Legoland Castle Hotel Billund: Review

One of the more unexpected benefits of having children is having an excellent excuse to stay at the Legoland Castle Hotel. Because at any age, where’s more fun than a Lego castle?! So during our week in Denmark, we checked in to Legoland Billund’s newest hotel which had opened a few months before our visit.

review stay*

The second hotel attached to Legoland Billund, it’s such a big part of the experience of visiting that while you can stay elsewhere, extending the Lego theme to every minute of your stay is hard to beat.

In fact, after arriving late on our first night thanks to a delayed flight, and spending almost all the following day at Legoland itself, before checking out the following morning, I felt rather regretful that we hadn’t had longer in the hotel to enjoy all the little touches – and, frankly, play with all the bricks. Here’s what it’s really like, with my Legoland Castle Hotel Billund review.

Check out my complete guide to Denmark with kids here

Legoland Castle Hotel Billund: the essentials

Split into two buildings, the Wizard’s Castle and the Knight’s Castle, there are 142 rooms in total. Most of the facilities, such as the restaurant are in the Knight’s castle, but as they’re right next door, it doesn’t make much difference.

Which you stay in is likely to come down to which room you pick: you can choose wizards, knights or princesses as the theme, with the Princess’s royal chambers, the dragon knight’s living room or the wizard’s magical observatory.

Some will sleep up to five, and all are heavy on the Lego, of course. (The Legoland hotel also has rooms sleeping up to six)

Guests at the hotel have a separate speedy access to Legoland itself – although you don’t emerge into the park, as with the Legoland hotel, you’re only a couple of minutes walk away – and tickets can be included in the stay, which cuts the costs.

There’s also a restaurant plus a play area between the two hotels, free parking (you need to get a permit from reception) and it’s just minutes from Billund Airport – Legoland Billund itself is so close that you can practically see the runway from one end of the park. 

Legoland Castle Hotel Billund: review

The rooms

Someone has had a lot of fun designing these rooms, managing to tick off the practicalities and leave you grinning as you spot all kinds of little details.

At its most basic level, they’re big: there’s a small area by the door for bags and coats, plus the double bunks for kids with space to play.

Linking this and the adults’ area, with its comfy double bed (twin beds made up into a double at least), is the storage space with wardrobes, safe and kettle for hot drinks plus a fridge.

Lastly a bathroom with decent sized shower cubicle. But that’s only the basics.

Every wall is decorated with Lego characters: not only pictures but little personal touches like a noticeboard with reminders about tournaments, 3D style arrows and lots of quirky details to spot. Even some of the carpet is designed to look like wooden floorboards, as if you were genuinely in a castle.

When my husband called out from the bathroom that the showerhead was made of Lego, I genuinely believed it could be true for a second – enough to go in and check. Alas, it’s not, but you’re persuaded nothing is impossible in this Lego world.

In the adult section of the room, we found a Lego cat on a shelf, and a huge tub of bricks for kids to play with by their beds. Most fun of all was the locked cabinet containing Lego ‘treasure’ for the small occupants.

With a trail from reception, you could find the figures needed for the code, unlock it and each (from chatting to other small guests) had a different surprise inside – my daughter’s were Lego Friends sets.

The Lego

It’s no real surprise that in the Legoland Castle Hotel, attached to Legoland itself, there’s going to be… Lego. LOTS of Lego. Probably even more Lego than I realised.

In the reception area, there are two huge boxes – helpful to entertain bored kids (and adults) as they wait to check in. Our room itself was in the other building, and the lobby of that had more Lego to amuse too.

At the entrance to the buildings, there are Lego statues: a realistic roaring dragon, which made me jump the first time I heard it, and a sword-wielding knight on a horse, whose clip-clopping hooves seemed to gallop up behind as you walked in.

The Lego chandelier in reception even had little Lego rats scurrying around on top.

Throw in a dragon asleep above the fireplace, more knights in front of it, a princess, a witch and various other characters and there was plenty of inspiration if you fancied building something.

Needless to say, you can also buy Lego sets there!

The little touches

I loved the code-breaking trail the hotel provided for kids (and my daughter loved the prize) but that was only the first of the little extras along the way.

Each day, there’s a competition to win Lego prizes – it changes from month to month, but ours was to see who can build the best Lego creation from 20 bricks.

