Lego Kidsfest Boston Reviews 2010

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If this is a recurring event that will be happening again this year, please let us know.

Dates:	Saturday, September 25, 2010 - Sunday, September 26, 2010
Hours:	Hours Vary see below
Ages:	Kids, Teens, Adults
In/Outdoor:	Indoor
Cost:	$$ see below
Category:	Special Events

LEGO KidsFest is a wildly energetic weekend long event filled with interactive, creative and educational activiites for kids and their families. There will be so much to do and see at each show and something for each member of the family.

Build in the Construction Zone, Play at the Race Ramps, Create at Creation Nation and Be your own Master Builder with an entry into the Cool Creations.

Featuring liife-sized LEGO models all weekend including Batman, Darth Vader, Indiana Jones, Thomas the Tank Engine, and Harry Potter, SpongeBob and more.

HOURS

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Saturday: Session I 9 am – 2 pm (SOLD OUT)
Sunday: Session II 3 pm- 8 pm (SOLD OUT)

Sunday:Session I 9 am – 2 pm (SOLD OUT)
Sunday: Session II 3 pm – 8 pm (SOLD OUT)

COST

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Adults (18-64) -$20.00; Children (3-17) / Seniors (65+) / Military $18; Under 3 $5.00

WEBSITE

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legokidsfest.com/Boston/events.html

LOCATION

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900 Boylston Street, Boston, MA, 02115 map

Getting There
For a convenient trip to the Hynes Convention Center, please consider the “PARK & RIDE” option. Avoid sitting in traffic and save money on parking by taking the T to the Hynes.

You can PARK outside the city at any T station and RIDE the T to the Hynes Convention Center. The Hynes Convention Center T stop is on the Green Line and will be open 8AM – 9PM on both Saturday 9/25 and Sunday 9/26.

TIPS

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SAVINGS!! BostonCentral subscribers receive $4 off the tickets! Use code BOSTONCENTRAL when you purchase tickets online to receive the discount.
Grab something to eat in the PRU food court to validate parking.

REVIEWS

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Thanks For Sharing Your Reviews And Saving My Money And Time

Our dear friends have a 'Legoholic' who turns eight today. I really wanted to take him and one of his friends to the Dec Hartford Kidsfest as a birthday gift. As we are unemployed, it would have made for an expensive day once we add on parking and food costs. I was willing to do this as we love this little boy, but will instead thank you for taking the time to provide your reviews, save the money and try to find another exciting experience for him. I'm wondering if Lego is reading the reviews and making any changes to the event.

LEGO Kidsfest

I am a disappointed LEGO fan! For all the hype and the exorbitant ticket prices, I found Kidsfest to be an enormous letdown. I paid the extra money for my child to go to a 'Club' meeting. I was told by the 'staff' person that the convention center would be open early so we would be able to walk around before the club meeting started. We arrived 45 minutes ahead of our 8:30 club meeting only to stand in line for 30 minutes because nobody knew what they were doing! I attempted to walk in the exhibit hall but the guard wouldn't let us in. The Club meeting started off ok: kids, here is a t-shirt, here are a pile of blocks, build a space ship and the LEGO Master Builder will come in & talk. This guy comes in, looks at 1/3 of the kids creations, offers 2 mediocre building tips and leaves. He was in the room for less than 10 minutes. The kids have to leave their creations, the only fanfare are the cameras provided by the diligent parents. We're shuffled out of the room, each kid gets a goody bag which consists of a flat fold poster, a sticker & SW mini ship worth about $6.00. For my kid thank goodness we got the goodies, but I paid $59, got up early, drove into the city & paid the parking fee so my kid could MEET a Master Builder - this guy was a joke, no actually a builder geek with no kid skills. And ditto for the previous reviews. The venue was overcrowded, the passport stamps for a tattoo was ridiculous, the attendant had to rip the page out of our program book and honestly, roping in adults to give mouth swabs for a potential bone marrow match was hard to explain. We were home by 11:30. I wished I spent the $25 at a local club meeting & the remaining on a set my son wanted!

Lego Kidsfest

I would give this a negative rating if possible. I used to love Legos until this event. It will take me a month or so before I can get back to a positive feeling about Legos. I would never attend a Lego event again. *It was expensive ($85 for a family of 6) *Even though we bought our tickets online, printed each one out online as directed and arrived a few minutes early we waiting 40 minutes in line!!! This was to get into an event where you only had a timed window of attendance. *It was extremely crowded and loud. There were lines for everything. There was even a line to get in the store!! We never even bothered waiting there. *There was not enough staff to supervise things. It was pandemonium everywhere. *The signage was really poorly done. It was hard to find your way from the parking garage to the event. *There was a lame little train (not even Lego) and they wanted $3 to go in a oval the size of a basketball court. *There was marketing directed at us and from the stage as though it was a conference for adults. There were probably more negative things I've blacked out. What a horrible thing, I felt like that old saying 'There's a sucker born every minute' for ever having bought tickets to this.

