LEGOLAND Discovery Center Chicago

About

Go on a weekday if you possibly can. This is the busiest room in the area by a wide margin — Saturdays run more than three times a typical weekday and peak through the early afternoon — and because it is a fixed circuit rather than an open floor, you cannot outlast the crowd. Most families are done inside two hours.

Admission covers a set route: a miniature LEGO Chicago, two dark rides, a 4D cinema, a build-and-test racing track, a Heartlake City zone, a pirate-themed play island and a DUPLO village for the smallest. The play element is real but bounded — this is an attraction with play areas in it rather than a playground — and reviewers put the sweet spot under seven, with older children working through the circuit faster than the ticket implies they should.

Two rules are worth planning around. No outside food is allowed and the snack bar is small, so eat in the surrounding centre rather than inside. And no adult may visit without a child of seventeen or under, which catches out a grandparent arriving separately to meet everyone else.