The History of LEGOLAND Parks


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Hello and welcome to the Where In The Park Podcast! This is Kevin, and on this episode, we will be going over the history of the LEGOLAND parks.

As always, the Where In The Park Podcast is brought to you by the unofficial seek-and-find games you play at theme parks at WhereInThePark.com. If you are heading to LEGOLAND California, we have a game pack for that park that is fun for families, friends, and solo travelers. If you, or anyone you know, has a pass for LEGOLAND in Florida or New York, send us a message on the contact form on our website, WhereInThePark.com and we might just send you a free beta version of games for those parks. We are still working on them, but reach out to us and let us know if you are ready to go on an adventure! 

Okay, so we can't talk about LEGOLAND without first going over the history of LEGO.

Before I get started, I do want to mention that much of this history is available at a page on LEGO.com about the LEGO Group History, but we filled in some of the gaps using the book The LEGO Story (affiliate link), which is an authorized history of LEGO written by Jens Andersen in 2021, and also pulled in some articles for other details. 

 

Ole Kirk Christiansen and the Early Years in Billund

So yeah, it all started with a man named Ole Kirk Christiansen. He was a craftsman from Western Jutland in Denmark, who in 1915 learned about a woodworker's workshop for sale in a tiny town named Billund. He had been working as a traveling carpenter, and by February of the following year, with some help from his siblings, he purchased a small house with a workshop in that town. In April, he married Kristine Sorensen, and a year later, they had their first of four sons, Johannes. There are many accounts on the LEGO story that bring up recurring fires at the workshops owned by Ole, with the book explaining that the first fire was actually started accidentally by their second and third-born sons, Gotfred and Karl George, when they were 4 and 5 years old, respectively. Apparently, they were trying to heat up the workshop when they were "playing and making dollhouse furniture for their neighbor's daughter." That fire not only destroyed the workshop, but also their house. But that led to Ole building a much larger house, with a larger workshop, in its place.

Working as a carpenter in a small town wasn't the best, financially speaking, and when the Great Depression hit, money got even tighter. He had been building houses and churches, but the people he was building them for couldn't afford to pay for them. The last home-building project he worked on was at the end of 1931. He decided to try to use his carpentry skills to make household items that he could sell for Christmas that year, including stepladders, stools, ironing boards, Christmas tree bases, and "a few toy cars."

The following spring, a guy who went by the name Wood Olesen ordered a large selection of Ole's work to be picked up in August. Around this point, Ole updated the name of his O. Kirk Christiansen Woodworking to include "& Toy Factory." In 1932, a yo-yo craze hit Denmark, so they started making yo-yos by the thousands, while also creating toys and wooden items for Olesen's order. 

Tragedy, Resilience, and a Second Chance

In September, though, Ole's wife, Kristine, dies from phlebitis, an inflammation that occurs in veins that may have led to a blood clot in her lung. This happened not long after she had a miscarriage of their fifth child, and sometimes this is misreported as her dying in childbirth.

To make matters worse, they learned that Wood Oleson had gone bankrupt and couldn't pay for the order he had placed the previous spring. Ole ended up trying to sell the items and toys to various shops, but for the most part, was just able to use them to barter for food for a Christmas dinner.

The book tells a story about a lawyer, who just happened to be in Billund in the late summer of 1933, stopping by Ole's house to see if he could find out why the carpenter's bills weren't being paid and why Ole hadn't shown up in court. He found Ole, who admitted to him that he had given up, that he had built houses and didn't receive any money for them, and that his wife had died, leaving him to raise their four sons. That lawyer helped Ole to file a letter of indemnity of his house, which prevented him from having to declare bankruptcy.

In October of 1933, their housekeeper quit. Not long after that, a woman was in town trying to get a job at a local "Tatol" -from the book's description, it sounded kind of like a Bath and Body Works, with soaps, perfumes, and other articles of personal hygiene. She didn't get that job, but she noticed a newspaper on a chair at her friend's house, and it had an ad for a housekeeper job. Now, it turns out that Sofie Jorgensen had actually been saving money while working in the big city of Aarhus, with hopes of starting her own Tatol someday... But, instead, she ended up at the Christiansen home as a housekeeper, and on May 10th, only seven months later, she and Ole were married.

