We celebrate the 40th birthday of the Lego Minifigure at LEGOLAND Discovery Center Boston

A few weeks ago, we had the chance to celebrate the 40th birthday of the Lego Minifigure at LEGOLAND Discovery Center Boston at Assembly Row Square in Somerville, MA. I was pretty excited to go with the family because I used to play with Legos all of the time as a kid and still enjoy playing with them alongside my kids and watching their reactions as well.

We arrived in time to find parking nearby and then the parade of characters started along with LEGOLAND Creative Crew members and employees. The Creative Crew are local kids who are selected to help the Master Builder throughout the year.

After the parade everyone assembled at the front of the store to sing happy birthday to the mini figures in attendance and then some fun confetti filled the air. We picked up our tickets and activity books and started the tour. We got in the elevator and proceeded to a waiting area where we were welcomed and saw a short video about what we could expect.

Our first stop was a ride where we would pretend to save the minifigures from the bad guys and spiders using special guns that shoot laser beams on the targets. If you get a bad guy you earn points. The goal is to try and beat your teammates and score more points!

What you don't realize is right before the end of the ride, it takes a photo of you and your teammates playing the game! Afterwards you have the option to purchase a print of the photo along with a neat Lego frame. If you're so inclined you can also order a copy of the photo broken up into lego bricks that can be assembled together and broken apart as a puzzle. So much fun!

We then had the chance to explore Miniland, where the local Lego master builder has created a landscape of region specific local attractions in great detail. There was Logan airport, some downtown Boston office buildings, the Boston Harbor Hotel, South Station and others. I was pretty excited because they were all buildings near my office and I was familiar with all of them. They even had more tourist-friendly options like Faneuil Hall, the Old South Meeting House, Fenway Park, Gillette Stadium and the Charles River. You could even interact with some of the exhibits like a boat race for Head of the Charles regatta and even playing baseball at Fenway that was built like a pinball game. That was by far my favorite attraction along with peering into the office of the master builder - pretty neat.

The kids enjoyed an activity scavenger hunt where you have to visit all of the various rooms and rides and get a stamp in your activity booklet. Our daughter really liked that one.

There is a Lego 4D movie that is included with admission and a ride where you pedal a bike to go higher and higher in a ride. It was a lot of fun going with the kids. There was a special exhibit for Star Wars where the master builder made Star Wars specific models that were pretty neat.

If you are looking for something new to do and you've been to LEGOLAND Discovery Center Boston before, they just opened up a virtual reality (VR) ride where you can put on a headset and race alongside other minifigures on a racecourse and see if you can get the best time. It was fun for all ages... the kids enjoyed it along with my dad! So much fun to be had.

When you get hungry, there's a Lego cafe where you can get food (even in a Lego lunch box container)and get drinks and pastries provided by Starbucks. They even made the Starbucks logo out of Legos. One thing to note is that while they serve Starbucks coffee, they do not accept Starbucks gift cards.

We ended the day exiting into the store where you could purchase all things Lego and even a brick separator. I wish they had one of those when I was a kid, it would have saved my fingernails a lot of agony.

NOTE: We were provided with passes in order to facilitate this review. No compensation was provided. All opinions are our own.