21021102 Legoland

On Friday, the family went to Legoland Malaysia.

 

Mommy had bought the tickets via Groupon which included 2-way coach service via WTS.

 

The meetup point was Singapore Flyer and so the whole family got up very early in order to make it for the 8.30am bus.

 

The journey to the Tuas 2nd link was alright, but the coaches were jammed at both the Singapore and Malaysia customs.  Seems that the coaches were unable to clear quickly as there is only one lane, and the coaches had to drop off their customers and then go to the other side and wait.

 

After passing through the Malaysia customs, the coach took another 15 minutes and then we reached Legoland.

 

Not knowing what is fun and what is not, we decided to proceed in a clockwise direction.

 

First we visited the Lego Technic area.  The first thing we try is the TECNIC Twister (aka cup that turned round and round). 

  

After that, we wanted to try the Project X (one of the three roller coasters that Legoland has) but the wait is 30 minutes and so we moved on.

 

Mommy wanted to try the Aquazone water next but K refused to try (see grumpy face below).

 

Grumpy face as she does not want to go on the water ride

So we moved on to Lego Kingdoms.

In front of the castle for the Dragon's Apprentice

Lego dragons on the way to the Dragon Apprentice's roller coaster

The Dragon Apprentice is the smallest of the 3 roller coasters in Legoland (we only found out later).  Mommy let K sit with daddy so he can take care of her. 

In mommy's opinion, this one is less scary than the one in Hong Kong Disneyland.  It only go for 2 small rounds. 

The entrance to the scarier roller coaster which we didn't try

Next, we go in search of the pony ride that we saw while queuing for the roller coaster.  The name of the pony ride is called the "Royal Joust"

After the pony ride, we moved on to the sector called Imagination, which had the most Lego structures in the whole Legoland.

First, Daddy and K tried out the Kid Power Towers, which required them to pull themselves up or something like that.

Then, we went to hide inside the 'Build and Test' room which had many Lego bricks for playing.  Even though the Legoland was not crowded, all the booths inside were occupied.  So we moved on after reapplying our sunblock.

Next, we tried the observation tower which is basically a 360 degree glass walled room (air conditioned) that went up and then turned 360 degree for a view of Legoland and its surrounding area.

See the 'sniper' on top of the castle?

Toilets are conveniently located at the corners.  The toilets are brightly painted in Lego yellow and red.  There is a children's sink in each toilet and a diaper changing table.  Watch out for the logo outside the toilet though - Mommy had to take a second look to see which is the girl's toilet and which is the boy's toilet as both logoes are blue in colour and the words are in Malay.

Lunch after that.  We had lunch at the Pizza place.  Two pizzas, a cup of Fanta and a bowl of soup costs about RM40.

We had wanted to watch the 4D movie at Lego studio but there was some time to spare and so we went around taking photos of the Lego structures.

And even time for a train ride in Duplo Express in Duplo Playtown.

We joined the queue for the 4D when we see the queue getting longer (about 15 minutes before the show started).

The 4D show was the typical 3/4D show - with glasses to make the picture look 3D, and water spraying, lighting effects and foam..

K looking cool in her 'sunglasses'

Next, Mommy and K went on the Beetle Bounce which is like the Frog Hopper in Hong Kong Ocean Park.  There are two beetle bounce machines here, individually controlled.  Perhaps the staff took pity on mommy, so he made the machine moved gently up and down, while the other machine (with a rowdy bunch of boys) zoomed up and down very fast.  Thank goodness!

 

Next comes K's favourite place in the whole Legoland - the Pharaoh's Revenge.  It is a two storey structure with many foam balls and some machines for shooting the balls into the air.  On the second floor, where are 'shooting guns' in which the children could put the foam balls in and then shoot.

Daddy helping her to collect the balls

Shooting from the second storey

Next was the Lost Kingdom Adventure.  K saw this advertised on Okto channel many times and was very glad to find it.  We went for two rounds and Mommy got higher points than Daddy in the second round (she could not find her 'laser gun' in the first round)

 

After that, tired Mommy decided to go for a ride on the Legoland Express which will go one round around Miniland.

