brings me to our most recent trip. Over the course of the past couple of months, my wife and I decided it would be an excellent bonding experience for my sons and I to go back to Legoland - just the three of us. The goal was to make the trip as inexpensive as we could, which is nearly impossible in California because the word “inexpensive” doesn’t exist out there. You think I’m kidding, maybe? A simple meal for one adult and two children at IHOP cost over $30.00 before the tip. We’re talking pancakes and eggs, here, folks! The only thing that didn’t seem to cost any money was me losing my wedding ring (more on that in Part 4 - The Voyage Home).

So anyway, one way we decided to lower the costs was to camp instead of rent a hotel room. This turned out to be one of the best decisions, because not only did we get a camping spot for less than the cost of a hotel room, but we were sleeping right on the beach. Well, technically, we were about 50 feet above it, but the point is we had beach-front rental property for only $25.00 a night. You can’t beat that even if you have Jack Bauer shoot someone in the thigh.

But I’m jumping ahead of myself. Where was I? Oh, yes. I was about to tell you the tale of our journey…