My Kids Had A Great Time

My kids went with their father to the Boston show and had a GREAT time. We live outside Milwaukee and they are begging me to take them down to the Chicago show because there were some things they didn't get to do. So we're heading down. I also want to see the models because they haven't stopped talking about them. These reviews show some unhappy people, but there were some happy ones too!

Kidsfest Letdown

My son is a huge Lego fan. We for years have been trying to put away enough money to attend one of the huge Lego conventions in California or Florida, or out of state for that matter because they never have any shows here in Massachusetts. I stumbled on the website announcing the show in Boston and told my son about it. He was so thrilled he would have done a million backflips from our home to the Haynes Convention Center to attend it. So I ordered tickets online, and off to the show we went. My son entered a model in the Cool Creations contest, a model that he designed on the Lego Digital Designer website. Rules of the contest were that the model had to be registered prior to start of the show. I registered it in the 'AGE 13+' group of entries. At the show a picture of his model with an entry # was placed on a display board. The top of the board had a huge red banner with 'AGE 13+' in giant yellow letters/numbers on it. Winners of the Cool Creations event were decided on ballot entries by the public attendees at the show. At the table were stacks and stacks of paper ballots for each age group. At the table there was only one Lego Staff member distracted enough to not control distribution of the ballots, so people were taking them by the handfull away from the table and filling in as many as they could for their favorite model, then tossing them in the bins and mixing them in when the staff member was not watching. I saw with my own eyes two young boys grabbing ballots by the handfull, taking them all around the show and coaxing people to jot down on the ballot their friends model #, cheating the voting system and cheating the results, I will get that in a bit because the results were even skewed or unfair. We arrived Saturday for session 1, got there early ahead of the crowd, mainly to get my son's model entered in Cool Creations which we pre-registered for. The head staff running the event was so thrilled with my son's model he escorted him to meet with a few Lego Executives to show it off, they were all thrilled with it and considered my son to be a 'true died in the wool Lego Engineer'. They loved his model for it's engineering and originality, and how it was displayed. My son was stunned that they love his model so much that it earned a meeting with the executive staff. This brought up my son's hopes, our families hopes that he had an even stronger chance of winning the event. With voting not being controlled to one ballot per person, per age group you voted for, the Coolness of the Creation did not matter at all. The winner in my son's group only won due to STACKED BALLOTING, thanks to his friends. His model was in no way near as good the one my son entered, but we did'nt stack the ballots like they did. I discovered the list of winners just recently by logging into Boston Lego KidsFest. Now here it gets even more skewed. The winner of the age group my sone was in is listed here as 'AGE 12+' age group, not AGE 13, hey Lego, is it frigging 'AGE 13+' as stated at time of registration, or is it 'AGE 12+' as stated on the winner list. May not seem like a big deal but it makes me now believe the winner was 12 years old, not 13, and perhaps my son should have won if the age groups were not skewed by one year. Voting for entries in Cool Creations should have been limited to one vote for each age group per person voting. In other words, each person voting gets to cast a total of 4 votes, one only per age group, making it entirely fair and truthfull. The ballots should have been printed on the tickets to the show which would control or prevent 'STACKED BALLOTING', and those who paid at the door to enter the show get one ballot strip per person or family member. I could have easily grabbed a huge stack of ballots from the Cool Creations table when the one and only staff member was loooking elsewhere, brought them to a quiet out of the way corner of the convention center and filled in as many ballots for my son as I could so he could win, AND NOT BE JUDGED FOR THE CREATIONS COOLNESS BUT STRICTLY FOR NUMBER OF STACKED BALLOTS. So to sum this all up, if you intend on visiting a future show and like me have a highly enthusiastic 'TRUE LEGO CREATION ENGINEER' entering a model, you may want to try and get the staff running the event to either change the voting system to prevent what happened to us, or at least exert better control on the distribution and entry of the ballots. My son not winning was a huge let down for my family, not being sore losers, but knowing he was cheated out of fair recognition for his Lego Model. That much of a let down that the show we could finally attend here rather than out of state was dispicable. Certainly not worth what I spent for 4 tickets, and wasting my military discount on them as well. Do yourself a favor and stay home, don't go to the show, 15-20 bucks per ticket is a good chunk of change better spent elswhere.