Great Wall of China - one of the Miniland's structures

After the ride, we go to Lego City and joined the queue for the Lego Rescue Academy.  The participants have to board one of the rescue vehicles and pumped the lever to make the truck moved a short distance to the buildings that were on 'fire'.  The participants then had to go down and turned the lever on the fire hydrant to spray water onto the building until the picture of the fire was replaced by the picture of a smiling Lego character (which mean that the fire had been put out).

Queuing for our turn

A Lego structure near to the rescue academy

K on the truck

Turning the lever to spray water at the 'building' on 'fire'

After leaving the Rescue Academy, mommy and K went for a 'plane ride' at the Lego City Airport.

And then it was tea break at the nearby Market Restaurant which sold western food.  Do note that Singapore currency are accepted in the restaurants and the rate was quite good (S$1 to RM2.47 on the day that I was there, which was comparable to the exchange rate we had in Singapore).

'Lego men' in the restaurant

Next was the Junior Driving School.  Mommy tried to get K to join the Driving School (for 6 -12 years old) since she would be turning 6 in 2 weeks time but the staff disagreed.  So we tried the Junior Driving School which was for 3 - 5 years old.

Too big for the baby Nissan

Guess she inherited Mommy's driving skills :P

 

Next, we went for the Remote Control Boat ride.

 

Last place to go - Miniland. 

Lego florist stand!

The dragon dance can move!

Boat Quay! So cute!

Mommy's obession with SMRT buses....

... and SBS buses

There are buttons around the structure which can activate some of the legos.  The 3 buttons below, for example, will start a snake charmer's music and make the Lego snakes in the rattan baskets (see beige roundish thing near to the buttons) come up (one button for one snake).

Another button will start the propeller of this aeroplane.

KLIA

Putrajaya....

They even have minatures like workers on a gondola cleaning the walls of a building.

K posing ala Arnold Schwarzenegger in front of the KLCC minature.

The KLCC fountain which everyone was so obessed with the last time we went to KL

a typical Legoland dustbin

After we had visited Miniland, there is time to spare and so Mommy went shopping to buy Janice's Christmas present and then we went back to the Pharoah's Revenge for K to play for another 30 minutes before we left.

At the coach pick up/drop off area, Mommy saw the public bus LG1 that was supposed to travel betwen JB Sentral (or was it Larkin Terminal?) and Legoland.  There are also taxi drivers waiting outside who are hoping to get passengers go to JB Sentral.

The return journey took almost another 2 hours with the jam at the customs again.  By the time we reach Singapore Flyer it was almost 9pm (we took the 6.45pm coach from Legoland) and everyone is tired and K felt asleep on the MRT on the way home.

Mommy's verdict was that children, especially those under 12, would like it (there were some rides that were only for children below 12).  The staff were friendly (waited for me to finish taking photos before starting the ride etc) and they have standby staff for some rides (eg, one staff to help to rescue junior drivers whose cars got stuck on the 'road' in Junior Driving School).  

For those with small kids and perhaps who drove in, the annual pass will be good as they can treat it like a zoo pass - that is, go there for half a day and just concentrate on a small section.  The sun was hot (like Singapore) there which might turn off some people, and cause some kids to fall sick after a day trip there.  Many of the seats are open air (no shelter) and are not in use as no one wanted to sit under the hot sun. 

The restaurants were not full when I was there, but I went during off peak season (weekday during school term).  However, I highly suspected that the queues will get longer (we only had to wait 5-15 minutes for each ride except for the Project X which had a waiting time of 30 minutes - please note that these timings are based on that was stated at the entrance, mommy did not really time the number of minutes that she queued for each ride) and restaurants will be full with no seats once the school holidays start. 

20121028 Early Birthday Celebration

Had an earlier birthday celebration at popo's place so that the two cousins can have their birthday celebration together.

 

 

Bought a large size cake from The Icing Room for them to decorate since K had been bugging mommy for it after making one for daddy's birthday last year.

 

The kids decorating their own cake

Yy helping out

After a while, the kids decided that eating the colouring (especially the semi-transparent one) is more fun than decorating the cake.

