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2016 Cleveland LEGO Kidsfest

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If you are looking for something fun to do with the whole family, hopefully you purchased your tickets for the 2016 Cleveland LEGO® Kidsfest early, because all sessions are completely sold out, and for good reason. The LEGO Kidsfest Cleveland has not been back in town since 2011. Therefore, we were due for a return of this family friendly event.

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The LEGO Kidsfest is specifically designed for kid level builders. Throughout the entire show floor are tons of areas for kids of all ages to build various builds. There are specific areas to just build Ninjago, or LEGO Friends, or build in only purple blocks. Kids also have the chance to make custom builds that get displayed on walls or there is a complete outline of the United States where builds are displayed from throughout the event.

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While we did not take part in them, be sure to take part in some of the zones where there are specific challenges, as kids get to take home LEGO sets for participating.

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One of our favorite areas is looking at all the lifesize figures made entirely out of LEGO. The mastery is quite amazing!

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The Cleveland LEGO Kidsfest takes place through Sunday, November 6, 2016.

For those looking to attend Kidsfest in your city, you are encouraged to buy your tickets as soon as possible, because the events can and do sell out in advance. See the www.LEGOkidsfest.com for available times and events.

Disclaimer: Our family was provided with tickets in exchange for an honest review of the event.

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Award-Winning LEGO KidsFest Returns to Cleveland

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Our family are original superfans of everything LEGO®! As a child, my parents bought me all kinds of LEGO sets during the 1980’s, and one of my greatest memories was when I went away to camp, and returned to see my family had built me an entire LEGO supercity. To this day I still own all of my original LEGO packed nicely in their original boxes.

Fast forward decades later, and our three sons are also addicted to LEGO, thanks to a grandpa that also is a LEGO Master builder.

We are also original connoisseurs of the LEGO Kidsfest events and attended the Cleveland Kidsfest session back in 2011. So we are ecstatic to see it returning to Cleveland the weekend of November 4-6, 2016. Plus our family has come a long way, now having three sons versus the two from our previous visit.

The award-winning LEGO KidsFest Ohio returns to Cleveland’s I-X Center from Nov. 4 – 6, 2016. The LEGO KidsFest is a traveling LEGO extravaganza featuring millions of LEGO bricks and dozens of hands-on, educational, and fun building activities for all ages. It features dozens of life-sized LEGO models and displays, LEGO building areas, the Big Brick Pile, race ramps and more, all covering more than three acres of space.

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Those who attended the previous show can once again can expect hands-on building, creative experiences and one-of-a-kind activities. Children of all ages and builders of all skills and levels are welcome.

LEGO KidsFest features dozens of new activities and popular favorites on the three-acre show floor. New activities for this year’s visit include LEGO Mindstorms, LEGO Movie, LEGO Disney Princess, the Mixels, a LEGO Superheroes area and more.

Once again, show-goers can enjoy the LEGO Model Museum, Race Ramps, Creation Nation, Construction Zone, LEGO DUPLO, LEGO Retail store and LEGO KidsFest Marketplace, the Big Brick Pile, LEGO Ninjago and more.

“We’re thrilled to be returning to the Cleveland area,” said Vince Rubino, Events Manager for LEGO Systems, Inc. “We’ve got a host of new activities as well as some areas we know are very popular with our fans. Not only will families create some new memories at the show, they’ll get another chance to flex and showcase their building skills. This event is a must for the true LEGO fan.”

Five sessions – all identical and 4 1/2 half hours in length – are held at each tour stop. LEGO KidsFest tickets can be purchased at www.LEGOkidsfest.com. Tickets are $19 for the Friday and Sunday afternoon sessions, and $22 for both sessions on Saturday and the Sunday morning session.

On tour since 2009, previous LEGO KidsFest tour stops have included major cities such as Chicago, Boston, Dallas, Atlanta, San Jose, Cleveland, Richmond, Phoenix, Portland and more.

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FUN FACTS

More than 400 billion LEGO bricks have been produced since 1949.
The LEGO minifigure represents the world’s largest population of people! More than four billion minifigures have been produced in the last 30 years. This is almost 12 times the population of the United States!
LEGO minifigures are out of this world, literally. The two Mars Rovers have an image of the LEGO minifigure etched into their front grill.
Approximately seven LEGO sets are sold each second.
There are about 62 LEGO bricks for every one of the world’s six billion inhabitants.
Laid end to end, the number of LEGO bricks sold in a year would reach more than five times around the world.
There are 915 million ways to combine six eight-stud LEGO bricks.
Children around the world spend five billion hours a year playing with LEGO bricks.
With a production of about 306 million tires produced a year, the LEGO group is the largest producer of tires in the world.
LEGO is the contraction of two Danish words, “leg godt” which means “play well”.
More than 19 billion LEGO elements are produced every year. More than 2.16 million LEGO elements are molded every hour, or 36,000 per minute.
It took 50 hours and 68,000 LEGO bricks to make the storybook in the LEGO Disney Princess at the shows.

