Florida: Legoland hotel moving toward summer opening

The hotel going up at the entrance of Legoland Florida in Winter Haven will be small by the standards of theme park hotels: five stories, 152 rooms.

Due to be completed next summer, it will be heavily themed for kids with model figures made of Lego bricks and guestrooms decorated with pirate, adventurer or royal court themes.

The Miami Herald got a peek this month at the construction site as well as renderings of the guestrooms. The skeleton of the building is up, but not the walls. The plaza where a smoke-exhaling dragon will go is just raw dirt now, filled with construction materials and debris.

The hotel will have a pool with cabanas for rent; a table service restaurant and a buffet with a child-size counter; views of Lake Eloise; peepholes in guestroom doors built at a child’s eye level; a separate park entrance for hotel guests, who will have early admission privileges; disco balls in the elevators that will light up and play dance songs when the doors close; an interactive lobby with Lego models and an oversized whoopee cushion; and a smoke-exhaling dragon in the courtyard.

The hotel will be Legoland Florida’s first and is intended to draw families for two-day visits. The go-ahead was given only after a similar hotel that opened next to Legoland California in April 2013 proved successful.

Walt Disney World’s hotels have about 24,000 rooms. Universal Orlando recently announced it will build its fifth hotel, which will bring Universal’s total to 5,200 rooms.

This story was originally published October 10, 2014 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Florida: Legoland hotel moving toward summer opening."