Tyler Anderson

The Lego Group has built eight amusement parks around the world, each known as Legoland. Each park features large-scale Lego models of famous landmarks and miniature Lego models of famous cities, along with Lego themed rides. The first Legoland park was built in Lego's home town of Billund in Denmark. This was followed by Legoland Windsor in England, Legoland California in Carlsbad, US and Legoland Deutschland in Günzburg, Germany. In addition, Legoland Sierksdorf was opened in 1973, but soon closed in 1976. In July 2005, the Lego Group announced that it had reached a deal with private investment company the Blackstone Group to sell all four parks for €375m to the Blackstone subsidiary Merlin Entertainments. Under the terms of the deal, The Lego Group would take a 30% share in Merlin Entertainments and positions on their board.[24] The sale of the theme parks was part of a wider strategy to restructure the company to focus on the core business of toy products. In 2010, Merlin Entertainments opened the first Legoland water park at the Legoland California site. On 15 October 2011, Merlin Entertainments opened their first new Legoland park, Legoland Florida, in Winter Haven, Florida. It is the largest Legoland opened to date at 145 acres, and also only one of the Legoland parks opened in the United States. The other Legoland (opened at a later date) water park was opened near the same location on 26 May 2012 after only four months of construction. Merlin Entertainments opened their second new Legoland park in Nusajaya, Malaysia under the name Legoland Malaysia on 22 September 2012.[25] It is the first Legoland in Asia and was quickly followed by another Lego-themed water park in the same area. The first Lego hotel has also opened near the site. People who stay in the hotel will also get tickets to the theme park and water park.[26] Merlin Entertainments has also planned several new Legoland parks: Legoland Dubai, Legoland Nagoya[27] (scheduled to open in 2015), and Legoland Korea[28] (also scheduled to open in 2015). In addition, they have opened four new Legoland Discovery Centres, which take the Legoland concept and scale it down to suit a retail park environment.