They’re then displayed on the mantelpiece with the creator’s name and age (let’s just say not everyone was under 10!) before being judged and the winner given a prize.

Perhaps my favourite bonus was discovering that all the staff in the hotel (and Legoland itself) had a minifigure on their name badge, which you could swap for one of your own. My daughter had three in her Lego Friends kit and seemed to acquire a few more along the way, so traded a couple that took her fancy.

You could easily pack a handful of minifigures from your own collection to swap for some more unusual and interesting options as well though, if you knew in advance.

The food

There’s a buffet breakfast in the restaurant attached to the hotel, which set us up well for our day exploring the park – everything you’d expect from a hotel buffet, including cereal, yoghurt, fruit, pastries and hot dishes, plus hot drinks and fruit juice.

The Lego shaped potato waffles were a fun touch as well, plus there was a good selection of cheese as you might expect in Scandinavia.

We also booked to eat dinner one night: also a buffet, it’s not the cheapest option (again, as you might expect in Denmark) at over £100 for two adults and one child, but there’s plenty of choice.

The starter, a tapas-style sharing plate was a highlight along with some delicious bread, plus a good selection at the buffet, from freshly cooked pizzas to fish and other hot dishes.

Children have dessert included – my daughter’s ice cream could be topped with ‘chocolate lentils’ (or mini Smarties) which amused us all – but I was too full to want to order anything else.

You can also order alcoholic drinks (and other drinks), although during our stay, staff seemed to be struggling to keep up with the demand.

There is a little play area attached to the restaurant which is great if you’ve got younger kids, not to mention high chairs for the very little ones.

The entertainment

Obviously there’s the Lego. So much Lego. And Legoland Billund itself minutes away, with your own speedy entrance – when we visited at the end of August, the Danish schools were back so there weren’t many queues but I can imagine it’s a big bonus at peak times.

We could also leave through the Legoland hotel itself, as a bit of a shortcut back to the Legoland Castle hotel, and the play area which sits in between both.

Once again, it’s designed to look like a Lego castle – coming straight from Legoland itself, with its intricate brick creations, I did doublecheck… but it’s a rather sturdier design.

There’s a clue here for the activity trails, which encourages guests to go and check it out, and it proved a perfect spot to wind down a little. We visited on the last day of a mini heatwave, so between our late arrival the night before, the excitement of the park and the weather, my daughter was flagging by around 4pm.

Not ready just to go back to the room, this kept her amused, scampering around the towers, climbing and sliding, and scuffing about in the sand with a couple of new friends.

The extras

There’s not just free WiFi and free parking included, plus aircon in the rooms, there are sometimes packages where kids go free as well as those including tickets to the park.

You can also arrange an earlier check-in and late check-out for around £40 each (useful if your flight arrives earlier in the day, for example)

If it’s not a proper holiday without a swimming pool, the Billund Bad is right next door – there’s an additional entrance fee – while the Skulpturpark Billund, a set of 65 sculptures around a trail, is also close by for a walk with a twist.

We stayed in the area for a couple of days (albeit not all at the Legoland Castle hotel) and also played minigolf and visited the Lego House, which I was very reluctant to leave.

For more ideas of things to do near Legoland Billund, check out this post

Legoland Castle Hotel Billund review: the verdict

It doesn’t matter how old you are, it doesn’t matter when you last played with Lego… checking in to the Legoland Castle hotel brings out the excited small child in everyone (especially my daughter!)

And while there are plenty of accommodation choices near Legoland Billund for different budgets, this needn’t break the bank, especially if you get the free child place discounts and tickets included.

Unlike a lot of hotels, it’s far more than a place to rest your head between days out at the park: this is somewhere where you leave wishing you’d had more time to sit around in the hotel playing with Lego, soaking in all the details of the room and generally enjoying living in a Lego world.

Even if you just stay for a single night, it’s part of the experience. I’m trying hard not to say ‘everything is awesome’… but when it comes to fun places to stay, this is the (Lego) cat’s whiskers.

For my review of Legoland Billund itself, as well as the other highlights of our week in Jutland, check out my itinerary

PIN FOR LATER: LEGOLAND CASTLE HOTEL BILLUND REVIEW

Disclosure: My stay was part of a press trip to Denmark with the Danish tourist board, and free for the purposes of review. All opinions are my own, including any childlike excitement at being encouraged to sit and build Lego…

Images copyright MummyTravels

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