Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to one and all (Santa by Catarino0937).

Groovy, man

I realized I never blogged Iain Heath's VW Microbus.

More bowling

Pepa Quin's Team Fortress blue team relaxes with some elf bowling.

Bowl full of strikes

At the Santa Quality Control testing center (by Si-MOCS) they've come up with a fun way for impact testing the toy nutcrackers.

Story girls

Ezra B. shows off Alice, Red and Dorothy, "and your little dog, too."

Miniland month

I know, I've been totally off the ball here. TheBrickMan spent the whole month of November giving me great content, and I was out of the picture for most of the time. I'll go back and look at them individually, but he closed out the series with an amazing group photo.

Gotta catch 'em all

Gotta catch 'em all by Carson Hart.

Ninja

Here's another from the BrickMan, a ninja.

I pity the fool

I apologize for being away from blogging for three weeks. In the meantime, I've missed out on the bulk of TheBrickMan's month of miniland figs. These are all great, so I'll probably continue posting them until I get them all up here, but today let's look at Mr. T and Justin Bieber (it's great that he's up to the minute with the celebrity tabloid news here - I'd love to see a divorcing Kim Kardashian next).

Florida

PJMoyer was at Legoland Florida for opening day.

Don't believe the brick!

TheBrickMan is celebrating the newest Legoland park with a month of miniland figures. This looks like it will be a great project, so I'll be coming back to this time and again over the next 30 days. Anyway, first up is Flavor Flav.

Happy Halloween

Every year the miniland displays at the various Legolands are decorated up for holidays. SoCalRay has a gallery of pictures from Legoland California Halloween 2002.

Bothie

Over on FBTB they are running a series of polls of their favorite 2011 sets and figs called the 1st Annual FBTB Awards. Anyway, someone (Ace?) produced this great trophy.

Sunshine state

Ricky Brigante, Darcie Vance, and Michael Gavin, who go by the Flickr title 'Insidethemagic' have also been to Legoland Florida. They have over 400 photos, so I could spend days and days posting these, but I'll start with two that caught my eye - this shipwreck off of Saint Augustine, and billboards in New York. Note the Classic Space logo.

Sunny Florida

Joe Meno was in Florida for the grand opening of Legoland. As you may well expect, he took a ton of great photos. I'll probably come back to this photoset a few times, but first I wanted to take a look at the new pirate section of miniland, as that is unique to this park and I hadn't seen photos previously.

Where in the world is Carm... er... miniland Gary

So miniland Gary came to BrickCon again, but he didn't go home with Nathan, instead, he left with Guy Himber.

Gary's travels

Following up on yesterday's post, last year Nathan brought his miniland Gary to BrickCon, but he got lost. He was rescued by some kind AFOLs, who took him on a global trek for the next year, taking in various sites around the US, and also the homeland - Billund Denmark.

Gary on the move

Okay, I saw something from BrickCon, but to fully appreciate it we have to go back a bit. You may all remember the video from a few years back where some Indiana Jones and LEGO fans recreated the famous scene of Indy running from the giant ball, but with a guy running from a giant LEGO ball rolling after him down a San Francisco street. Okay, it turned out their ball was actually a huge styrofoam ball covered with a skin of baseplates, but that doesn't take away from the utter coolness. Anyway, in 2009, Mythbusters tried it out. In the process they went to Legoland and enlisted Gary McIntire (and, IIRC, a bunch of SandLUGgers) to help build a giant LEGO ball. Be sure to watch the video linked. Anyway, on to this blog. Nathan Proudlove commemorated this with his own Miniland version of Gary and the giant ball.

Team Fortress 2, take 2

Pepa Quin made his own Team Fortress 2 blue team.

Would you like some tea?

Tommy Williamson's Alice and Hatter were on display at BrickCon.

Keep your hands off me, you damn dirty physicist

Iain's apes were having a bit of fun at Hawking's expense at BrickCon.

Tomorrow we work on what to do if you're attacked by someone with a kumkwat

Micah Berkoff's Self defense against fresh fruit was part of the PythonScape display at BrickCon.

Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

Powerpig made this tribute: Steve has left the stage.

Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2 by Arkov/Lego Junkie was on display at BrickCon.

Bring out your dead!

I'm not dead! another Pythonscape contribution, this time from Rabidnovaracer.

And now for something in the same vein

Check out the collaborative display at BrickCon.

Pythonscape

AFOLs from around the world are gathering in Seattle this weekend for BrickCon 2011. One feature this year is Pythonscape, a miniland-scale group display. GeekyTom puts the gang in armor with his So-called Arthur king and his silly English knnnnnnigits .

South Beach

More from Legoland Florida: South Beach. BTW, I just wanted to note that I have yet to see any photos of the miniland pirates display. We know from the official site that Miniland USA will include five sections - Washington DC, New York City and Las Vegas will presumably be much like the displays at Legoland California, and I've previously blogged photos of some DC landmarks under construction at the park. The Florida section (much like the park in Carlsbad features sites from California) has gotten a lot of play in the media and I've shown some of these over the past few blog posts. The pirate section, however, is a mystery to me. The reporter who wrote today's article seems to have been standing right in front of the display: "...said Adrian Jones, Legoland general manager as he looked over the cluster with Lego swashbucklers, ships and a volcano." And yet he took no photos! Grr. Maybe the park officials have not been allowing that, wanting the pirates section to be a surprise? Anyway, the park opens soon enough and I'm sure Flickr will be full of photos shortly.

Daytona Speedway

More from Legoland Florida: Daytona Speedway.

Tampa

More Florida previews: downtown Tampa.

Bok Tower Gardens

It looks like the press was recently brought in to Legoland Florida to promote up grand opening on October 15. Here's Bok Tower Gardens.

Free tickets to Legoland!

If you read this blog, you surely want to go to Legoland Florida, set to open on October 15. Well, you can get free tickets. If you sign up for the LEGO VIP program (at no cost) and follow the directions, you can get two free tickets to visit the park between October 24 and 30. I can't imagine why any LEGO fan who's within striking distance of Winter Haven won't take advantage of this offer.

Scooter

Aurore&aube created their own miniland take on the classic Homemaker set 212, Scooter.

A handy bird on a rainy day

Moctagon Jones presents the vultures from Tulgey Wood. For more Disney-themed creations, see DisneyBricks.

The Tweedles

Moctagon Jones presents Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. For more Disney-themed creations, see DisneyBricks.

Alice in Miniland

Moctagon Jones presents Alice in Miniland. For more Disney-themed creations, see DisneyBricks.

One World Trade Center

Legoland California has a miniland scale version of One World Trade Center in their New York skyline.

What an incredible smell you've discovered!

Moodswim made Han and Luke in the trash compactor.