With summer vacation season in full swing, there is always lots of advice to be had about where to go, what to see. This isn’t one of those posts. This is a warning of sorts.
Everybody knows that Niagara Falls, Ontario is a tourist town. The downtown is full of attractions designed to extract money from people as quickly and efficiently as possible. One of these establishments uses a different tact from the wax/monsters/wrestler/wonder of the world routine. It’s called Brick City. And it’s a largish building, dedicated to LEGO.
It looks promising. It’s bigger than surrounding attractions, so it’s easy to imagine multiple floors full of displays. But, I suppose I should have taken the small notice declaring “Brick City is in no way affiliated with nor sponsored by LEGO” to be a warning sign. And the admission prices- well for the five of us it was over $50, so it had to be good right? There was certainly a steady stream of LEGO Geeks being drawn in, so I decided to go for it.
Well, there is a room with a sizable LEGO display, including recreations of things like the CN Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge, and they set up an AC/DC concert –which was a whimsical touch. But many of the models were right out of the box (which you could purchase at a rather steep mark-up in the “gift shop”) and there was only that single room. I took in the display for a few minutes, moved to the door to find the next exhibit only to find the door led to the exit. That was it. There were a few tables with piles of basic Duplo and LEGO bricks for kids to play with, but you’d be hard pressed to kill more than 20 minutes there.
I really wanted to like it, but I’m afraid that compared to the LEGO artistry chronicled on this site, Brick City is somewhat of a let down. So if you’re in Niagara Falls, save your money, especially if your kids are over three years old (under three and they’re free, so you might just be able to justify it in that case). Or spend the 12 bucks or so and just sneak in yourself for a quick fix while everyone else heads down to the Haunted House.