 

The Name LEGO Is Born

Now, this is important to the LEGO story because if all of these events hadn't happened, we likely wouldn't have a LEGO company today. You see, the money that Sofie had been saving was used to pay off some of Ole's debts, which led to him restarting his Toy Factory. Also, that lawyer who had helped him is the one who suggested that Ole come up with a better name for his toy company. In 1936, Ole had settled on a combination of the words "Leg" and "Godt," which in Danish means "Play" and "Well," with the portmanteau LEGO. Most sources telling the story of LEGO like to point out that "lego" is Latin for "I gather together" or "I assemble," and that Ole did not know Latin, and this was just a happy coincidence. Especially considering the fact that his toy factory was not creating building toys at this moment. In fact, it wouldn't be until ten years later that the first plastic injection molding machine from Great Britain would be brought to Billund, where Ole quickly started creating plastic toys. 

It wasn't until 1949 that Ole started using that machine to create "Automatic Binding Bricks." Apparently, his sons didn't like them, but Ole went for it anyway. By 1953, they were rebranded as LEGO Mursten, with Mursten just meaning Bricks, and the name LEGO started being molded onto every brick. A few years later, in 1956, LEGO expanded beyond Denmark for the first time, with its toys being sold in Germany. Two years later, in 1958, the LEGO design we all know and love was patented, which is known as the stud-and-tube system.

It was in 1960 that they really started exporting to countries outside of Denmark. Also, that year, the wooden toy warehouse burned down, ending LEGO's legacy of making wooden toys, while allowing the company to focus on plastic bricks.

 

From Toys to Worlds: Early LEGO Creativity

The following year, Ole's cousin, Dagny Holm, who had worked briefly for the company in the 1930s, returned to LEGO after years of work as a sculptor. She brought some imagination to LEGO and worked hard as a model builder. By 1963, LEGO sets were finally being sold with instructions of step-by-step model building.

In 1974, the Billund Airport opened on November 1st, with Kai Lindberg, a Danish actor and politician, as well as several mayors and other political figures arriving from Copenhagen, being given a tour of the Lego Factory while they are in town, followed by a presentation of a "family park" based on LEGO bricks.

 

If You Build It...They Will Come

And, that brings us to the first LEGOLAND Park, which opened in Billund, Denmark on June 7th, 1968. Now, today, this is a full-sized theme park, but at the time, it was just an expansion of their factory tour, so guests had something else to do. There is a webpage about the first LEGOLAND park at lego.com that tells the story of how Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, Ole's son, was in charge of the company at the time, and his cousin, Dagny Holm, who I had mentioned, joined the company in 1961, led to creations of buildings, castles, figures, animals, and more. This resulted in the creation of an exhibition of finished models for guests to view while they were visiting the LEGO factory. And, by the mid-1960s, they were entertaining 20,000 visitors a year.

So yeah, the tour and exhibition were becoming more and more popular, so they expanded. This might sound familiar if you listened to our June 6th, 2025 episode about how Knott's Berry Place became Knott's Berry Farm. You know, they had something popular, so the guy in charge decided to expand, and the next thing you know, you have a theme park. In this case, Godtfred decided there had to be a way to display LEGO models outdoors. It turns out he noticed some great window displays at a shop in Copenhagen, not far from Tivoli Gardens, and he ended up hiring Arnold Boutrup, the chief designer at the department store, to design a real "LEGO land."

So, they draw up some plans, and haul in some dirt to make the landscape interesting, because the factory was built in a flat moorland in Billund. And they start adding LEGO buildings, and even install a passenger-sized LEGO train to go around all of it. When the park first opened, that was all that was there, plus SEAT Traffic School, an attraction similar to Disney's Autopia. The SEAT brand is actually still around; it's a Spanish car company, which in 1968 was owned by the Spanish government, but has been a fully owned subsidiary of Volkswagen since 1986.

Meanwhile, in 1969 LEGO DUPLO bricks, which are twice the size of normal bricks, launched globally for smaller children. Interestingly, a land dedicated to younger children wouldn't be added to LEGOLAND until 1980, when they added Fabuland, which was named after another line of LEGO products aimed at younger children, which had been released in Europe in 1979. LEGO Fabuland products were only available in the USA in 1983, while they continued to be available in Europe until 1989.

 

The Evolution of LEGO Characters, Sets, and LEGO Stores

But, I'm skipping ahead, back in 1974, LEGO released set 200, which was the first LEGO set to include yellow-skinned human characters, with this box having pieces to construct five family members. The set was popular, but the characters were deemed too large to be played with in other LEGO sets. Then, a year later, a precursor to minifigures was introduced. They were sometimes referred to as LEGOLAND Figures, or simply "Stiffs." They resembled the later minifigures, with the same general dimensions, but they lacked articulated limbs, and their heads, though of a similar shape and color (also yellow), didn't yet have faces printed on them.

