The international LEGO Exhibition is held in National Stadium on Warsaw for the third time. This time under the slogan “Invasion of Giants”. Finally I decided to go and see it, especially since I had a perfect excuse – a three year old son of my sister. And so we went together (me,my sister and Maks, her son) to check if this attraction is suitable for kids this young.
First impressions? It will be an expensive afternoon. First we paid 10 złoty for parking, the next stop was at an entrance. There we found out that kids under 95 cm of heigh enter fo three. Maks is three centimeters higher and he doesn’t fit under the lego block attached to a scale. It seemed weird to me that the determinant of price is height and not age. Oh well, we promised him so we just have to pay at this point. And it’s no pennies. We need to pay 28 złoty for every one of us, including Maks (there’s no discount whatsoever!) and 2 złoty for the mandatory cloak room.Uff, it definitely hurts my wallet.
How much time did they spend building it?
We enter the exhibition area and right after we do that the kid needs to pee. The toilet is located outside of the area, but fortunately a nice lady stamps us on our hands which allows us to leave and come back as we please. Situation is under control!
We finally can start with the exhibition. It’s divided into 12 thematic zones. One with giants is where you’ll get to see enormous LEGO buildings or life-size figures of famous sportsmen such as Marcin Gortat. Next up is an area full of superheroes – “Aunty look, Spiderman!” – Maks exclaimes as he notices his favourite comic character.
In the ‘giants’ section we spend some time admiring the intricate work on the US Capitol mock-up. The LEGO version of this famous building is made out of 1 236,000 blocks. Over one million! Wow! It took 6 years to put it together! I admire the people who built it. It takes a lot of patience and even more passion to be able to spend that much time building something made out of tiny LEGO blocks.
How do you open it?
After some time we reach the robotics zone. We press the button and the beaver hits its’ tail on the LEGO ground. We hit another button and a LEGO man is mowing a LEGO lawn. The main question that troubles our three-year-old is: “Where do you open it? I want to play with it!”. Unfortunately, most of the exhibits are displayed in glass cases so you can’t actually touch them. It’s nice that you can start them by pressing the button, it’s a pity that many of them did not work at all.
Maks is a huge enthusiast of trains so we spent most of the time next to the train model made entirely out of LEGO. As everything here 😉 Attention span of a three-year-old is shorter than a millenial watching a movie without his smartphone in one hand so we need to keep Maks constantly entertained. The LEGO figures are not enough to keep him interested for long so we run around and play hide and seek between the exhibits. There’s lots of space so there’s planty of places where we can run around without disturbing anyone.
We end our LEGO adbenture in the FUN PARK zone which is the most interactive of them all. Finally something that’s actually for young kids.
What are we going to build?! A tower!!
Fun Zone is where you can build whatever your heart desires. The LEGO blocks are organised in colors so it’s easy to find what you’re looking for. There are also some pictures that can provide inspiration and show what you can build, if you’re out of your own ideas. I end up putting together a frog and an elephant. What’s really cool for the kids is that you can build a car and let it run on the car slides.
There’s also a special wall where you can put your name using the LEGO blocks. We put our names as well. Here’s where the most kids are gathered at once. They run up to here as soon as they notice the wall, it immediately grabs their attention making the carefully prepared exhibits completely worthless for the young ones.
So here we are, building another tower, and we still have the Human Body zone as well as Star Wars zone to see. We reach a room where there’s life-size human skeleton made out of LEGO. Maks runs through the room, not paying attention to any of the exhibits. There’s a brain, a heart, a respiratory system. Everything beautifully reproduced from LEGO bricks. This room is definitely more entertaing for the adults and older kids than the young ones.
Star Wars is a where the movie fans will be extatic. There are many iconic characters from the Star Wars universum such as the adorable robots C-3PO and R2-D2. Another area is one dedicated to the iconic cartoons. This one is flooded with colourful elements. You’ll get to see some characters from Smurfs or Alice in Wonderland. There are also Moomins and my favorite Hatifnates. Really cool! There’s even a quiddich court known to all those familiar with adventures of a young wizard by the name of Harry Potter. There is something to look at for everyone.
In my opinion
As someone who took a three-year-old to the exhibition I think it’s not worth it. Especially for the price. We paid 28 złoty for child’s entrance fee, but the only excitement he got out of this whole thing was being able to run around a spacious room. We did build some towers out of LEGO blocks, but that’s something we could do at home as well. The exhibition is marketed as something primarily for the kids, but it’s for the older kids. A three-year-old does not understand what it’s all about. He wants to play with LEGO and not look at it behind a glass. In my opinion it’s worth changing the price determinant from heigh to age. I guess older children will get out more out of this whole experience.
As far as my own opinion goes – the exhibition is ok, but it’s not something “life changing”. I do respect the people who put lots of hard work and time into making the figures, building and statues out of LEGO bricks, but I was not really wowed with any of them. It’s a shame that some of the
[Where] National Stadium (Stadion Narodowy), Al. Księcia J. Poniatowskiego 1
[Kiedy] The exhibition will be open from 16.12 to 25.03
The exhibition is open for visitors daily; opening hours: Mon – Sat: 10:00 am – 9:00 pm; Sun/holidays: 10:00 am – 8:00 pm)
[How much] Morning ticket is 23 złoty (10:00 – 15:00); Bafternoon ticket 28 złoty (15:00 – 19:30); 2+2 ticket 23 złoty (15:00 – 19:30); evening ticket 19zł 19:30 – 21:00; weekend ticket 28zł
