It may not have been the wisest decision ever made, to take two children to Legoland on the first warm day of the year just as the park had opened for the season, but nothing prepared me for the hordes of people.
It took an hour to get about five miles from the M4 into the park and another half-an-hour queuing to get in.
Getting on the first ride took two hours of queuing – including a 15 minute stop when the ride broke down - by which time it was 2pm, having left home at 9.45am.
Queuing for the second ride took one-and-a-half hours; the third a speedy 30 minutes (including ten minutes for the ride’s mechanical hiccup!)
It had now gone 5pm and we were on our fourth or fifth ride – with the park closing at 6pm!
We sprinted for the final ride and queued for three-quarters of an hour – again, a longer period due to the ride breaking down for 20 minutes.
We made our escape at about 6.30pm and crawled for an hour through traffic to get back to the M4.
Six rides in as many hours inside the park wasn’t the best hit rate and the children were disappointed.
But what added insult to injury was the poem on the wall at the entrance to the dragon roller-coaster, which used the immortal words “dragons lair” but omitted the apostrophe in “dragon’s”. If I’d had a marker pen on me I’d have put one in – I had plenty of time!