CharacterCentral Takes on LEGOLAND Billund

Photos by: PeterPanFan and Disney Dan from Character Central

Found at: http://www.charactercentral.net/B3666_LEGOLANDTripReportBillundTheTownthatLEGOBuilt.aspx and on Flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/peterpanfan1953/tags/LEGOLAND%20Billund%20Resort/ and https://www.flickr.com/photos/theverynk/sets/72157646618885782

Details: Recently, PeterPanFan and Disney Dan from Character Central made the trip out to Billund to take in the original LEGOLAND park and surrounding area. Being seasoned Disney theme park reporters (seriously, their site has more information about the various Disney attractions than I could ever make myself read), they had a bit of an advantage in knowing how to take decent photos of the displays - usually I end up highlighting features from Miniland when I blog about park photos, but these guys knew to get photos of the sign at the LEGOLAND Hotel, ceilings, detailed mice on rides, a Pick-A-Brick wall, themed characters, corporate-sponsored buildings, shopping and displays at the airport, the promo area for the LEGO house, the viking dragon, the dragon in the hotel lobby (every hotel needs one), the hotel bathroom, the Friends minidoll-scaled display, the train as it drives behind miniland, the wildlife, an arctic helicopter sculpture, DUPLO sculptures, external signage, and of course, Miniland. This isn't quite a full guided tour, but it's probably the closest thing we've seen to it. Now if only they could take more close-ups of Miniland... Oh, they did get a few of those too. Here's a wampa from Hoth in Miniland Star Wars, some rock climbers, a Coke truck, the Acropolis (Wikipedia), an interesting angle of Kennedy Space Center's rocket garden (Wikipedia), Neuschwanstein Castle (Wikipedia), Osaka Castle (Wikipedia), Nyhavn (Wikipedia), Amalienborg (Wikipedia), and even a LEGO Truck Show from the late 90's. I could probably comb through these photos even more thoroughly and find even more highlights, but I'm a bit short on time to keep researching this. These may be the most complete current look at the Billund park we've seen yet. Disney Dan has 529 photos on Flickr. PeterPanFan looks to have a few hundred photos on Flickr, but I don't have an exact count since they're organized by tag instead of by album/set. The photo featured above is this one by Disney Dan.

Moulding Machines

Name of Model: 4000001 Moulding Machines

Created by the LEGO company for participants on one LEGO Inside Tour.

Found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/si-mocs/sets/72157626759883253/with/5797067803/

Details: I've previously blogged about the LEGO inside tour and one of the exclusive kits given there, but as additional tours come up, each one gets a new exclusive kit. The most recent inside tour participants received the set I'm featuring today - 4000001 Moulding Machines. The person who took the photos featured here also made a video of the build and wrote a full review for EuroBricks. The set recreates both the current style of moulding machine and the earliest hand-operated moulding machine from 1949. There are even play features - you can press the mould together on the smaller machine, and the larger machine has a slot for a round 1x1 plate to go through as if it were a raw ABS pellet. You know you want it - and sure enough, someone has loaded it up into LDD and made building instructions.

This is Tuesday and Wednesday's models of the day

Photos and Videos from LEGOLAND Billund

Name of Photoset: Legoland

Photos by: Loozrboy

Found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/loozrboy/sets/72157625268155694/

Details: It's time for another look at what's up at LEGOLAND. This time the photos are from LEGOLAND Billund in Denmark, which was looking pretty great in October of 2010. You'll want to make sure to look at some of the videos included here. Although the parks actually use non-LEGO hardware to make moving items happen (it'd be more exciting if they used Mindstorms components, but I guess that'd be harder to maintain outdoors), it's still thrilling to see things like the boat navigating working canal locks and the ferry transporting moving cars.

LEGOLAND Billund and Headquarters Photos

Name of Photo Set: Legoland

Photos by: ford302_91 (models by LEGO employees)

Found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mvetting/sets/72157621340096749/

Details: Now that the LEGOLAND parks are open again for the season, we're beginning to see a wave of new photo galleries from inside the parks. There are some pretty great photos out there, but as per our "daily dose" style we're not going to be blogging these too quickly. This particular flickr set is actually of photos taken in June 2009, and it also includes some interesting photos from LEGO's world headquarters in Billund, Denmark. Highlights include a LEGO logo mosaic made of minifigs, LEGO chandeliers, and a floppy skeleton sculpture. There are 51 photos here overall.

The Early Days of Legoland

Sometimes you come across things that completely take you by surprise. That's how I felt when I saw this collection of photographs of Legoland [Lego in general, for that matter] when it was in its infancy. It's hard to believe how far the brick has come since the 60's.

Maybe you'll like these photos on Flickr as much as I did.

News: Photos of Official LEGO Anniversary Event

Name of Event: 75 years of LEGO event in Billund August 9 to 11 2007

Found at: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=271428

Details: Those of you who are in the know are probably aware of the fact that the LEGO® company celebrated its 75th anniversary a few days back. Well, naturally, they threw themselves quite a LEGO-themed party to celebrate. This Brickshelf gallery includes a ton of photos of the event - and there's a ton of great stuff to see! Most of these would have qualified to be models of the day on their own, actually, but it doesn't make much sense to keep that much of a backlog here. Keep an eye out for a Chinese Dragon-styled train, a sandcastle, wooden puzzles, a Star Trek ship, cool cars, some familiar amazing buildings, a cathedral, and dozens of LEGOLAND Park attractions. That's just a few highlights - the whole gallery is a treat.

Denmark Metropolitan Train

Name of Model: Copenhagen Denmark metropolitan train 4. generation. This is version 2. Close coupling with rubber bands. Curved sides in a very simple way.

Created by: esbenkolind

Found at: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=173269

Details: This is a really clever and realistic model based on an existing train in Denmark. Until you take a closer look, you might actually confuse the photos included of the full-size train with the photos of the LEGO-minifig sized train. The curved front was done by using some newer curved elements with studs-not-on-top pieces. Additionally, this builder designed a unique coupling system that allows the train cars to be really close together but still turn just as well as any standard LEGO train.

(This is Tuesday's model of the day.)