Review: Legoland Malaysia Hotel – Premium Adventure Themed ...

Posted: 19 Dec 2014 06:41 PM PST

Staying at the Legoland Malaysia Hotel was a dream come true for me. Ever since I discovered that Legoland Hotels were a thing, I've become enamoured with the idea of a LEGO-themed hotel and I am extremely proud of the fact that I finally got the chance to spend a night in its hallowed halls.

Be sure to also check out my reviews of the Legoland Malaysia Theme Park and Water Park to find out more about all the fun stuff you can get up to at the Legoland Malaysia Resort.

Disclaimer: I paid for my Legoland Malaysia Hotel stay.

The Legoland Malaysia Hotel wasn't constructed when I first visited the theme park in 2012. The Legoland Malaysia Hotel officially opened its doors in November 2013, so it's still relatively new.

On my recent visit to Legoland Malaysia, I made it a priority to check the Hotel out and book a stay in just so that I enjoy the quintessential Legoland experience. I'll have to be honest – this was one of the things I was most excited about.

With hotel rooms, it's difficult to give you a consistent indication of how much it costs, since they can change all the time, depending on when you book or if there are any promotions that you can take advantage of. I had a friend who was a Legoland Malaysia Premium Annual Pass holder help book as he managed to get a 30% discount of the hotel rate.

I paid about RM745 (~AU$250) for one night in a Premium Adventure-themed room. That amount includes various taxes (10% for service tax and 6% for government tax). You can find out more information about the different room types and make a booking at the Legoland Hotel website. The website also has a very comprehensive FAQ section with a wealth of information to help you plan your trip.

From the moment I approached the hotel, I was delighted by how colourful the building was as well as architectural flourishes that made it look like parts of its facade was constructed by oversized LEGO bricks. It became obvious almost immediately – this was not going to be like any other hotel.

I really liked the massive minifigure sculptures and the brick-built dragon at the entrance. The giant minifigures that greet you are excellent – but there's something not quite right about them. I'll get to that later in my review.

As soon as I stepped foot into the Legoland Hotel lobby, a massive grin broke out on my face. I realised that I'd just entered an entire realm where I was surrounded by LEGO. I normally consider myself a rather subdued adult LEGO fan but I just couldn't contain the joy and excitement that erupted from my heart.

In the hotel lobby, you'll fine a massive LEGO Pirate Ship encircled by a literal pool of LEGO bricks. Kids are free to play with the bricks and you'll often find a whole crowd of children in and around the pirate ship playing with LEGO.

The Legoland Hotel is essentially a giant interactive playground and if your kids love LEGO, they are going to have the best time of their lives with so much LEGO lying around. The poor mermaid on the ship's bow had one of her arms missing, which was fixed after this photo was taken.

As if a giant LEGO pirate ship wasn't enough, the lobby also houses a LEGO Castle that doubles as a playground. Like the Pirate Ship, the moat around the caste is also filled with LEGO bricks. The moat is bordered by cushions that are great for sitting around as you watch your kids play in the LEGO pit. I pretty much geeked out at both these structures, wishing that I was young enough to explore them without looking too silly.

I took these photos very early in the morning, which is why the lobby looks relatively empty – after about 10:00am, the lobby transforms into a hive of activity with families checking in and out or just milling around while their kids enjoy the play facilities. Go early if you want to snap pictures or play around in these oversized LEGO playgrounds.

Behind the castle you'll also find a troll standing guard. It's beautifully sculpted out of precious sand-green bricks.

Checking in was a breeze – the front desk staff were extremely professional, cheerful and very very friendly which made the entire process all the more enjoyable. What immediately grabbed my attention was the giant wall of minifigures that served as the backdrop for the reception. The dude in the bicycle pictured above moves back and forth. It's a bit of a shame that his bicycle wasn't constructed out of LEGO.

The assistant manager that helped check me in was gracious enough to allow me a better look at the very impressive minifigure wall. You may be wondering, are they Kragled? Unfortunately, the answer is yes – they are all glued together, at least the ones that I tried to yank out.