In 1977, the LEGO Technic set was launched, which was a line aimed at older children.

Then, in 1978, there were two big developments that kind of go hand-in-hand. Jens Nygaard Knudsen redesigns the LEGOLAND Figures into the articulated minifigures that we know today, and Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, one of Ole's grandsons, develops "System within the System" for LEGO sets, which leads to new themes like Castle, Space, and Town. The first set of this new "system with the system" includes the first minifigure, a police officer in set 600: Police Patrol. (It wouldn't be released in North America until 1981, as set 6600.)

The first LEGO store (not including the gift shop at LEGOLAND Billund), was named "The LEGO Centre" and it opened in Sydney, Australia in 1984. From archival photos and videos, it seemed like it was part LEGO Discovery Center as well as a store. But, it would close sometime in the early 1990s.

The next big leap in LEGO theming occurred in 1989, with the release of LEGO Pirates. These sets include the first minifigures with unique facial features.

In 1991, Kjeld created a special limited company named LEGO World A/S (Oh, A/S is just the Danish abbreviation for Danish words similar in meaning to an LLC, or Limited Liability Company, here in the US). But yeah, he created this company to start designing new LEGOLAND parks around the world, but did not include LEGOLAND in the name to prevent his father, Godtfred, from noticing it. After Godtfred's death in July of 1995, the name was changed to LEGOLAND Development A/S, but that was after LEGOLAND Windsor had already been built, so Godtfred found out about Kjeld's plans before his passing, and reportedly approved of the plan.

But, I am skipping ahead again, back in 1992, another LEGO store opens, this time at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. Another LEGO store will open five years later, at Downtown Disney (now known as Disney Springs) at the Walt Disney World resort in Florida in 1997.

Back in 1993, though, the first classic green LEGO Castle dragon was released, appearing in the Dragon Masters subset (or Dragon Knights if you live outside of North America) that was released in August of that year. It was available in Fire Breathing Fortress (6082), Dark Dragon's Den (6076), and Dragon Wagon (6056). In the UK, the dragon was given the name Ogwen, but everywhere else, it was just a generic dragon. The first roller coaster themed to the castle set and that Dragon, was opened in 1997 in Billund. Today, a version of this coaster is found at every LEGOLAND park in the world.

In 1995, the Kristiansen family formed KIRKBI, a holding and investment company whose name is just a combination of the common Kirk middle name in the family, and BI for Billund, the town where LEGO started. Today, KIRKBI owns 75% of the LEGO Group, with the LEGO Foundation, its charitable arm, owning the other 25%.

 

Global Theme Park Expansion

LEGOLAND Windsor, that I mentioned earlier, opened on March 17th, 1996. It was built on the former Windsor Safari Park, which had been at the location from 1969 until 1992. 

Now, just for a little bit of housekeeping here, I want to point out how the evolution of LEGOLAND Billund affected the development of LEGOLAND Windsor. As I had said earlier, when the Billund location first opened, it was just a park with LEGO buildings surrounded by a passenger train, and one Autopia-inspired car ride for children. Now, this isn't exactly what we might picture in our heads when we think "theme park." 

But, over the years, that original LEGOLAND area became Miniland, with LEGO Safari and Mini Boats added in the 1970s. In 1973, LEGOREDO Town opened, it is kind of their version of Disneyland's Frontierland, and it's also where they installed their first roller coaster, Timber Ride, in 1978. As I mentioned earlier, Fabuland opened in 1980, but it wasn't until over a decade later, in 1991, that they opened Pirate Land, with a Pirate Boats indoor/outdoor dark ride. Okay, they continued to add on to the original location, but I want to put a pin it right there, because this takes us to the opening of the Windsor location. 

When that park opened, it had its own Miniland, just like every LEGOLAND park that has opened, plus DUPLO Gardens, Driving School, Boat School, Fairytale Brook, and Pirate Falls. Designs for converting the former safari park into LEGOLAND began in 1992, with the animals being transferred to other locations through 1993. Construction began in 1994, and Miniland started being installed in 1995. The only attraction from the former park that remained in LEGOLAND was their funicular railway, which was renamed Hill Train. If you're ever in the Southern California area, the Magic Mover at Six Flags Magic Mountain, as well as Angels Flight in downtown LA, are both examples of funiculars, and there used to be one at Universal Studios Hollywood, but I'm just rambling now.

