Visiting Legoland for the first time

It's been a while since I posted here, but writing is good for me and I need an excuse to write more.  So, I felt best to just write about my weekend, so....

I visited Legoland the first time this past Memorial Day weekend.  Since I have a kid, I can go there without any iota of weirdness one might feel for some reason otherwise.  

We went there on Sunday with friends and family, then wound up buying an annual pass so we can come back on Monday, which we did.  

My favorite part of the day was breakfast at Beach Plum Kitchen a distance away from Legoland. The Americano there was excellent. 

The rides were fairly conventional and not rough at all, but I loved it whenever I got to see complex Lego sculptures on the way.  In that sense, I loved most of the slow boat rides.  Other rides tend to go past things fairly quickly.
 

Loved the medieval Lego castles.  Some pretty good BBQ here.  You can actually get beer at the BBQ place here.

My favorite part of Legoland was the Miniland, which is basically miniature sculptures based on actual cities like New York, San Francisco, New Orleans, and Los Angeles.  Just walking around and looking at all the intricate details was pretty cool.  My kid thought it was pretty amazing as well. 

I took many photos of these areas since I do art for a living and as such, I need as many art references as I can find.  

San Francisco looks pretty cool in miniature form.  Even has those sea lions at the Fisherman's Wharf.

I couldn't really tell if there was a Lego Biden on there, but if he wasn't, I'll assume he's indoors.

One can't help but appreciate Los Angeles a little more when you see such works...

I think there is something special about miniature cities. It really stirs up your imagination--it makes you want to really go into those little corners of the world and see what's behind those walls, street corners, and buildings.  Charlie Kaufman's movie "Synecdoche, New York" kind of touched upon the obsessional craft of building miniature cityscapes.  I don't recall if the film had a specific point to it, but I suppose it was an exploration of art, obsession, and madness.

I can appreciate Lego miniatures a little more than other kinds of handcrafted miniature models, however, given that the the abstract nature of using bricks to build structures keeps things fairly limited...in a good way.  You wouldn't worry about details going obsessively out of hand...at least nothing beyond what digital artists might call "pixel" or "voxel" level of detail.  I take it Monet and Seurat can at least appreciate the Impressionistic nature of such work. 

That's it for now.