LEGO Set To Open First LEGOLAND Hotel in North America

Hold on to your plastic bricks, the LEGO Empire is about to get even bigger.  Fans of the world’s favorite building toy will be delighted to hear that LEGOLAND California Resorts is set to be home to North America’s first LEGOLAND hotel.  That’s right, the toy you love to build with but loathe to step on will be taking its place beside the many themed hotel destinations.

The 250-room hotel will feature brightly colored LEGO décor, a pool area and restaurant. While we can only envision what the future building will look like, the first model built for the new project has been revealed – a six-foot tall model of a hotel bellhop built out of more than 37,000 LEGO bricks.

In addition to the life-sized bellhop, plenty of LEGO goodness accompanied the announcement.  A 12-foot acrylic shark along with Aquarists from SEA LIFE Carlsbad Aquarium, lifeguards wearing customized Build-A-Rafts from LEGOLAND Water Park and a front loader carrying more than 28,000 thousand multi-colored DUPLO bricks added to the festivities.   Weighing more than one-thousand pounds total, the contents of the front loader were dumped on a queen sized hotel bed styled in a LEGO motif. Children from the local Boys and Girls Club were invited to dig in and build stuff from the massive pile of brightly colored bricks.

While this is the first LEGOLAND Hotel in the United States, it will be the third in the world following LEGOLAND Windsor Hotel opening in 2012 and LEGOLAND Billund which opened a 176-room LEGOLAND Hotel in 1991.  When completed, the three story hotel will feature rooms and suites themed after the most popular LEGOLAND areas, including the LEGOLAND Water Park, SEA LIFE Carlsbad Aquarium and Star Wars Miniland. Construction will begin in early October 2011 with the hotel set to open to the public in the summer of 2013.