Located in the hotel lobby is also a small LEGO shop which lets you shop and buy LEGO sets even when Legoland has closed. It was great, being able to stare at LEGO at 9pm. They had some pretty great sets like the newer modulars when I was there as well. Unfortunately, I forgot to take any pictures of the shop – sorry!

Next to the reception, right in front of the restaurant is a small enclave for kids to hang out and play. There's a Kinect set up which is very popular with the kids. My favourite things about this play area are the oversized LEGO trees which look exactly like brick built trees you'd get in sets.

There are also really cool (and comfy) brick couches in the area. I'm pretty sure that LEGO have never created a 3 x 5 red brick so it may not be completely accurate. Oh! You can also see a small bit of the shop, where the sets are on display in the window in the top right corner of the photo!

We checked in pretty swiftly and promptly headed to our rooms, to get ready for a full day at the theme and water park. We stepped into the lifts and were greeted by a pleasant surprise. It's a literal disco inside there, complete with disco ball light effects, pictures of popular minifigures dancing and upbeat music to entertain you on your way up or down.

It's a great feature that is surely a lot of fun with younger kids, and one of the small little touches that make Legoland Hotel a very special place for children.

On to the themed rooms! My Legoland trip was planned quite late, so I wasn't able to get my first choice – the Pirate room, or even my second choice the Kingdom themed room which was a bit of a disappointment, so we had to settle for the Adventure themed room.

If you're planning a stay at the Legoland Hotel, I'd urge you to book far in advance (and not on the week itself like me!) in order to secure your room. From chatting with the front desk manager, she said that the Pirate rooms were by far the most popular. Even though we got the Adventure Room – I still had a blast. Let's open the door and step into the wonderful world of LEGO's most famous adventurer, Johnny Thunder.

HOLY MOLEY! I had pretty high expectations of the rooms at the Legoland Hotel but I still managed to be blown away by how awesome the rooms were. The room was decked out from carpet to ceiling in an Egyptian Adventurers theme. I instantly recognized that most of the characters and elements on the wallpaper and bedding were from 2011's Pharaoh's Quest, of which I had fond memories of as it was one of the themes that I collected when I first got back into LEGO.

We stayed in the Premium Adventure themed room, the main difference between a premium room and a non-premium one was essentially the view – premium rooms get a nice view of the entire Legoland Malaysia resort.

Speaking of the view – here's Legoland Malaysia from my room. It's a pretty decent view but quite unnecessary – this is one of those hotels where the interior matter much more than what's outside the window.

The Premium Adventure Room that I stayed in sleeps a maximum of 5. The main bedroom area (with the bad ass blue sheets) can be partitioned through a sliding door, to give parents some privacy if needed. And yes, the entire room is decked out in this amazing Pharaoh's Quest-inspired wallpaper. It is 100% awesome.

Here's a closer look at the bedding in the Adventure Room. The printing on the quilts felt extremely fancy and the beds are pretty comfortable. I really like the square pillows with the Pharoah minifigure's faces on them. Not sure if they were actually made with actual Egyptian cotton…but hey, they had Egyptian hieroglyphs on them! Close enough. I paid quite a bit for the room, and it's always nice to have a comfy bed to come back to after an exhausting day at the theme park.

The entire room is covered with LEGO – even the carpets which have all sorts of cool LEGO designs on it. The designs on the carpet above is actually from an actual LEGO set – Flying Mummy Attack. I have very fond memories of that set, as it was one of the earliest sets I owned when I got back into LEGO.

The carpet is one of those little things that made it such a joy to stay at the Legoland Hotel, making you feel like you are truly surrounded by LEGO wherever you go. To a regular adult holidaymaker, this might not seem like a big deal and it isn't – but to any fan of LEGO, it's these fine details that make all the difference.

