Legoland California Unveils Star Wars Miniland

Carlsbad, CA – None other than Princess Leia herself, Carrie Fisher, was on hand at LEGOLAND California today to cut the red ribbon on the launch of the park’s new STAR WARS Miniland. Throngs of eager STAR WARS fans young and old - including celebrity parents such as Christian Slater, Brooke Burke and Tony Hawk - were among the first to glimpse the newly constructed attraction, which houses scenes from all six films in the STAR WARS saga and one from the ‘STAR WARS: The Clone Wars’ animated television series. Each scene is replicated in 1:20 scale and the entire Miniland features roughly 2,000 models made of a staggering 1.5 million Lego bricks.

LEGOLAND California General Manager Peter Ronchetti greeted guests at the opening ceremony and stated, “This (STAR WARS Miniland) is unique in many ways. It’s the first in the world, and you can follow the chronological path through the STAR WARS timeline to retrace the major events of the amazing saga. But you’ll be further immersed in the STAR WARS experience as you pose with lifesize Lego models of people like Chewbacca, R2-D2 and of course, Darth Vader. And once you explore STAR WARS Miniland you will also notice there are interactive elements and features that really create what we call the hands-on minds-on experience of LEGOLAND California.”

A large team of model designers, animation electricians and landscapers worked for over thirteen months to bring the new Miniland to life. It took the model designers 143 hours just to develop and design the Millennium Falcon featured in the “STAR WARS: A New Hope” scene. For all models only commercially available bricks were used, and to help make the models last long they are actually glued together for display and sprayed with a UV coating to protect them from fading due to sun exposure.

We asked LEGOLAND Master Model Builder, Gary McIntire, what it was like working on the new STAR WARS Miniland. He answered, “I know, just as a STAR WARS fan myself, I would come out just to see this. I have the raddest job ever, I know that, and then you throw pretty much the most awesome project that I could ever possibly do at me… it’s been a dream! It’s been really, really rad.”

Lego has announced that LEGOLAND Germany and LEGOLAND Billund will also be opening STAR WARS Miniland areas in 2011.