Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Nauseating, but I like the garlic bread: Legoland Windsor reviewed

The theme music to Legoland in Berkshire is the theme music to The Exorcist. It appears from speakers hidden in the grass. I hear it as I wander out of some un-enchanted wood filled with Lego: we have lost our ancient woods and need new ones. These ones smell slightly of drains. The Exorcist music is a joke for parents; or perhaps an acknowledgment that there is something demonic at Legoland. You can, from the fake hills — everything is fake here, and that is both bewitching and awful — see Windsor Castle, which probably means that from Windsor Castle you can see Legoland.

I wonder if Legoland will outlive the monarchy; if Legoland and the monarchy have a lot in common. I wonder if the Queen — and all politicians — could be made of Lego and still function adequately, or even better. This could be the Lego election. That is not an abnormal fantasy for this column. Sometimes I think all politicians should be played by actors. They would do it so well.

Legoland is a theme park containing, more fascinatingly, a tiny Lego world with real cities but tweaked slightly, as if in a dreamscape. It also has the least nutritional food of any theme park in Britain, which, were I a theme park, is not a race I would like to win. Merlin Entertainments, which owns Legoland — and also Thorpe Park and Alton Towers and, horribly for the surviving Plantagenets, Warwick Castle — have confused Lego with life. Too much Lego can do that to you. Now they think we can actually eat Lego.

Last year the Soil Association, which is concerned with child nutrition, did a learned survey and concluded that Legoland should rename itself ‘Deep Fried Crap Land’.

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