Scattered throughout the room are brick sculptures in all shapes and sizes. Being an Egyptian-themed room, there's a shelf littered with sacred Egyptian relics (which is kind of creepy if you think about it) and also animal and insect sculptures which are very impressive to look at.

The models are very well designed and look great – I had a very fun time scouring the room for all the different brick-built sculptures when I first checked in. You almost feel like an explorer or tomb raider!

Across the bed is a little desk where you can stash your stuff as well as a television set. Pardon the mess, we pretty much dumped all our shopping and stuff when we checked in as we were pretty knackered. The televisions are pretty bad, the picture quality is quite awful, so don't expect HD quality TV shows or movies.

They did have sports channels, which was a nice little consolation as it meant that I could watch live football matches that were on that weekend!

Here's my friend's son, Jaell having the time of his life on the bunk beds. The bunk beds are also decked out with Pharaoh's Quest sheets and other decorations.

The bunk bed sleeps three – you can slide out a mattress from the bottom and is a genius idea since kids love bunk beds. I always wanted a bunk bed when I was much younger and would always get excited if I got to have sleepovers at houses that had bunk beds. It's just a lot of fun climbing the ladder up and down.

It's also an ideal setup for families as you can pretty much let your kids hang out on the bunk beds while the adults chill out in the main bedroom area.

There's a television right opposite the bunk beds as well, positioned quite high up which means the kids will have to watch their TV shows from the top bunk. Below the TV set you'll find one of those revolving puzzle games, where you have to twirl around blocks to form a picture.

You can either construct the Pharaoh's Face or a secret message to unlock a treasure chest in the room – more on the treasure chest later!

It wouldn't be a hotel room review without mentioning the bathroom. The toilet is fairly unassuming – I mean, it's a place for you to shower and do toilet stuff. Still, you're at a Legoland Hotel, and yes – there are a couple of LEGO sculptures in the bathroom as well to jazz it up a little!

Another great addition that attests to the child friendliness of the Legoland Hotel is the presence of a children's sink that sits a little lower than the adult sink. It's a pleasant little touch that is super handy for kids to wash up after themselves.

Having stayed at other hotels and resorts, it just dawned upon me that it would be quite difficult for children to use the sink if its only at adult height, so this is a very smart thing to have at a hotel that's aimed predominantly at families with young kids.

Also have to mention the toiletries you get! They're all Legoland branded and great looking illustrations on them. The quality of the toiletries were only so-so, so don't expect anything too fancy – this isn't the Grand Hyatt.

And yes, in case you were wondering, the soap is… sort of LEGO shaped. Sort of.

For almost RM750ish (~AU$250) a night you get a very minimal number of complimentary food and drinks in the room. There's just instant coffee and tea, a couple of mineral water bottles and some cookies, but that's it.

Because of all the really cool LEGO accessories and decorations in the room, it might be tempting for guests to steal them and accidentally take them home. As a deterrent, all the stuff in the room is ridiculously expensive and yes, you can buy them. I don't think anyone is going to spend RM1,000 (~AU$330) on a LEGO bedsheet but hey, if you have money to blow – why not? I also digged the very fitting use of the Papyrus font on top of the room-item-menu.

One of the best things about each Legoland Hotel room lies in this unassuming treasure chest. Located in one of the corners of the room is a little interactive game that you can play.

Somewhere on the dresser you will find an activity sheet with clues that will help you unlock the treasure chest's mysteries. It's a treasure hunt of sorts – you search the room for clues which will yield a code to open up the treasure box. It was quite a fun little thing to do which younger children will absolutely love.

It must be an adult thing but I found that some of the clues were quite ambiguous and a little hard to comprehend. It took the joint effort of 3 adult males to figure out the code, but we eventually managed to crack the puzzle!

Here are the goodies that we found in our room's treasure box. We got a Chewbacca minifigure magnet, a Frodo Baggins keychain and a small notebook. To be honest, the loot was very very underwhelming. I expected a LEGO polybag at the very least.