WE HATE LEGOS NOW

We built my son up for days telling him we had a BIG surprise for him. He's obsessed with Legos and thought this would be such a WONDERFUL event for him. IT WAS TERRIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IT WAS OVER-CROWDED AND THERE WAS NOTHING SPECIAL TO DO WITH THE KIDS! IT WAS LIKE A TRADE SHOW!!! OH, HONDA AND OTHERS GOT TO DO THEIR PROMOTIONS THOUGH! It was hot, crowded, and the lines to do the FEW things for the kids were over 40 min. long. Oh and the train ride that is advertised??? Well you have to pay for it! My son was sooo disappointed... seriously, I wanted to cry!

Lego Kidsfest

Oh!!!! was my family ever disappointed in this event. After reading the reviews, I just have to say that I agree with each and every one. If there a choice of a zero (0) rating, that is what I would give. The Kidsfest was nothing but a let down. Considering the price we paid for indivudual tickets, you would think that the Lego company and sponsors could have given each child a Lego kit to take home. Areas where the children could build something and then have it taken away from them was unforgiveable. You don't place something in front of children and then take it away. My grandson wanted to take some of the building legos home but since they were not for them to keep, I had to tell him no. I would have felt like a thief if I let him take some pieces for himself. The whole environment was tense, there were so many people. The center was OVERCROWED. There was not an aisle you could walk without weaving in and out around people. Shame on a successfully thriving company like Lego to contribute NOTHING to this event.

Lego Kidsfest Was Horrible New York Chicago People Save Your Money

I really hope the people in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, and Hartford read these reviews so they can save their money! We went to the Sat. second session and it was so overcrowded! Can you imagine waiting in line for 40 minutes just to spend your money at their Lego 'store' (my son was really hoping to find something 'exclusive' like they promised there would be... alas no such luck- except for last year's Christmas set, everything was pretty much what you can get in the stores or on-line)? Basically all it is is tables of Lego bricks for the kids to play with. The only neat thing in our minds was that you could create a 2'X2' piece for a 'mystery mural', but again, it was so crowded there you could barely make it to the table to do so. And like the other reviewer, we were livid that they ran out of prizes. Such disappointment after waiting in line after line to get the paper stamped at various vendors so our child could get his prize only to find that the prizes were all gone. How can they run out? I mean you sell X amount of tickets, you have X amount of prizes. The same thing happened with the coupons they were handing out at the Lego 'store' there. They had two more sessions on Sunday, what were they going to do since they ran out of all this stuff the day before? Terribly run and I will warn off everyone I know that is thinking about going not to waste their money.

Letters Mailed Today

I brought my family of 5 to Lego Kidsfest Boston on Sunday. I agree with the other comments about this fiasco! Wasting time to get our 'passport' stamped and to only get a Boston Duck Boat tattoo, New England Aquarium bookmark or a silly band was a disappointment. My four year old said, 'No, thank you' to his choices. I wrote a letter to the people listed on the Lego Kidsfest website as well as Lego's big office in Enfield, CT.

Lego Kids Fest Boston

Thank GOODNESS we could park for FREE! We were greeted with a HUGE line. HUGE. Then, as we went thru the 'ticket' gate (the takers didn't even LOOK at the tickets, nor did they COUNT them!) we were greeted by a miserable woman who would only give us 2 books. There were 8 of us! We had to fight to get ONE more, after she walked away from me and started handing them to other people coming through. It's not my fault that the COMPANY running the program didn't have enough books to hand out. FOr $20 a head, they should have had plenty! We finally got upstairs to the 'event'. My exact words were 'OH HELL NO!' I couldn't believe that a few dusty pieces that you couldn't get near and 15 vendor booths is what LEGO considers a 'KidsFest'. I got in line for the store while my sister went around to the booths to get the stamps. Thankfully, a woman came along the line and gave out coupons and told us to just go to our local Lego store. She was the only bright spot in our day. After collecting the 'stamps' we were given a tattoo. Nice. We couldn't get near the 'building' spots, the education lines were huge. I was the woman who said 'the only thing without a line was the ladies room' and my sister commented 'and it was the best part of the whole day'. I let a bunch of firefighters in Boston know that it would be a HUGE WASTE OF THEIR TIME AND MONEY to even take their families there. I'm sure the LEGO STORE in South Shore Plaza, Braintree profited from the LEGO Fest overflow of families trying to salvage the day. NEVER AGAIN! And I will let everyone I see and everyone I know to NEVER EVER waste their money on something like that if it comes to their neck of the woods.