Unless you have a Lego-mad child (or love the bricks yourself), you might never have heard of Billund, Denmark. To be honest, there would be no good reason to travel to Billund if it wasn’t the home of the most famous brick in the world. We visited Billund in May 2023 with our boys, then aged 9 and 10. We had an amazing break and created some awesome family memories!
Getting to Billund
We spent 3 days in Billund as part of a longer trip through Denmark. However, Billund would be an amazingly easy weekend destination as well.
The airport is teeny (so quick to get through) and is situated less than 4km from the entrance to Legoland. Flight times from London are just over 90 minutes. You could easily leave after work on Friday, spend Saturday at Legoland, Sunday at the Lego House before flying back on Sunday evening.
Legoland
Billund is the original Legoland. In many ways, it is similar to Legoland Windsor. We visited in the May half-term holiday. Windsor would have been rammed at this time of year with long queues for the popular rides. Billund, on the other hand, was refreshingly quiet, with no queues of more than 15 minutes and many rides walk-on. The kids even did the log f1ume 4 times in a row as no-one else was on it!
There are some rides which are different to Windsor. Mininland is larger with more emphasis on other European countries, less London (as you would expect!). Additionally, you can visit their Sealife centre, although not huge, an enjoyable breather from rides!
Highlights for us included the Polar X-Press, Viking experience and a simple area where you could build and float Lego boats.
The Lego House
Although we all loved Legoland, we all agreed that the Lego House was our “must-do” from this holiday. If you or your kids are die-hard Lego fans, then you should not miss this! For those who like a statistic, the Lego House is filled with 25 million Lego bricks, waterfalls and giant animals and plants…
It looks amazingly cool. The design consists of 21 staggered blocks which look like Lego bricks, with 9 roof terrace play areas. Outside, they have placed 2 pixelated staircase structures across one another to create an outdoor theatre. Kids will love to run up and down this but do be careful as it is steep!
You can, and should, book ahead as they have limited time slots. I would recommend booking an early morning entry slot as there is a lot to do here. We arrived at 10.30am and still didn’t have time to do everything before it closed.
If you want to eat in the Mini Chef restaurant (and, again, you should for the experience), you will definitely need to book a table in advance.
How does the Lego House work?
The ground floor houses a huge shop, restaurants and the Lego brick machine.
Here, you scan your wristband to get your own unique brick combo, After, you then watch the Lego brick machine (a great souvenir!) make and bag up your set. The centre-piece is the huge Lego tree of creativity which stretches up through the floors. The upper floors split into coloured “experience zones”.
Our boys particularly loved designing Lego racing cars in the blue zone and then racing them down the tracks, before shooting their own movie in the green zone and building and then releasing Lego sea animals in the yellow zone. We also all enjoyed the mini-world set ups in the red zone, with lighting which changes from day to night.
Lunch at the Mini Chef restaurant
Lunch in the Mini Chef restaurant was also a highlight. You order by putting together Lego bricks to represent the meal combo you want. Once you’ve done that, a robot delivers your food from a conveyor belt.
Billund
Other than its Lego fame, Billund is a fairly unremarkable Danish town.
There are a number of restaurants in the compact centre. None are remarkable and some are a little over-priced. We had fairly mediocre pizza on our first night at Billund Pizza and Steak House.
Apart from the pizza restaurant, we self-catered our breakfasts and dinners in our Airbnb. There were convenient supermarkets within the town centre and it was reasonably easy to decipher what we were buying. The notable exception being the yoghurt masquerading in a milk carton – not the best in a cup of tea!
Where to stay
There are a number of good options, depending on your preference and budget.
Lalandia
Lalandia is a Center Parcs style holiday resort with a fantastic looking pool and restaurants and other entertainment on site. If we had been staying for longer, I would have chosen this option for the down-time activities and easy choice between self-catering and eating out.
Legoland Hotels
As with Legoland Windsor, Legoland itself boasts 2 hotels, the Legoland Hotel and the Castle Hotel. Click here to find out more.
Other hotels and self-catering accommodation
Alternatively, you could look for a regular hotel or Airbnb within the town. In my view, you don’t need to hire a car if you are just flying in for a weekend. You can easily walk to both the Lego House and Legoland from accommodation in Billund centre. Our Airbnb was unremarkable, however, and the host wasn’t terribly helpful so I wouldn’t specifically recommend it. Nonetheless, there are many options within the town.
Check out my post on top things to do in London if you enjoy this kind of break.
