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Egyptian theme rides set to open in March |
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North County Times
Original Article »
January 11, 2008
Toning down the fear factor but still hanging onto the adventurous
spirit of an “Indiana Jones” movie, Legoland California will open its
Egyptian-themed “Land of Adventure” area March 10.
Four new
attractions are planned as part of the park's largest single-year
investment since it opened in 1999, park officials said during a news
conference Thursday.
The new area's signature ride -- the
Lost Kingdom Adventure -- takes visitors in mock, four-seater jeeps
through mostly unlit rooms where spiders, snakes and scarabs (beetles)
scramble over faux Egyptian artifacts. Visitors blast away at these
creepy-crawlies and other hazards with laser “guns.”
Ride
designer Bill Vollbrecht said Thursday that his favorite part occurs
when the jeeps careen around a mock traffic accident where two
skeletons and a jeep are embedded into a wall covered in metal spikes.
But
don't expect any blood and guts -- even the pretend kind. After all,
this is an amusement park geared toward families with children ages 2
to 12.
“It's not real skeletons,” Vollbrecht said. “It's fun, smiling Lego skeletons -- they don't mind getting squished.”
Legoland
reportedly is spending $20 million for its Land of Adventure and a new
aquarium complex -- a separate-ticket attraction set to open this
summer.
This is double the $10 million the park spent in 2006 to
expand its “Pirate Shores” area, General Manager and President John
Jakobsen said Thursday.
That 2006 expansion paid huge dividends,
he added. That year, the park set an admission record with more than
1.6 million visitors. Last year, the park repeated that figure, and the
coming year looks just as bright because of the attractions that are
coming, Jakobsen said.
“We'll become more and more of a multiday
experience,” Jakobsen said, noting that a new Sheraton resort is under
construction next door.
Bordered by Cannon Road to the north and
Palomar Airport Road to the south, the park is one of three amusement
attractions based on the Lego building-block theme. There also are
Legolands in Denmark, England and Germany.
Legoland started with multiple ideas for its new adventure area, including a haunted house or jungle theme.
Park
surveys showed visitors had a marked preference for going on an
excursion into ancient Egypt, so that's what Legoland selected,
Vollbrecht said.
However, parents also stressed that they wanted the “adventure” to have a limited danger factor.
“We found with our guests, they didn't want anything too scary or too dark,” he said.
Though
the advertising poster at Thursday's news conference showed a bouncing
jeep with some of its wheels off the ground, the jeeps in the Lost
Kingdom ride won't rock as they make their trip through the building,
Vollbrecht said.
“We can't do crazy dips and things,” he said.
And the gunfire sound effects aren't too loud or realistic sounding, park officials say.
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