LEGOLAND New York Resort Announces Summer Opening
By: Mike Palmerini & Colin Donahue
LEGOLAND New York Resort will be opening in Goshen, New York early in the summer of 2021. The 175 acre resort, which has been under construction since 2017, cost over $600 million to build and is opening a year late due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
“We at LEGOLAND New York Resort are excited to share with you this bricktastic moment that’s been long in the making,” said Stephanie Johnston, Divisional Director of the resort. “We are pursuing a phased opening model, which means we will gradually open areas of our theme park in order to increase guest capacity along with it.”
Johnston says that the opening plan is aligned with the resorts constriction milestones and is designed to support social distancing. The resort is currently about halfway complete.
Public Relations director Matt Berman says that at its peak, LEGOLAND expects ten thousand visitors a day. For now, the resort plans on operating at 33% capacity and performing temperature checks on visitors before entry.
“The delay in opening the park due to the ongoing pandemic has been a difficult experience to overcome, but we here at LEGOLAND are very excited to eventually open this summer to the public,” Berman explains.
Upon entering the park, visitors will quickly notice BRAD, the Big Red Awesome Dinosaur. BRAD is a 10.8 foot tall LEGO dinosaur made up on 182,000 bricks and supported by internal steel rods; to prevent him falling over. He is one of the 18000 LEGO models in the resort, and Berman says over 40 million LEGO bricks have been used to construct them all.
Other attraction include 8 roller coasters, NinjaGo world and Miniland; which contains LEGO models of American Landmarks all over the nation like the Empire State Building and the Gateway Arch.
The newest attraction is Professor Brick’s Factory Adventure ride. Creative Lead Andy Marvin elaborates that the ride is unique to the New York park and doesn’t exist anywhere else.
“Professor Brick’s Factory Adventure ride will use facial recognition technology to create a digital minifigure of their rider,” Marvin explains. “I do not want to spoil the surprise but there will be ways for guests to interact with their digital minifigure during the ride.”
Marvin believes that the facial recognition technology will be a great way to personalize the experience for visitors.
Tickets to the resort are $75 for guests under 13 and 85$ for others. A 210 room hotel is under construction nearby as well, details are scarce however this could be a great asset to the resort.
“We are so excited to invite people to see how bricktastic LEGOLAND New York is,” Berman says. “We’ve been working hard on this project since 2017 and its been a long time for many of us. It is so exciting to see it all come together.”
