Legoland Beach Retreat Review

[juju12345]

We just got back from our first time at Legoland!
We flew from Nashville into Tampa on Friday June 22nd. The flight into Tampa was cheaper than Orlando- Tampa airport is fairly big but it’s easy to navigate and coming back through security was the fastest I’ve ever seen. You do have to take a train from terminal to main gates and another train to rental car but it’s a pretty fast process.
It took us about an hour and a half to get to LEGOLAND Beach Retreat with some traffic getting out of Tampa. The check in process is done in the car at a drive through window as there is no real front desk. This is cool checking in but very annoying if you need assistance during your stay. We picked up drive through dinner on the way and ate on the little porch area. Each cove of little rooms has a small playground that the kids loved. We were in Seagull Cove which was a great location and close to the main area. Parking is close to all the coves.

The lighthouse building has a very small gift shop and the bar and restaurant. In the back is a castle with lots of LEGO’s to play with. At 8pm every night there was a dance party. The staff leading this were all awesome!

I really like the room!

Nice king size bed in main room and mini fridge. There isn’t a microwave but they said you could ask for one if you need one.
There is a curtain separating the kids area. We have a 3,4, and 6 year old so it’s perfect for them. There is no tv in the kids area. They had 2 small bottles of water and two juices complimentary and also each kid got a little LEGO bag to keep. There’s a big box of legos to play with also in the room. Impressive to me was the potty had a built in potty seat that comes down!
Breakfast buffet is complimentary and is actually really really good! They had a freestyle coke machine and good assortment of juices and milk. They had eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes, tator tots, breakfast burritos, pancakes, oatmeal, and fruit. Breakfast is served from 7:30-10am. Lines build up after 9am a bit. I do wish it started a bit earlier even just for leaving out cereal and yogurt or something bc we had to leave for our flight at 7:30 and didn’t get it this morning.

They have free shuttle to take you across street to the park but it doesn’t run in the middle of the day- started in morning till noon then back up 3 hours before park closing. We drove over bc you get free preferred parking. The park opened at 10am and we drove over there about that time and there was a long line to get into parking lot which made us wish we had taken the shuttle! Our kids aren’t into the roller coaster rides but there’s plenty else to do. I think most people were at the water park bc the main park wasn’t too busy considering it was a Saturday in the summer.

Most rides I saw were about 5-20 minutes waits. We waited 20 minutes for the ninjago ride and the rest were pretty much 5-10 minutes.




The awesome thing for little ones is there are a lot of play areas that they loved! I swear most of the times mine would rather play in a playground than anything else. It was crazy hot so we didn’t get to walk around enjoying like I would if it was nicer weather. We left around 4 to head back and ate at the hotel. They have free kids meal with adult entree purchases and the food was good- highly recommend the Caribbean egg rolls and black bean burgers.

On Sunday we had a pool day. It’s kinda crappy that the beach retreat pool is only open 9-12 then from 4-9. I have no idea why they close middle of the day. You are welcome to use the other hotel pool which we did end up doing. They are pretty much identical pools.
I highly recommend the fish in a bag drink! Yum! They also have ice cream treats at the bar you can get from pool area at a walk up window. There is also a large sandy area with playground at the pool area.

We went to the other hotel pool but after a bit they closed it due to storms somewhere in the area so we played at the LEGO play area inside for a while.

Now for the bad bit—- the storm did arrive when we got back to beach retreat. We ran from the car to the room but our keys didn’t work- had to run in rain to the walk up window thing being pelted with rain and they just gave us new keys which didn’t work either. The kids were under the porch with my husband scared of the storm and I ran back across in terrible thunderstorm to a window and they gave me a phone number on a piece of paper to call!!!! . I had to demand someone come let us in right then and they said ok but it took about 30 minutes to get somebody to let us in! Totally unacceptable and they were barely apologetic. So I think the beach retreat was fun but the customer service sucked. The entertainment staff and gift shop staff was great but everybody else seemed pretty irritated to be there.

Overall my kids loved legoland and especially the pool and dance parties! Don’t forget to take mini figures to trade at all the gift shops! Sorry this was so long but hard to find much info on beach retreat sometimes! Ask if any questions!

Edit to add— the other annoyance is no housekeeping. They said to call if you need anything so the 2nd night I asked for more towels and they asked my check in day and when I said the day before they asked if I had really used all my towels?! I’m like yeah with 5 people I’d like fresh towels and they brought some but didn’t seem happy to. I thought that was weird.