Billund is a town in central Denmark. It's known as the birthplace of LEGO. It also features LEGOLAND Billund and at this time of the year its most popular destination is the LEGO House.
Getting to Billund can be cheaper than you think but you do need to have a bit of stamina and patience. Ryanair has flights from Stanstead direct to Billund and they generally leave around 7am and return at about 10pm (so it is possible to do a day trip). If you haven’t got that type of energy you could get accommodation either near Stanstead or in Billund. Flights can be as cheap as £4.99 (+ £4 selecting your seat and only a small hand luggage). If you pay a bit more you can add more baggage, which considering where you are going and the exclusive sets available, I would recommend it. You can just add a return bag if you wanted. As most people are aware, getting to Stanstead is the worst bit of the journey.
Taxi from the Airport is about £16 but there are also busses. During the summer months they provide a free shuttle service. Believe it or not you could walk from the airport to Billund (but then again you might be using valuable building time).
Once in the town centre of Billund (which has a population of only about seven thousand) you can’t miss the beauty of the LEGO House. You can enter from multiple sides. Depending on your travel arrangements you could spend a few hours of your first day just exploring the outside of the building and the non-ticketed areas inside the building such as the shop, free building area, sculptures and restaurant where you order you food with bricks and robots serve it to you in LEGO boxes. This could easily take up 4 hours of your day so bear that in mind when planning as you could easily spend an entire day inside the ticketed area of the LEGO House as it is awesome.
Without ruining too many surprises, the LEGO House is full of things to do. There are themed sections where your creativity will be brought to an entirely new level. There are so many different activities for you to get immersed in that time will just fly by. Apart from the abundance of bricks one of the best aspects of the LEGO House is the staff. You possibly have never met such a bunch of lovely helpful people that really make the experience even more amazing. Rather than telling you anymore about the excitement that awaits you inside, it is important to note that you can upgrade your ticket to an annual pass at any point on the same day that you have a ticket (recommended if you are planning to spend more than 3 days in the house in 1 year) and that you can buy tickets using your VIP points.
Keep an eye on the “What’s On Page” on the LEGO House website as they run some amazing extra events such as “Fan Tours”, “Fan Evenings”, “Monthly Mini Build” etc. Some events will need pre-purchased tickets, and some sell out rather fast. This year six members of GertLUG were amongst the 85 attendees of the LEGO House Christmas Lunch. This event was hosted by some of the amazing senior staff at the House - Astrid, Stewart & Jan to mention a few. During the evening we were fed with copious amounts of traditional Danish Christmas lunch (Julefrokost) and drinks.
We also had the opportunity to meet and watch presentations by two designers who are LEGO employees. The first was the designer César Carvalhosa Soares who brought Kevin Feeser’s LEGO® Ideas 21318 Treehouse to production. He gave a fascinating insight into the journey a selected set must travel through for the final design process. The second designer is the creator of the LEGO Modular building set for 2020 - the Bookshop, Wes Talbott. He said the model was inspired by the houses of Amsterdam and the dollhouses that were built by his mother.
Later that evening we had the opportunity to have out of hours access to one of the build zones within the house. Most attendees of this evening’s event were adults, but at this point most of them had reverted to their childhood. We spent several hours creating Christmas themed decorations for the LEGO House.
So to summarise, amazing house, amazing, staff, amazing events and an awesome experience.