Yesterday was the last day of our Christmas holiday so we decided to head into London and visit BRICKLIVE Christmas at the Saatchi Gallery. We all love Lego. Christmas was spent building Lego BB8, Lego Boost and the Lego Nutcracker so we thought this would be a fun morning.
BRICKLIVE describes itself as an interactive Lego-based Show for Lego fans. You can wonder at expert builder displays, build a mosaic, build a present and even meet Father Christmas.
The show was split across four zones, the Christmas Zone, the Creative Zone, Minecraft and Star Wars. Each one offered a different experience in building and creating. There were 3 timed sessions each day and we paid £60 for the four of us to go. Was it worth it?
Sadly I didn’t think so. The first room we went into was the Star Wars room. There were some amazing models of Star Wars vehicles and some pictures made of Lego on the wall but the room was filled with tables around a large display area where you could build your own creation. My 7 year old loves Star Wars so was happy to sit before a tray and build.
The next room was Minecraft and Architecture. There was a wall of computers where you could sit and play Minecraft, and a similar set up, where kids sat with a tray of Lego and built something inspired by Minecraft. There were some large Minecraft figures around the room but these were made from cardboard, not Lego. When you had finished your creation you could place it on the table in the centre. At the end of the room was a much smaller table with trays of white Lego. There were some lovely buildings but my children were not so interested in this.
The next room had a wall made from Lego where you could add your name, an area filled with green Lego blocks to sit and play in, and a few sloping tracks where you could make and race Lego cars. We spent some time in this room. The final room had a few stalls setting Lego sets, some Lego art and a place to sit and contribute to a Lego mosaic. We had taken part in this at the Model Engineering Exhibition at Ally Pally last year and it’s a really fun idea.
Overall we managed to spend our 2 hours in BRICKLIVE Christmas. The children enjoyed themselves but I found it a little boring. Nothing felt very special. The Star Wars models were impressive but there weren’t enough of them, there was no interaction from any of the enablers and it just felt like a bit of a money making event with no real purpose. It was geared towards children but our tickets were all priced the same. I think adults should have gone free, or perhaps I should have let my husband take the children whilst I went shopping on the Kings Road!
My OH wasn’t that impressed when he went to a previous BrickLive with the boys. If you want to go again keep an eye out for money off vouchers. I think I saw some on LittleBird about a month ago, which makes it less of a financial hit.