Passing through the revolving door of Lalandia feels a bit like stepping into Narnia. A bucolic Roman town with a plaza, a small authentically ruined Colosseum and Ionic archways greet us. It is lit by old-fashioned lamps and fairy lights and dotted with palm trees, illuminated underneath a blue sky. On closer inspection it’s a bit more Las Vegas-meets-KidZania, the now closed mini “children’s city” at London’s Westfield White City shopping centre. But we are still impressed. (Photo: Gils Saren Lambert / Total Buy Out)

'Home of the Brick'

From the outside, Lalandia, which is a stone’s throw from Billund airport in central Denmark, looks rather like a vast airport hangar with huge plastic slides sticking out inelegantly from the side. But inside the main building, it’s a different story. Aside from being home to the Aquadome, the biggest (a whopping 107,640 sq ft) water park in Scandinavia, there is ice skating, rock climbing, a sky rider (combination of a slide and a zipline), bungee jumping and even an indoor toboggan run. It’s also right next door to the original Legoland Resort and 10 minutes (on the free city shuttle bus) from Lego House (pictured), aka “Home of the Brick”, the epicentre of all things Lego and now an interactive experience centre with multiple play zones. (Photo: Supplied)

Many Legoland visitors stay at Lalandia

The small town of Billund – population 7,300 – is where Lego originated in 1932, and is where it’s still headquartered. Many Legoland visitors stay at Lalandia as part of a package. We walk past a mini-golf course, a bowling alley, a bar, a sweet shop with, to my children’s delight, a DIY slushie machine and arrive at the Aquadome where we have booked a day ticket for the five of us. It’s not cheap, DKK339 (about £38) each, so more than £190 in total, but walking inside the vast atrium, with its nine water slides, multiple indoor and outdoor pools, an aqua splash playground, spa and sauna, helps make up for it. While the boys, Charlie, 15, and Eddie, 12, and my husband, Dom, immediately make a beeline for the terrifying looking Turbo Racer ride, a lightning-fast tube which seems to drop from the sky, my daughter, Jemima, 10, and I head for the cave pool which is lit by spotlights and is ensconced by tropical coloured fish. (Photo: Allard1/Getty)

Makes Centre Parcs look 'a little amateur'

As longtime devotees to Center Parcs, having been to each of the six resorts in the UK and Ireland (Sherwood Forest pictured) and one in the Netherlands, we can’t help thinking that Lalandia makes Center Parcs look like a little amateur in comparison. While the basic premise – booking into a self-catering lodge, getting a wristband which gives you access to the waterpark and so on – is more or less the same, Lalandia probably offers considerably more bang for your buck. (Photo: Lee Davison Photography/Getty)

'We were really happy'

A friend, Abby Taylor, who stayed there the week before us in August 2024 in a classic Scandinavian-style bungalow, paid almost £900/US$1,224 for six nights for her family of four. A quick search at the time of writing, September 2024, reveals that a two-bedroom lodge for the same week at the Longleat Forest Center Parcs site in Wiltshire in August 2025 would set you back around £2,548/$3,466 for seven nights. “We were really happy with our bungalow. It was very clean and simple and had everything we needed and it was great to have free access to the Aquadome and Monky Tonky (a soft play area) which the boys (10 and eight) loved,” she says. “Our wristbands acted as entrance passes, locker and house keys and we also liked the fact we could load money on to them so we didn’t have to take wallets to the pool.” We also got chatting to another family there who told us that they found the lodges more modern than those at Center Parcs in the UK and that they paid less than half the price for a week in August at Lalandia in comparison, on a pay-for-five nights, get-two-for-free deal. (Photo: Soren Brissing)

A wider range of activities

They say that all the lodges are kitted out with washing machines as standard (something you pay extra for at Center Parcs.) Before our trip to Denmark, I also joined a “Billund for Brits” Facebook page on which people raved about the gold wristbands, which cost around £120/$163 for a family of four, and provide unlimited access to a wider range of activities including ice skating, bungee jumping and climbing walls. (Photo: Supplied)

Food and drink can be expensive

Having said that, we found the cost of food and drink comparable or sometimes more expensive than the UK (this is Denmark, after all), though the choice and quality was generally excellent. I had a very decent poke bowl which cost around DKK79 (about £9/$12) and the children’s pizzas cost around the same. Beer and wine was about the same or even cheaper than the UK, at about £6/$8 a glass. So while Lalandia, which has two other sites in Denmark (in Sondervig on the west coast of Jutland, and Rodby on the Baltic island of Lolland), is not set in a Narnia-style forest like Center Parcs sites, it still has heaps to offer. The fact there are two brilliant attractions on the doorstep of its Billund resort and that it’s only a one-hour flight from the UK makes it even more accessible and appealing. I’m only sorry we didn’t discover it sooner. (Photo: Reuters)

Travel information

How to get there: Ryanair flies from Stansted to Billund from £30pp/$41pp. / Where to stay: Lalandia offers include three nights for the price of two for a family of four from €506 (£427/$581). Legoland Village has cabins for a family of four from DKK1,249 (£141/$192) per night. Hotel Legoland has rooms for four from DKK2,230 (£252/$343) per night. / For more information, visit the Legoland Billund Resort, Lego House and Visit Denmark websites. (Prices accurate at time of first publication, September 2024, US$ conversions calculated in June 2025) (Photo: Didier Messens/Getty)