Thanks to my job I knew I would be flying to Wellington for work soon, so I made the most of a fly in/fly out trip by flying home on Saturday instead of Friday night, pay for my own hotel and go see the Lego exhibition which I knew would not be making it to Auckland. I’ve also been waiting for it to come to New Zealand for over a year, since I found out it was in Melbourne.
Thanks to points I have accumulated over the years with the Intercontinental Hotel I had enough points to treat myself to a night in the fabulous Wellington Intercontinental. When I checked in it turned in to an even bigger treat as they upgraded the room I was booked in to and offered me complimentary drink vouchers or a leather embossed credit card holder. Rather than drink in the bar alone using the drink vouchers I opted for the card holder.
The exhibition was only about a 15-minute walk away from the hotel and it was a stunningly beautiful day for a walk, which was a huge relief coz all day Friday it had rained and was really windy. The exhibition is at the Takina Convention Centre, the same venue where the Brickman’s last show was held. Previously, it focused on dinosaurs, but this time it’s all about Star Wars and I’m a lot more interested in Star Wars than dinosaurs. At the entrance there was a cool life-size model of Gandalf telling me “You shall not pass”, but I was too excited to see the Lego to obey him.
The exhibition opened with a welcome video message from Brickman telling us all the facts and figures and then a black curtain above us wound back to reveal a massive Imperial Star Destroyer and two small fighter ships racing towards it in attack formation. My jaw dropped and I said out loud – Wow. After seeing that I knew this was going to be a really good exhibition and well worth making the effort to try and see it.
The whole exhibition was really interactive with so much to see and do and it was easy to forget these massive structures were actually built out of Lego and must have taken many people many months to build.
After seeing all the characters with lightsabers you could build your own and through the magic of CGI you can have your photo taken with your lightsaber lit up.
After the exhibition I had plenty of time to wander around the city before heading home.
While wandering around I found the Lego shop which I hadn’t been to before, it was a little bit smaller than I expected but I loved how they had a lot of the art sets built and on display.