The Windsor park was the first LEGOLAND to start off with a land named "The Beginning," with its own version of "The Big Shop." This will be repeated in future parks. The Hill Train would take you from the Beginning, down to Wild Woods. A land with Goldwash, The Rat Trap, and Pirate Falls. Next to Wild Woods was a Circus Show, in the My Town land of the park, which if you continued on would take you to LEGO Traffic, a land with Boating School, Driving School, and L-School. Apparently, L stands for Learner, but it's usually understood as meaning it's for little ones. Next was Duplo Gardens, with Fairy Tale Brook, a DUPLO Train, Play Town, Waterworks, and Whirly Birds. And well, many of those are still in the park in one form or another, even if they may have been updated and had their names changed a little. Rounding it all off, back near the park entrance, you could find Miniland, and finally, there was Imagination Centre, which is where you can find Bricktopia today. So yeah, obviously, the park has been updated quite a bit since 1996, but let's move on.

In 1998, LEGO and MIT Media Lab collaborated to launch LEGO MINDSTORMS.

The next year, LEGOLAND California opened on March 20th, 1999.

LEGOLAND California was announced in the early 1990s, with an LA Times article from November 29th, 1993 explaining that the plans for the park at the time was to spend $100 million dollars to convert a former tomato and flower field into a 43-acre park in Carlsbad, California that wouldn't have any thrill attractions. The focus for the company was to build a park for families with children between the ages of 2 and 13 years old. The reporter does point out that 100 million dollars is roughly what Disney had spent on Toontown, which had opened in January of 1993. It was a risk opening a theme park in Southern California, but Kjeld and the LEGO Group went for it anyway.

When it opened in 1999, it had some similarities with the Windsor location. They were both planned and designed by an American company named Jack Rouse Associates. The opening day attractions in California were designed by a man named D. Mark Snell, Director of Design at JRA back then.

But yeah, like Windsor, it started in "The Beginning" with a "The Big One" shop, but this park was built on former tomato and flower fields, so they didn't have to worry about a hillside, but they did cut out a large body of water instead, creating a land they named The Lake, which is where the attraction Coast Cruise is located. Next to this body of water is also where you will find this park's Miniland. They also had their own versions of the Fairytale Brook boat ride, Driving School, Junior Driving School, and instead of Boat School, they had Skipper School. Also, this was the first LEGOLAND park to open with its version of The Dragon roller coaster. Like I had said earlier, the first version opened in Billund in 1997, while the Windsor version opened in 1998, two years after that park opened, but a year before the California park opened. California was the first park with a LEGO Technic-themed roller coaster, though.

 

Licensed LEGO and Major Brand Expansion

But yeah, also in 1999, a large leap for the LEGO Group occurs, with its first licensed LEGO sets, when they partnered with Lucasfilm to introduce the world of Star Wars to LEGO.

In 2002, they added Harry Potter to their licensed set lineup, while also creating BIONICLE, both of which will eventually find their way into the parks. Of course, as we're recording this in 2026, a Harry Potter themed land has only been announced for one LEGOLAND park, the one in Germany, LEGOLAND Deutschland, which itself opened its gates on May 17th, 2002, the same year as that licensing deal.

LEGOLAND Deutschland took around 19 months from ground breaking to park opening, which was reported as being nine months early. That first year, it had nine themed areas, including a Miniland, of course, and their own dragon-themed roller coaster, the Feuerdrache, or Fire Dragon.

And well... this is where this story gets a little bit of an emotional dip...

 

Leadership: Restructuring & Realigning to the Mission

Between 2003 and 2005, LEGO was struggling as a company. A few years earlier, in 1998, they actually reported their first-ever yearly loss, but it was fairly small and everyone in management believed they could bounce back. From 1999 to 2003, though, their losses just kept getting larger. By 2003, the company was reportedly $800 million in debt. The following year, they record their biggest yearly loss, of $220 million.

A 34-year-old strategist for the company named Jorgen Vig Knudstorp alerted them of how dire the issue had become in late 2003, calmly explaining, it's reported, "We are on a burning platform, losing money with negative cash flow and a real risk of debt default which could lead to a breakup of the company." So, they put Jorgen in charge.