It would also be cool if they could somehow include a minifigure or build that relates to the room we stayed in such as a Mummy/Johnny Thunder minifig for the Adventure Room. That being said, your mileage may vary. I've seen pictures of the treasures from other people that have stayed and some of the boxes did contain polybags in them. Guess I was pretty unlucky.

That's it for the room!

Here are some pictures of the hallways on the Adventure themed room floor as well as the elevators – like I've mentioned previously, I really love that you are overwhelmed by LEGO everywhere you turn at the Legoland Hotel. Regular hotel guests or casual LEGO enthusiasts may gloss over all the decorative details, but as a huge LEGO fan with a very robust inner-child, this was pretty much heaven for me.

Here's a shot of the swimming pool at the Legoland Hotel. It's fairly small isn't particularly fancy but it would still be handy for a quick swim to cool yourself down from the Malaysian heat.

Next to the pool is a brick built sculpture of legendary LEGO Pirates personality, Captain Brickbeard.

Each hotel room stay comes with complimentary buffet breakfast at the Bricks Family Restaurant. I'll just cut straight to the point and say that the food was pretty bad – it was pretty much the worst part of the entire Legoland Hotel experience. Foodies beware, as hotel buffet breakfasts go the food at the Legoland Malaysia Hotel is one of the worst buffet breakfasts I've ever tasted.

There's quite a variety of breakfast staples such as sausages (no pork since most places are Halal in Malaysia), eggs and baked beans, as well as Asian breakfast options such as rice, noodles and porridge.

Here's what I had for breakfast. Quite shabby but hey, at least it was free. The restaurant also gets packed with families, so the lines for food were quite long at times. I recommend that you get there as early as possible to avoid the breakfast rush.

The only thing I liked about the restaurant is that it was littered with many different LEGO sculptures and models.

There was even a Dalek-like contraption in the restaurant. I complained a lot about the food, since I kind of expected a much better spread because of how much the rooms costed. I've stayed in hotels in Malaysia that cost less than half of what I paid at Legoland and got to have a really sumptuous buffet breakfast.

That's it for my Legoland Hotel experience!

I'm not sure if this is funny, sad, shocking or just downright absurd but something is definitely not right at Legoland. Right at the beginning of this review, I mentioned that I really liked the giant LEGO minifigures that stood guard around the Legoland Hotel but there was something wrong with them.

Can you see it? Once I saw it, it was impossible for me to unsee and it really bothered me throughout my stay, everytime I took the time to admire these giant minifigure statues. Still can't spot the glaring error? Let me help you by pointing it out..

THE HANDS OF THE LEGO MINIFIGURE STATUES ARE UPSIDE DOWN.

EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. OF. THEM.

I was flabbergasted when I noticed this, especially when it wasn't an isolated case. The minifigure statues look exceptional and very well made, so it is simply mind boggling that a blunder like this was committed. It's pretty funny when you think about it – with hundreds, maybe even thousands of people involved in designing, planning and building the Legoland Hotel that this somehow slipped under everyone's radar. Someone DUN GOOF'D. Hard.

Which is kind of a shame, since these minifigure statues are my favourite feature of the Legoland Hotel. They are majestically huge, and have such a commanding presence when you walk among them. They're incredibly accurate to real minifigures, that they really seem like they were enlarged hundreds of times.

If you've stayed at the Legoland Malaysia Hotel, have you noticed this glaring error?

Final Thoughts: Disregard all the niggling flaws and hiccups, I absolutely loved my stay at the Legoland Hotel. If you're planning a trip to Legoland Malaysia, I highly recommend at least a night's stay at the Legoland Hotel, especially if you love LEGO or have children that do.

It's quite difficult to properly express the elation and joy I felt the entire time I was there. There is just something profoundly delightful about being surrounded by LEGO-things for 24 hours. It really builds upon the fun that you experience at the Theme Park and Water Park.

