Lego or Lego? My Son Compares Downtown Disney Lego Stores

Below is a guest post, by my son Godzilla the Air Toa. Enjoy! (All images are thumbnails — please click for larger versions.)

There’s a Lego at the heart of Disney, and since I’m obsessed with Lego, I’m writing an article of comparison. Our contestants: Downtown Disney Lego Store Anaheim vs. Downtown Disney Lego Store Orlando.

The atmosphere: In Anaheim, when you get off the monorail from Disneyland you will see a big yellow building with two Lego bricks in front.

When you enter, the rows of shelves will contain Creator, Dino Attack, Bionicle, Bellville, Click-its, Duplo, Cuarto, Exo Force, and much more. Lego brick models of Darth Vader, R2-D2, and Tahu wait for you as Lego red baron flies around a towering Lego giraffe.

Once you have everything you need, a Lego sea serpent is slithering through the walls at the checkout counter.

There’s a serpent at Orlando too. It swims near the Lego brick tourists, dogs, and Creator statues. When you enter the circular building, your jaw will drop. There’s enough Lego in the store to build three of the stores out of Lego bricks! Most of the statues are on the outside of the store, because in that puny little double-circle building I don’t think there’d be enough room for some products as well. There’s also a lot of little play tables, with Lego bricks for kids to play with.

The quality: I must admit, the range of sets are the same, but being a bigger store, Anaheim has more stock, but the same sets you can get from Orlando. I believe Orlando uses too much of the building for “fill a box” (you get a box, you can fill it up with whatever bricks you want for a given price, but they have to be able to close it). I also think Orlando mis-uses its space with too many models and free-build tables. I mean, I know it’s really fun to free-build, but I’m looking from a company perspective. At Anaheim they have a bigger space, so they have enough room for that stuff.

The results: Orlando wins! It was close. I’m probably picking favorites, because I like Walt Disney World more than Disneyland, but, oh well!