It turned out that they hadn't really been keeping track of which sets were selling, which led them to create more sets that they already had sitting, gathering dust, on warehouse shelves. Also, they had tried to enter the video game industry with their own internal department, which was just losing money. And, of course, they had expanded into multiple theme parks quickly, but weren't really prepared to manage them. So, they laid off over a thousand employees, started keeping track of individual set sales, closed their video game department, and sold 70% ownership of all four of their LEGOLAND parks to an American investment company named... the Blackstone Group.

Now, I know what many of you might be thinking: it's either "wait, I thought they were bought by Merlin Entertainment" or "wasn't Blackstone the investment group that owned SeaWorld?"

Well, let's take a step back on the timeline here... Twenty years earlier, in 1985, two guys who used to work at Lehman Brothers joined to create Blackstone, an alternative investment management company. The name, apparently, came from their last names, Schwarzman and Peterson, with schwarz being German for the word "black" and petra being Greek for "stone." Over the span of those twenty years, they had invested money in various chains of hotels and motels, they partnered with Warner Bros to buy Six Flags in 1991, but cashed out in 1993. You can visit their Wikipedia page, it's kind of crazy, really.

But, as far as this story goes, in May of 2005, Blackstone acquired a company named Merlin Entertainment. That company had been formed back in 1998 when they purchased Vardon Attractions in December of that year, which owned The Dungeons, a themed entertainment location in London and York that had first opened in 1974, and twenty-three SEA LIFE aquariums, with the first one having opened in Scotland in 1979.

So yeah, back to where we were, 2005, Blackstone buys majority ownership all four existing LEGOLAND parks, and joins them with Merlin. Within two years, Blackstone buys 80% ownership of the Tussauds Group, famous for their wax museums, but they also owned European theme parks: Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, Chessington World of Adventures in the UK, and Heide Park in Germany.

Now, two years after that, in 2009, that's when Blackstone acquired SeaWorld, but I can't find anything showing that they ever tried to combine the companies. Blackstone ended up selling their stake in SeaWorld in 2017, and you can listen to that full story in our episode about United Parks from August 15th, 2025.

Anyways, Blackstone and Merlin take control of the parks, and begins investing in them. By 2008, there are SEA LIFE Aquariums at the LEGOLAND resorts in Billund and California, and Atlantis attractions run by SEA LIFE in the LEGOLAND parks in Windsor and Germany. 

By 2011, a new LEGOLAND park opens in Florida on October 15th, the same year that LEGO had released the NINJAGO line of toys and a tv show back in January. The NINJAGO ride, and accompanying lands would start to be added to some of the parks in 2016.

LEGOLAND Florida, similar to LEGOLAND Windsor, took over a previous location. Cyprus Gardens park in Winter Haven had been in business from 1936 until 2009, and the conversion began in 2010, with LEGOLAND opening just 15 months after breaking ground.

Of course, more attractions continued and continue to be added, and more LEGOLAND parks continue to open, including Dubai in 2016, Japan in 2017, New York in 2021, Korea in 2022, and Shanghai in 2025. We should point out, though, as with most theme parks in the Middle East, the Dubai location is actually owned by another company, in this case it's Dubai Parks and Resorts, with Merlin only operating the park.

There have been some interesting changes as far as Merlin's ownership is concerned, in 2013, Blackstone went public with Merlin on the London Stock Exchange, and sold off their shares by 2015. But, in 2019 they partnered with KIRKBI and the CPPIB (that's the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board) to purchase the shares of Merlin to make it a private company again.

 

Why LEGOLAND Matters—It's Fun For All Ages

But yeah, I guess that's enough for today. We do of course plan to do some deep dives into individual parks, including the lands, attractions, and details, but for now you at least have some groundwork for how we have so many LEGOLAND parks, and we hope you take the time to visit them. I know they designed the parks with ages 2 to 12 in mind, but just like LEGO bricks, people of all ages can have fun with LEGOLAND. 

And, just a reminder, we do have a Where In The Park game for LEGOLAND California, and if you, or anyone you know, frequents LEGOLAND in Florida or New York, send us a message on the contact form on our website at WhereInThePark.com and we might just send you a free beta version of games for those parks. We are still working on them, but reach out to us and let us know if you are ready to go on an adventure!

Alright, this is Kevin signing off for the Where In The Park Podcast, until next time... We'll see you somewhere in the park.


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Disclosure: The following list contains affiliate links, and each is notated accordingly. If you click and make a purchase using these links, Where In The Park may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. These commissions are used to cover podcast operational costs. Thank you for your support!
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