Disclosure: We were gifted a family ticket for BRICKLIVE 2019 and some brick kits. All thoughts and opinions are my own
Sophie loves getting creative and building with bricks and Thomas has recently started to get into it too. We were recently gifted a family ticket for BRICKLIVE at the NEC in Birmingham and enjoyed an afternoon session there along with Sophie’s friend C and her mum. The two girls were very excited about getting to have a day out together and were looking forward to a fun afternoon at BRICKLIVE. They were especially excited at the prospect of getting to see all their favourite PAW Patrol characters recreated in brick form.
Needless to say, the PAW Patrol area was the first place we headed for. 21 characters from the hit children’s TV programme – all the pups (including Everest and Tracker), plus Ryder, Mayor Goodway, Mayor Humdinger and his kittens along with the Lookout and Marshall’s fire engine. The girls ran around excitedly, calling out “Look!! There’s Skye! There’s Rubble!” and of course they had to have their photos taken with each and every one of them!
I loved the fact that all the brick sculptures had an information board next to them showing how many bricks each model contained, how many builders were involved in making it and how long it took. It really made me appreciate just how much work went in to all the wonderful sculptures that we saw across BRICKLIVE.
It was lovely to bump into Natalie from Plutonium Sox in the PAW Patrol area too. I always love meeting other bloggers, especially those whose blogs I’ve followed for a long time.
The girls enjoyed posing for a PAW Patrol photo at the mosaic brick PAW Patrol photo cut-out board. We had to take a couple of photos with them swapping places as naturally they both wanted to be Skye.
The next stop was one of the brick pits which was filled with purple bricks. I have to confess the thought of taking my shoes off and stepping into a pit of small bricks sounds quite painful (have you ever stepped on a LEGO® brick barefoot?!) but the girls jumped in quite happily and were soon busy getting creative.
Thomas was quite keen to get out of the buggy and explore so we headed over to the DUPLO® brick pit so that he could join in the fun too. There was such a wonderful variety of different DUPLO® bricks here. Sophie particularly enjoyed getting creative with slides and number bricks while Thomas was just happy sitting amongst the bricks and being able to play with them to his heart’s content. I think all three children could have easily spent the rest of the session here but there was still so much else to explore.
The giant soft bricks were also lots of fun. Sophie and her friend enjoyed building a little house together and sitting inside it. Thomas had a go at trying to put the big bricks together. Knocking them down was so much easier and a lot more fun as far as he was concerned though!
Next stop was the brick sculptures of marine life in Brick Ocean. Sophie loved the killer whale with her baby; her friend adored the penguins and we were all amazed by the level of detail in the Coral Reef sculpture.
There was quite a long queue for the inflatable assault course in the middle of the hall. Thankfully it did move quite quickly though. I love this photo of Sophie coming off the slide at the end of it that my friend took. Pure joy.
Sophie and her friend loved being able to dress up as an Egyptian and a Beefeater and pose next to brick models.
The girls had a quick go on the racing ramps where you could create your own car and race it. This was a very popular area and the ramps were quite busy.
The graffiti walls were a little quieter. Sophie and her friend were quite happy here for a while, using bricks to write their names on the wall. Naturally we had to include Thomas and Jessica too.
We had a quick look at all the creations in the map builder zone. I loved the mini landmarks recreated in brick on the map of the world. There were some very unique and individual creations there too!
We finished off our afternoon with a brief look around the BRICKLIVE Force area. I have to confess that I’m not a Star Wars fan, so I didn’t recognise many of the models here. The girls loved the different models though, and Sophie got very excited spotting some planets in one area.
There was so much to do at BRICKLIVE that we didn’t quite manage to fit everything into our visit. We had a brief look at the marble run area and marveled at the amazing designs. The mosaic building area looked like fun. It brought back a few memories of doing similar things with Jessica and Sophie. Sadly we didn’t manage to join in with it this time though. We would have also liked to have tried the climbing wall and inflatable laser quest area had we had more time too.
It was a great afternoon out though. The girls certainly enjoyed seeing all the brick sculptures and had so much fun in the brick pits. Even Thomas got to have fun in the DUPLO® brick pit and the soft brick area. It was a lovely way to finish off our half-term.
It was so lovely to meet you all! Such a fun day out too. Don’t worry that you missed out on the laser quest, we joined the queue for a few minutes before noticing that children had to be over eight years old to go in. Libby did go on the climbing wall though and loved it! I think my favourite bit was seeing the marine models, they were incredible.
Nat.x
I loved the marine models – they were amazing weren’t they? Glad Libby enjoyed the climbing wall and good to know that we didn’t miss out with the laser quest. So glad that you had a lovely day out too 🙂