Looks like Legoland California has a 2025 project now. Is this a new location for the previously-planned Vekoma Madhouse alongside another new addition? Different project all together?
At long last, I have all the answers. That haunted house-themed Vekoma Madhouse plan we leaked for LEGOLAND California back in the Spring of 2022 is definitely out for now. In its place is an all-new LEGOLAND California Project 2025 codenamed "Project Mars" internally.
Project Site: 2.38 acres (103,470 square feet) of generally flat land along the western side of park property. The area in question is currently occupied by the Driving School and Junior Driving School attractions.
Project Timeline: As of 8/1/2023 work was anticipated to begin in January 2024 and conclude in March 2025. Given that approval is still pending, the start date may have slid a bit since then though.
Project Details: This proposal involves the demolition and replacement of the existing Driving School and Junior Driving School attractions with new “LEGO Galaxy”-themed land. Major new components of this new park area include a fully enclosed, indoor roller coaster, an outdoor flat ride, an outdoor children’s play structure, and a largely covered toddler play area. Minor additions throughout this new land include a new space-themed LEGO building area, a new gift shop, new shade structures, new seating, new and updated hardscape, and overhauled landscaping.
Attraction Description: Planned for a 2025 debut is a new, LEGO Galaxy-themed “cluster” within the existing LEGOLAND California theme park. The new, space-themed land will invite guests to “train for space exploration, meet other intergalactic travelers, and blast off on missions into the LEGO Galaxy.”
A full, raw site plan of Project Mars is included below.
As far as I know, this will be the first land in a LEGOLAND park to be themed to LEGO's famous space sets. A quick Google search also seemed to endorse my recollection that, if approved and built, this would be the first time Merlin has ever built a fully-indoor roller coaster at a LEGOLAND property.
Indoor Roller Coaster
The anchor attraction for Project Mars is an all-new, fully indoor, roller coaster where “guests are launched out in an exploration mission into the uncharted LEGO Galaxy in their own customized LEGO spacecraft.” This new coaster will be housed within a new, pre-manufactured, single-story, 32,319 square foot building with a finished height of forty-four feet. Per the plans, this new structure will be “enhanced with exterior LEGO “space port” theming” which is permitted to reach as tall as fifty-five feet. Also housed within the building’s perimeter will be attraction queue space, a LEGO brick building attraction, and retail, maintenance, storage, and mechanical space. This roller coaster is also set to feature a 1,316 square foot, covered, unconditioned, outdoor, queue space in addition to the previously mentioned indoor line area.
A closer look at the site plan for this new indoor roller coaster building is included below. Take a moment to note the bits of LEGO theming visible on the right side of this image! Love to see site plans this detailed.
At the top right of the image, you can see the entrance and exit for the attraction. Around the top right corner and right side of the "Proposed New Ride Building" you can see the guest-facing, themed structures that will block views of the main ride warehouse. These smaller structures appear as though they will house the ride queue, gift shop, and LEGO building area. It's likely that all that is slated to be contained within the actual "ride building" portion of the structure is the indoor roller coaster itself.
In total, this new roller coaster building is slightly smaller than Busch Gardens Williamsburg's DarKoaster ride area. That said, since this structure is being purpose-built for the coaster that houses it, it can likely utilize the space more efficiently than DarKoaster managed. Another place that this project compares well to Busch Gardens Williamsburg's new-for-2023, family, indoor roller coaster is that both the DarKoaster building and this proposed LEGO Galaxy-themed coaster building are very similar in height.
Unfortunately, with LEGOLAND California's 2025 coaster being located entirely indoors, we don't have any further information to work with here. Hopefully additional documentation will surface at some point that would allow us to decipher the coaster make, model, layout, etc. For now though, the fact that LEGOLAND California is planning a slightly-smaller-than-DarKoaster-sized, fully-indoor roller coaster will have to suffice.
HUSS Airboat Flat Ride
A second ride addition to this new LEGO Galaxy-themed land is a space-themed HUSS Airboat flat ride. The attraction is slated to utilize a 4,122 square foot area in front of the new roller coaster. The site plan for the attraction (below) also reveals a large entry arch, a shaded queue area, and a small operator booth. It even looks like there may be some LEGO rockwork around the ride's perimeter!
Children’s “Playscape” Area
Another 1,755 square foot plot in this new LEGO Galaxy land will be allocated to an alien spaceship-themed play structure. A top-down glimpse at that attraction can be found below.
"Tot Spot" Play Area
Lastly, a 1,234 square foot portion of the new land will be dedicated to a covered, LEGO Duplo-themed toddler play area. It is also included in the site plan above.
NOTE: This is one in a series of new leaks regarding the LEGOLAND California resort. Details about other projects in development can be found here:
While diggin’ for documentation relating to LEGOLAND California’s new-for-2025, indoor roller coaster, I stumbled across something I thought was tremendously interesting. Back in April of 2023, the Community Development Director for Carlsbad, CA sent a memo to the city’s mayor and the members...
Wow. Incredible that they'd give up the Driving School space for this, with that being a staple of the brand. But kudos to them leaning into Space, which is a theme that they haven't really explored in those parks yet.
Screamscape has shared additional info on the project, as well as concept art for the coaster show building and play structure.
