LEGO® House: LEGO® Square

As you enter into the LEGO® House, your first stop is the LEGO® Square. This area is free to enter into and there are a number of things going on. I entered by the door that is right by the LEGO® Brand Store there. In front of the store is a display where you put your hand down on a sensor and it tells you what minifigure you are like. In reality, it just randomly generates a minifigure picture as my 5-year old tried it multiple times and was always something different.

One of the first things you see is a directional sign telling you where everything is in the square. The signs look like large brick tiles. At the bottom of the sign, a brick-built dog does its business.

Right by the information desk is a brick model of the LEGO® House itself. It is pretty detailed and while I didn’t get to read everything on it as I had 2 kiddos who wanted to see everything, it does look like it is to scale.

At the far end from the LEGO® Brand Store is a mosaic on the wall. I assume this is the Christiansen line of company leaders. If you look at it from the other angle it says in Danish “DET BEDSTE ER IKKE FOR GODT” or “only the best is the best” in English. “The best is never too good” is apparently the direct translation.

This mosaic is by some tables which are set up for people to eat at. While I have been to many places in the US where bringing your own food is not acceptable (they want you to buy food there), Denmark as a whole was very accepting of bringing your own lunch. My family visited the LEGO® House 2 days in a row. On the first day, we hit the Mini Chef restaurant because… well we had to. I’ll review that experience later, but let’s just say it is a bit pricey. So for day 2 we stopped at a grocery store near by, grabbed some makings for sandwiches and had much cheaper sandwiches by the mosaic for lunch. It worked out a lot better for our wallets and you could still watch everything nearby.

How did they make the mosaic that has 2 images? If you look up close, you can see it is all made of 1x1 cheese slopes. There is no sign nearby that says how many they used, but it is definitely cool how they did it. Makes me want to try it, but probably on a smaller scale.

Near the mosaic is a koi pond made from bricks. I didn’t get a picture of it, but above the pond are real plants that hang down and on those plants are brick butterflies. The Square as a whole had a lot of real plants with various brick built plants and animals mixed in.

The full scale Bugatti Chiron will be at the LEGO® House in the Square through 10 June 2019 (so not much longer). It was pretty cool to see. While you can’t get up close to touch it, you still get a pretty good view.

You can see my set review of #42083-1 here and some pictures of an actual car and the factory I saw in France here.

The display had a touch screen attached where you could control the functions of the car to include all of the lights and then a sound system that made it sound like the car was really powering up its engine. Lots of onlookers took pictures of it and it always seemed to be a popular place to hang out.

Nearby the car were some smaller cases. I took 2 pictures. The first is of the engine parts that they built to actually power the car. The second is of the Technic parts they used to built it and a few of the assembled patterns. They also had a case with the side mirror design inside and then a case with a lot of #42083-1 wheels. The wheel case was a contest where if you guessed the right number of wheels, you could win a #42083-1 set for free. My NLS, my 5-year old, and I all guessed. We’ll see if any of us were close.

Overall, the LEGO® Square is a great welcoming space. There are still a number of things to do and its a great place to hang out. My NLS pointed out that if she worked in the area in Billund, it would be a great place to bring a lunch and hang out to get away from work.

As a Dad with little kids, the plight of bathrooms is real. Are they clean? And in Europe especially, is there one I can use? The LEGO® House bathrooms all seemed pretty clean to me. There were a number throughout the building to include in the Square area. The ones in the Square were the biggest with stations to change diapers, stalls with kid sized toilets, and a line of sinks at a little kid level. Gold star to the LEGO® House for realizing kids would be there and you need good bathrooms for those kids.

Right by the bathrooms are a bunch of lockers. The lockers are free to use if you purchased a ticket. You swipe your entrance wrist band by the locker and it locks it. When you want to open it, just swipe your wrist band again. We put our lunch cooler in there and a few coats which worked out great.

You can buy your tickets to the Experience Zones at the information desk in the Square or you can save money and buy them online ahead of time. If you buy online, you can print or use your phone to scan a code at a machine in the Square. It will disperse your entrance wrist band right there. If you have trouble, there were a number of employees in the vicinity who were very helpful. On the first day, an employee saw us fighting with the sticky part and he came over and helped to install the bands on us and our kids.