The largest LEGO Model ever built is the life sized X-Wing fighter. It took more than 17000 hours to build over 5m bricks and 46000 pounds.

By 2020, LEGO’s aim is to make sure that 100% of its energy will be balanced by renewable energy sources.

Ticket Giveaway

One of MY followers will win (2) tickets to for the opening night session on Friday, Nov 4 2016 (4-8:30pm). I encourage you to LIKE and Follow LEGOKidsFest on Facebook, Twitter and/or Instagram for all the latest ticketing updates as this event has been selling out in prior cities. Must be 18 to enter, 1 entry per day allowed, random drawing by USFG!

Winner will be randomly chosen by USFG and announced on my Blog and notified via email. Contest ends Oct. 13.

ENTER HERE (Winners have been selected)

For those looking to attend, you are encouraged to buy your tickets as soon as possible, because the events can and do sell out in advance. See the www.LEGOkidsfest.com for available times and events.

Review: Lego Brick Universe (Columbus, Ohio)

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My parents always taught me that you should always learn something from the experiences you do in life. So I live with that mantra on a daily basis and strive for greatness and learning from my mistakes.

Growing up, I was quite fortunate that my parents bought me quite a few Lego playsets throughout my childhood. I quickly learned to appreciate the brick and always took care of my Lego, making sure they carefully got taken apart and placed back within their boxes.

One of my favorite memories as a kid was when I went away for 5th grade camp, only to return to see my parents and sister took the better part of the week putting together every single one of my Lego sets to build a huge city. It was wonderful and awe inspiring to see them all together at the same time.

Today, all of my childhood Lego sets are tucked away neatly in their boxes and stored in my basement. It was not until I met my wife’s father that I began to once again appreciate those little bricks. Then after having 3 sons of our own, I now get to see my kids eyes light up every time they go to my father-in-laws and want to go into his basement so they can play with his huge Lego train layout and village.

While my kids continue to grow their own Lego collections, as they age, I will eventually break out my sets and show them.

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Brick Universe

Our family was recently invited to attend Brick Universe in Columbus, Ohio, which is taking place August 20-21, 2016. Our only prior experience to going to a Lego convention was that to the Lego Kidsfests when it visited Cleveland a number of years ago. Our kids were also substantially younger and had less of an appreciation for Lego at the time.

Going into the Lego Brick Universe event, I had no expectations other than to have a great time with our kids. However, I quickly learned that some of the questions I had prior were answered at the event, as well as I had new ones among the mountain of plastic cities.

For example, I always wondered why Lego never built military sets. It always seemed like a massive target audience. However, upon entry to the hall, you were presented with HUGE military displays of war ships, tanks, and battle scenes, of course all made out of Lego.

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What I come to find out is that everything was custom made, as Lego will not make violent sets. So a private company has taken to making custom sets, mini-figures, and weapons for use in creating war scenes. The ingenuity was quite spectacular!

Along the same “violence” lines, we overheard the story behind the really expensive mini-figures, specifically the DeadPool character. Apparently Lego created the DeadPool mini-figure, only to find out once the movie was created that it was an R rated film. Since they did not want tied to a deadly character, they pulled him from shelves, thus creating scarcity. Kinda interesting and something we did not know.

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As we walked around the hall, we were presented with spectacular scenes of buildings and vehicles, and everything these creative geniuses could conjure up out of Lego bricks. It really was quite spectacular and made us wonder not only how much time and money went into creating each scene, but how they went about transporting such elaborate buildings and such, often without gluing the pieces together like some master builders.

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Through all the questions, we sorta got lost in the moment and ended up spending hours and hours at the Brick Universe event, being nearly the last guests to leave the hall. It was not because it was so large and overwhelming, but because we got lost in the moment. The outside world was behind us as we spent time sitting at tables building elaborate Lego dreams coming out of our children’s minds and coming to fruition at various tables throughout the convention hall. Or because our boys would go round and round the various displays seeing what new items they could discover.

The experience was a chance to relive our own Lego childhood memories while letting our kids build their own. For that, we are thankful!

Our family was provided with tickets to attend the Brick Universe event as well as given a family four pack of tickets that we gave away during pre-promotion of the event.