It seems the driving schools will not disappear altogether, but rather be relocated to the site that currently houses the Funtown Fire Academy. That area, however, seems to be significantly smaller than the current area occupied by these attractions.
As for the coaster itself: according to a news article cited by Screamscape, the coaster will indeed be launched and will feature "own customized LEGO spacecraft" in "an exploration mission into the uncharted Lego Galaxy".
Can someone help me make sense of what’s going on with the launch track appearing to be used twice? I’ve tried to figure out what’s being illustrated there since it seems to go in two different directions, and I’m still not sure
The use of a turntable for the maintenance switch is very intriguing. Intamin normally loves their switches so maybe that's a hint that this is someone else's design?
The use of a turntable for the maintenance switch is very intriguing. Intamin normally loves their switches so maybe that's a hint that this is someone else's design?
Time to brainstorm: Two roller coaster manufacturers that come to my mind who have turntables are Gerstlauer and Mack. While Intamin is promoting turntables for the Multi-dimensional coasters, it seems old for the transfer track to be the only area for that.
Another thing to note is how small that turntable is. Could the size indicate that the coaster has small trains? The track is banked in the plans, and if these trains are small, could they be single cars? What if this is a Gerstlauer Bobsled Coaster? Pure guess right now.
The planning shows the track strikingly resembling what Gerstlauer builds for their bobsled coasters. LEGOLAND has worked with the company in the past for two Ninjago-themed SkyFly rides and some older coasters. Also, Gerstlauer's HQ and production facility are just a few miles from LEGOLAND Deutschland.
Ride Experience
First of all: the speculative layout I've posted to the Florida thread seems to be mostly accurate. The ride will feature regular as well as FasTrack/accessible queue. On top of the exit gift shop, there will be a photo pick-up opportunity.
Ride capacity is listed as 24 seats and 1 seat/occupant (?). So we could look at 6 vehicles featuring 4 riders each.
The queue features two "interactive zones". One in a rectangular room called "MEET THE SQUAD" and one in the triangular room previously discussed as a potential pre-show called "BUILD AND MISSION BRIEF". Local news has reported riders will be launched "in an exploration mission into the uncharted Lego Galaxy in their own customized Lego spacecraft" (Source I found on Screamscape). I'm excited to see what kind of gimmick they have come up with.
The planning shows the track strikingly resembling what Gerstlauer builds for their bobsled coasters. LEGOLAND has worked with the company in the past for two Ninjago-themed SkyFly rides and some older coasters. Also, Gerstlauer's HQ and production facility are just a few miles from LEGOLAND Deutschland.
First of all: the speculative layout I've posted to the Florida thread seems to be mostly accurate. The ride will feature regular as well as FasTrack/accessible queue. On top of the exit gift shop, there will be a photo pick-up opportunity.
Ride capacity is listed as 24 seats and 1 seat/occupant (?). So we could look at 6 vehicles featuring 4 riders each.
The queue features two "interactive zones". One in a rectangular room called "MEET THE SQUAD" and one in the triangular room previously discussed as a potential pre-show called "BUILD AND MISSION BRIEF". Local news has reported riders will be launched "in an exploration mission into the uncharted Lego Galaxy in their own customized Lego spacecraft" (Source I found on Screamscape). I'm excited to see what kind of gimmick they have come up with.
Did a bunch of analysis on those plans last night, and I'm almost positive this will be an Intamin of some sort.
I definitely agree that the drive tires and station setup look a LOT like a Gerstlauer Bobsled, and that was my first guess as to what this was. But the supports and footers are undoubtedly Intamin IMO. Specifically, the fact that the flanges for some of the taller supports are A) located on the "main" beam, as opposed to the inner/secondary beam, and B) the high quantity of smaller bolts on the column flanges:
Studio Tour is a close example of what I'm expecting, but the hexagonal footer plates don't appear on it (because the outdoor footers are buried Gerstlauer-style, and the indoor is on a baseframe). They do show up on other coasters though, see Pantheon here. Notice the hexagonal plates with either 6 or 8 anchor bolts, it matches with the supports above:
I would personally say that's enough to confirm Intamin. Some other non-Gerstlauer-Bobsled evidence I'll raise:
Bobsled drive tires have a gap for the chassis, while Project Mars has drive tires with a very small/no gap in between them
Bobsled magnetic brakes are mounted horizontally off to the side, while Project Mars' are centered on the track
If it was a single car train, I would expect the turntable to be much shorter. It's about 23ft long
Either way, there is an impressive amount of track crammed in that building and this should be a very cool little ride! Just look at the clearance envelopes in this cross-section!
Seems that ART Engineering has been shipping hardware to the park, explicitly for the Galaxy project. Very odd given that neither the coaster nor the flat ride in the proposal belongs to them. What's changed? Source
They also shipped a container of "ANCHOR ROD HEX NUT COUNTER PLATE AND HTS: TEMPLATE SHEET PLATES" to "MERLIN ENTERTAINMENTS GROUP FLORIDA" in August.
I remember reading somewhere that the supports for the Legoland Wing Coaster in Germany were not delivered by B&M/Clermont Steel but by a Hungarian contractor. Might it be a similar situation here? And/or they might be doing the themed facades, though that would probably not count as "amusement ride parts."
