Legoland Florida rolls out new Ferrari attraction
WINTER HAVEN – Legoland Florida theme park has moved into the fast lane. Its new Ferrari Build & Race attraction is now open to the public.
Opening-day visitors put the new space through its paces. They intensely assembled small cars using red and black Lego bricks, ran them through ramps and other physical challenges and then scanned their models into a simulator to see whose vehicles could do three laps around a virtual Ferrari course fastest.
All of that was preceded by a life-size model of a Ferrari 296 GTS that uses 424,000 Lego pieces. Its driver-side door is propped open, allowing people of all ages to sit behind the wheel and pose for photos.
“It reflects the strength of the Ferrari IP,” Rex Jackson, managing director of Legoland Resorts, North America, said Friday. “It’s loved by children. It’s loved by adults. We’ve seen it in our other attractions that we’ve launched across the globe that the interaction is truly a family interaction. It’s not just an interaction for the kids.”
The look of the attraction, which also has a simplified Lego model car above the entrance, is dominated by Ferrari’s trademark red – some call it rosso corsa – and black.
“It’s a great partnership we have with Ferrari,” said Julie Estrada, public relations director of North America Merlin Entertainments. “We’ve worked with them quite often to tell the story from the beginning to the end, hand in hand with us on every detail, meticulously crafted.”
Ryan Wood, model shop manager at Legoland Florida, advised park guests to utilize all of the test ramps.
“They’ve got different angles, and they’ve got, in some cases, tighter targets to aim for,” he said. “The more fast and accurate your car will be, the better your chances of winning on the virtual game board.”
The digital track, which covers an entire wall of the attraction, “is a model of the same track that Ferrari uses in Italy to test out their F1 cars and their Ferraris and sports cars,” Jackson said. “So what we’re able to now do is take your Lego car and basically transfer that into the digital realm right and then race around the track.”
The track is a knot of 10 curves and turns, and there are real-life mini-structures amid the digital course. Surges of speed can be added and tire pressure manipulated. Virtual weather conditions change regularly in the attraction. Participants can alter their physical models and try again to improve their times.
Back in the Ferrari garage – aka the room with the full-size car model – visitors can activate sound effects and admire the car’s Florida (but still Lego) license plate.
“Also in the room is a little bit of Ferrari history as told through our Lego minifigure, so we bring a little bit of storytelling to go along with the magic of seeing a life-size Lego Ferrari,” Jackson said.
The new attraction is in the Lego Technic section of the park and near the Great Lego Race roller coaster. It’s also near Pirate River Quest, the water ride that opened at Legoland’s Pirate Cove a year ago.
Jackson expects guests to be spending time with their Ferraris.
“The dwell time in this attraction, we’ve seen is going to be between that 15- to 30-minute mark, where the entire time, though, is spent actually doing things with your family, not standing in the line,” he said.
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