Overall, the employees there were great. They were very helpful, gave tips to my 5-year old on some of the building challenges, and were very friendly. On the first day, there was one who had one of the Technic cars that has a pull back function. It seemed like every time we walked through the square, he launched it to my kids. On the first day at the end of our visit, my kids were overtired and didn’t want to leave so it was a little rough trying to get them out the door. Then from about 50 feet away, the Technic car goes right by my 5-year old and both kids stopped being upset and wanted to play again. Just enough distraction to get us out the door (Thank you!).

Not sure if I got any pictures of them, but in the Square, they also had some of the larger rubberized bricks to play with. My almost 2-year old enjoys those and it worked out good. My 5-year old wanted to make some custom minifigures to buy in the Brand Store so while that happened, my almost 2-year old and I built with the large bricks.

In the Square there are also some brick built sculptures of the LEGO® family. I failed to get a picture of them, but I believe my NLS has one. I will add it to the post later.

Finally, the Square is your entry point into the Experience Zones and you can see the bottom of the Tree of Creativity from the Square. We’ll get into the Experience Zones next.

Happy building!

Store Review - LEGO® Brand Store - The LEGO® House - Billund, Denmark

If you park at the parking garage and walk to the LEGO® House, the entrance you will take is by the yellow steps outside. Underneath those steps is the LEGO® Brand Store inside. It’s like every other brand store in that there are a lot of sets and pick-a-brick. There are a few differences, but before we get into them the top of the store has a brick built background with minifigures and other characters built out of brick. They are depicting various scenes and some minifigures that have appeared in the past. The Shakespeare minifigure appeared in the first LEGO® Movie. The female minifigure next to the deer looks very similar to the girl found in series 10 of the collectible minifigures (without the shades).

Another picture of the creation above and then underneath the entrance to the store you can see a history of all of the logos. I did a poor job fitting them all in so you can’t see the first or last one, but you get the idea.

This store has a Mosaic Maker. I failed to spend a lot of time reading everything or to see the price. Online, it is advertised as being $129.99 for a 15”x15”, 5 color mosaic with 4,500 pieces. I didn’t see anyone use this while I was there and if you go to LEGO’s website, Billund doesn’t show up when you go to book online.

The store was pretty well stocked. I didn’t go around and get pictures of everything, but the recent Ideas sets were there and the Creator Expert line was well stocked too. There wasn’t too much out of the ordinary although I did catch a few LEGO® Education sets which I don’t normally see in the brand stores.

The store had a this build in it. The label says that it is a fan build not available for sale at the store, but it doesn’t say who made it or if it depicts anything specific. You’ll notice some pick-a-brick containers by the fan build. Unlike most stores that have a wall, this one has them spread out. I think it is because the back wall is actually the yellow steps on the front of the building. I did not get a pick-a-brick bucket, but a skim through showed some decent parts available. They had the newer plant piece available in stock which I would have added to my bucket.

Also they had a large scale Garmadon figure in the store. They weren’t highlighting anything specific about Ninjago and this minifigure is not in front of the Ninjago sets, but it’s always fun to see what sorts of things they build. In the background you can see a large 2x4 red brick. Other than those, that was it for decorations outside of the ordinary. To be fair, if you wanted to see more awesome builds, just go another 100 feet or so into the LEGO® House.

The store sells a bunch of LEGO® House swag to include mugs, t-shirts, minifigure key chains, and a book about the LEGO® House. My NLS got a minifigure and I got some of the exclusive sets (which I’ll cover at another time). The only other set I saw that you can’t get everywhere was #40305-1: LEGO Brand Store. It was out of stock and the employee said they would be getting a shipment in the day after I left. I was disappointed, but given the exchange rate today, 230 DKKs comes out to be $34.40. If you look on Brickset.com, it says the price in the US is $24.99. So I’m glad they were out of stock because I would have paid an extra $10 over buying it from a Brand Store in the US.

Overall it was a good store. They had a good selection of sets in stock and the store employees were helpful. I did not go around comparing prices too much so I can’t tell you if it’s worth it to buy sets there or not. Definitely check the exchange rate if you are there and see if you should just wait to buy in the US.

One note about buying LEGO sets in Europe… the VAT or Value Added Tax is added into the price already. This is unlike the US where sales tax is added on at the register. Some areas in Europe have places where you can get a form at the store and turn your receipt and form in at a location at an airport before you leave to get reimbursement for paying VAT. The store there has signs mentioning that VAT savings so it might be something to look into if you fly to Billund.