 

 The completely decorated cake.  All decoration comes with the cake, except for the 3 brown bears that are bought seperately (one of them broke when Charlie dropped it and so was placed lying down on the cake rather than standing up). 



Family photo.

The usual birthday song (the and usual unable-to-blow-out-the-candles scenario)

 The two birthday girls cutting the cake (C kneeled down so she looked smaller than K).

Enjoying the cake.

afternote : daddy did celebrate K' birthday at her child care 1 day before actual day, but there is not many photo taken?

Author - Laurence Anholt

For parents who are sick of the usual fairy tales (like me), check out Laurence Anholt.

He is a UK author who had written many story books, many of them award winning, and he had a series called seriously silly books, which he reinvent fairy tales into stories with other meanings.

The first book K read from the series was Ghostyshocks and The Three Scares, which had Ghostyshocks, a timid girl, who made friends with 3 scary bears.

Next we borrowed Eco-Wolf And the 3 Pigs which turned the usual good-pigs-bad-wolf story inside out.

She is now reading her 3rd seriously silly book called Shampoozel (see small snapshot below).

All seriously silly, and can be found in the national library.


p/s to those who are wondering why my updates are so few and in between nowadays, I had changed my job and this new job is taking up far much more time than expected.  Alas! The troubles of working mothers!

bmi

took this when we walked past Khoo Teck Phuat Hospital.  they have a BMI machine at the food court.

its printed in red because her BMI is below the normal range. mommy wonder if BMI applies to children too?

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20120513 library books

K loves to read.

And on Mother's Day, when mommy borrowed new books from the library, she just could not wait until we reach home.

p/s one of her favourite phrase nowadays is 'But I can't wait' (aka impatient)
pp/s while she can read simple English books on her own, she still need mommy to read Chinese books to her.  Hopefully she will be able to read Chinese books independently soon!

1) reading while waiting for the food


2) eating and reading at the same time


3) holding the book while walking.  Sometimes she will wrap the book around her body.


4) reading on the escalator

20120422 K's first rainbow

Took public transport to Popo's place, and when we are running in (about 15 minutes from bus stop to Popo's place), it was drizzling lightly and we saw a rainbow!

This is K's first rainbow, btw, so mommy just had to take a snapshot. :) 

Still don't know how to rotate a photo in blogger though :P

 

20120421 shavings

K had a few enrichment classes, and most of them require the use of pencils, and sometimes, colour pencils.

So on weekends, Mommy will try to sharpen the pencils and colour pencils when she remembered so that K will not run out of pencils/colour pencils during class.

Below is a snapshoot taken of the pencial shavings.  Just thought that the picture looks nice :P

The drawing on the paper is drawn by K using black marker.

 

20120406 First Pet

K's child care brought them to the Animal Resort.

Mommy should have known something like this will happen when she picked up K from child care the evening before and see bags of fish lying on a table near to the door.

So when mommy went to po po's place on that Friday evening, Po po told mommy that she brought fish home. K's first pets!

And according to Po po, while she was busy preparing dinner, the girl opened up the rubber band securing the plastic bag of fish and walk around the house swinging the plastic bag.

The poor fish must have seen their lives flash before their eyes. There are about 5 of them? With one that is very fat.

Anyway, the general consensus was that they won't last very long, so mommy just borrow a plastic container from Popo.

Imagine the next morning when daddy said that the fish had given birth (and 2 adults died)! So suddenly we have about 30 baby fish on our hands, and Mommy had no idea what to do next.

Daddy went back to work, and while K is having her enrichment class, mommy had to rush back to Popo's place to get a small fish tank, plus buy baby fish food, and grass for oxygen.

By the time they reach home, one of the adult fish had jumped out of the temporary home (see first picture for temporary home) and the mommy fish had given birth to more baby fish.

temporary home

Shifted the baby fish to the fish tank. Another adult fish died, then in the end even the mama fish died, so only the baby fish is left.

K is not really interested in them.  At the beginning she will ask for permission to feed them.  And she will stand on her stool and peep into the tank sometimes (especially when we told her some fish had died).  But all in all, mommy don't think she is ready for pets.

As for the baby fish, sometimes a few of them will die, so very soon, K's first pets might be no more.

fish tank for baby fish