The price might be a little steep, especially for Malaysian tourists and families (the starting income for a university educated fresh grad is about RM2,500ish) but trust me that it is money well spent. The rooms were very comfortable, clean and most importantly fun since they were completely decked out with LEGO stuff. The rooms were a little on the small side but all 5 of us managed to fit comfortably without much issue.

The Legoland Hotel experience is one that I would repeat again without a second thought. I can't wait to start my own family and plan a full Legoland experience with kids in tow. Like the theme park and water park, the Legoland Hotel is and will always be geared towards children and the young at heart.

If you expect 5-star treatment and luxurious pampering, you will be sorely disappointed. If you expect an overwhelming LEGO-filled stay and tons of references to your favourite LEGO sets and characters, you will have an absolutely amazing holiday.

I hope you've enjoyed my review of the Premium Adventure room at the Legoland Malaysia Hotel! Be sure to also read my reviews of the Legoland Malaysia Theme Park and Water Park for my thoughts on the complete Legoland Malaysia Resort experience!

If you're planning a trip to Legoland Malaysia, feel free to drop me an email or leave a comment with any questions!

Have you stayed at Legoland Malaysia or any other Legoland Hotel in the world? Let me know how your stay was like in the comments section!

Pinnacle or Malaysia Hotel? - Gay Thailand - Gay Thailand Forum ...

Posted: 29 Dec 2014 06:04 AM PST

I stayed at the Malaysia just two weeks ago. LoveThailand's post is spot on. A standard room is 850 baht. For me, the Malaysia is my hotel of choice. It is rather spartan and kind of dumpy, but that's fine with me. I'm the type who couldn't care less about luxuries. I'm only in the room to sleep and . . . well, you guess. All I care about is whether the room has air conditioning, a decent bathroom, and a TV. The Malaysia has all those, plus their restaurant-bar is open 24 hours. That is not the case at the Pinnacle unless they've changed since the last time I stayed there. The Malaysia is more laid back and friendly, kind of a family atmosphere, whereas the Pinnacle is more "all business."

The rooms in the Pinnacle have safes. The rooms in the Malaysia do not, although they have individual lobby safes behind the front desk - no charge for their use and you have 24 hour access.

The Pinnacle is much more luxurious than the Malaysia. If you decide to stay at the Pinnacle, instead of booking through the hotel or a hotel booking company, book through Jimmy. Jimmy is Thai, but his English is fluent and his office is in the Pinnacle. He will get you your room at a substantially discounted price. When you arrive at the hotel, you simply tell the desk clerk you registered through Jimmy. You'll pay Jimmy, not the hotel itself, although the front desk may require a room key deposit. In my experience, sometimes they do and sometimes they don't.

Jimmy's telephone number is 01 859 6585

Email: jimmyfirst@hotmail.com

A few tips:

1. I advise calling Jimmy, even if it has to be an international call. He has a reputation for either taking forever to respond to Email and sometimes not responding at all. Call him between 10:00am and 3:00pm Thailand time.

2. You will know exactly how much to pay Jimmy before going to the hotel and you will know his room number. Instead of entering his office and paying him directly, put the exact amount of cash in an envelope (there will be one in the room desk), write your name and room number on the envelope, and slide it under his door - even if he is open. He'll get it. Why? Because Jimmy will talk your ear off and keep you waiting forever while he's busy taking telephone calls. If you want to put the money directly in Jimmy's hands, be prepared for it to take at least an hour or so before you can get out of there.

3. If you intend to bring "guests" to your room at the Pinnacle, book a room for two. It doesn't cost much more, but there will be no hassle about bringing anyone to your room. If the "guest" spends the night with you, booking a room for two will give you a breakfast voucher for him too.

There is another option. Directly across the street from the Malaysia Hotel is a fairly new hotel - The Ibis. They forbid any smoking on their premesis at all - even outdoors. Smokers have to go off their property to light up.

I don't have an Email address for the Ibis.

Telephone number: 02 610 5188

Fax: 02 610 5189

I've never stayed there, so I don't know their prices or whether they're gay friendly. Christianpfc, do you know?

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