Obviously the big draw for LEGO® fans is the LEGO® House exclusive sets. I will capture #21037-1: LEGO House, #40366-1: LEGO House Dinosaurs, and #4000026-1: LEGO House Tree of Creativity in individual reviews.

Is this the Best Brick Mosaic(k) Software Yet?

If you've looked around at the LEGO fan sites and some of the photo streams, you're bound to have seen some mosaic MOCs.  If you haven't seen any of them, you can see a few of the record holding mosaic creations at this site.  I fully admit that I am not artistic enough to build one on my own, but I have looked into some of the free software options online.  If you do a search for 'LEGO Mosaic Software' there are a few sites that will let you submit a picture, tweak it, and then will spit out instructions and a piece count.  From my limited experience, most of them need specific types of pictures and have a hard time turning pictures with details or certain color schemes into LEGO brick mosaics.  

Well Bricklink just recently released their version of brick building mosaic software called Mosaick (and since I'm promoting them, here is a promotion for the Bricks for Bricks Bricklink Store).  Why are they doing this?  Well Bricklink is a great place to get bricks and you can find about all of the bricks ever made out there.  So why not build a software that encourages people to buy bricks.  Then of course when you buy bricks from someone who sells on Bricklink, they get to charge their fee and make money.  How does this version stack up?  Here is a quick example of how Mosaick worked using a pretty detailed picture.  

I am into aviation (despite not doing a lot of builds related to that area) and specifically fighter jets.  So here is picture of a formation of F-35s.

Picture from http://www.af.mil

To use Mosaick, you don't have to download anything.  All you do is drag and drop the picture file that you want to use onto the website.  Easy!  I took the F-35 picture and dropped it in.  

The first task is to figure out how you want to set up your mosaic.  My options for this picture were square, 4x3, 3x2, and 5x3.  Having messed with the software some, different pictures give you other options and some will let you customize it.  Square lets you move a square around the picture to select what you want to do.  For this case, I picked the 5x3 aspect ratio just to see what it would come out like.  The first was 25x15 inches or 80x48 studs (or 2.5x1.5 standard sized LEGO base plates assuming a standard sized base plate is 32x32 studs) in color using plates.

It's not super detailed, but you can tell what the picture is for the most part.  And for a little over $1,800 you can buy all the parts to make this through Bricklink (yikes!).  

Okay, so money is no issue for you.  You just want a super cool mosaic built from LEGO plates.  How about 75x45 inches or 240x144 studs(7.5x4.5 standard baseplates).  In my opinion, this looks awesome!  Wow!  Considering how detailed the original picture is, this definitely captures it... granted it is huge, but that's another story.  And for over $16,000, you can buy the parts right away!

Just for fun, you can also grey scale the picture.  Same size as the previous one, but obviously less colors.  As you can see the one aircraft on the bottom left is hard to see, but the details are mostly there.  Given that the parts are mostly dark and light grey with some black and white, the price comes down substantially to ~$1,500.

If you've looked at the pictures I've posted or into Mosaick itself, you've seen that you can choose plates, tiles, or bricks.  This obviously will adjust the price based on what parts are available and the colors of those parts.  So again the same picture with the same dimensions, but back in color, this time in tiles.  The picture looks almost the same and the cost goes down from ~$16,000 to ~$7,500.  To me it looks like the detail is still there.  

Same picture again, but with bricks.  This one brings the price to just under $4,000.  Again, it still looks just as detailed to me.  

Also, I took the picture down a size so now it is 50x30 inches or 160x96 studs (5x3 standard baseplates).  This brings down the cost to ~$1,800 with bricks.  The detail isn't as good, but I still think it looks pretty sharp.  

So failure on my part... I didn't capture any of the piece counts or numbers of separate colors.  I did however save a version of the instructions.  You have the option to print, but I think using a computer would probably be easier when it comes time to build.  Tracking where you're at would be a challenge for a mosaic this big though.  I'm sure you could come up with a good method though.  

Whew!  If you've made it down this far, I'm curious to know what you think.  Have you messed with Mosaick at all?  Has anyone actually built anything?  I think that the key is to try the different methods out to see how you can keep the detail in your picture while keeping the parts cost lower. Overall, I think Mosaick is the best LEGO brick mosaic software I have ever seen.  It's only in beta version so hopefully the Bricklink team will continue to make it better.  I'm excited to see what happens with this tool and I look forward to someday having the time a bricks to build a giant mosaic for my wall.