LEGOLAND's Cutting-Edge NINJAGO is a Smash

My three sons (ages 8, 6 and 4) were too young to realize it, but I wasn't.

This has been done before.

But as we recently chopped, blocked and laughed our way through LEGOLAND's newest attraction, I realized something else: This has never been done this way before.

NINJAGO is awash in kid-friendly ninja mystery: It sits near the back-right of the park; You work your way up to it. You can't see it from the outside; The ride is completely enclosed in a large, colorfully adorned building that requires walking through the Forbidden City-esque NINJAGO gates, past the brand-appropriate statues, live characters and fun side activities.

For all the fanfare outside, the nondescript doors of the attraction itself are quickly overlooked. All you can see is the darkness and ominous red lighting of the hallway and queue. It's loud in there due to amped-up music, and you're curious to find out what in the world is happening.

Once in line, the various NINJAGO heroes and villains adorn the walls on large posters, some of them instructing you about karate motions you're apparently gonna need. My boys named every character in quick succession and quickly started practicing for the ninja battle they now knew was coming, even as they still had no idea what the ride was actually about.

(What a great way to keep the little ones occupied and excited while waiting in a line! Pro Tip: All that practice karate chopping requires a little more elbow room than normal, however.)

"It's indoors and air-conditioned, which is great for a lot of the months here", says LEGOLAND Senior PR Director David Brady. "Every member of the family can ride it (with the exception that you can't hold a baby on your lap). It keeps score, so you are playing right against other people. Mom, dad, brother, sister-up to four people at a time-can track each other's scores. And you're basically using nothing more than ninja karate chopping moves, so it's a very small learning curve."

"You put on 3-D glasses, you ride through a wavy track, though it is flat. It is in the dark, and there are loud noises, with fog coming out and other 4-D touches, but there's no targeting device. You're not having to manipulate something or aim a tiny little dot. You're literally just chopping and punching your hands [at the screen] and you can see, 'oh, the red fireballs are from me, and the blue ones are from my family member.'"

So, yes, if you've ever played X-Box Kinect or the various Wii motion capture games, this is going to be very familiar. And for those of us old enough to have experienced the arcade shooters of yesteryear-where you "aimed" a plastic gun at the screen and shot up the baddies until they faded away in a splash of pixelated blood-there's a strange sense of nostalgia.

Yet, this is something totally new too: Four people sitting in a ninja-themed red orb with its score-keeping computer layout; working together, making ridiculous hand motions in repeated fashion; hooting and hollering and trash talking as NINJAGO villains, spiders, skeletons and other G-rated spooky stuff pop up and are just as quickly dispatched by your "thrown" fireballs, exploding into heaps of bloodless LEGO bricks.

"It's a game-changer in terms of the technology," said Brady, a veteran of the Disney parks scene before recently coming over to LEGOLAND.

"Some of the other theme parks have had those kinds of score-keeping rides for about 20 years, but we've gotten away from any kind of targeting device. It's literally just your hands. It's much easier to master, with much lower downtime for maintenance as you're not beating a device up hours and hours, day after day.

"The hands-free technology doesn't exist anywhere outside of LEGOLAND. We actually worked with the developer to come up with it. I'm sure, eventually, they'll license it to others and it will be all over the place, but for now, it's unlike anything else you'll experience anywhere on any other ride. It's a real bragging point for us. We typically don't have the real cutting-edge technology innovations-our attractions are usually a little more tame-so it's really great to have something that's a first throughout the industry."

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My inner big-kid quibbled with the fact the ride only spins on the track but remains flat at all times, even as the on-screen heroes jump down canyons, are flung from a catapult and generally fly around on a plane your simulation doesn't follow. Or that many of the 4-D touches (like fog, light and puffs of air) only occur once or twice. Or that many of the scenarios are repetitive, and the targeting seems a bit arbitrary even as it is admittedly innovative.

In the end, it didn't really matter what I thought.

The kids had such a blast interacting with these well-known heroes and villains that they demanded to "go again!" immediately after the ride came to an end. (We were "the mean parents" who forced them to experience something else for a little bit, but we did return an hour or two later after many requests.)

My boys would have ridden it 10 more times if we had let them (and had the daylight to spare), and isn't that really the true measure of success when it comes to a kid-first attraction like this?

What's more, getting to see the goofy, in-action look on your family's various faces (displayed on video screens after the ride is done) is worth the price of admission alone-though getting a copy of the prints costs the usual add-on charge.

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"The repeatability is huge," confirmed Brady. "There are all kinds of Easter eggs and high-scoring things that you won't notice your first time through. So I guarantee you're going to look at your score and the scores in your party and say, 'I wanna go right back again and try to beat that score'. You're gonna want to sit in a different seat to see if that plays an advantage. You might then see things that are really small and moving fast and try hitting those. It adds a lot of repeatability and a lot going on the screen.

"If you know the characters-and this is a franchise that LEGO has had for many years-you recognize the heroes, the villains, the locations and Easter eggs. There's a lot to take in and it's very immersive."

Yes, what's old is new in a way with NINJAGO, even with the appreciated fresh approach.

And the ability to collectively share an exciting slice of family adventure never gets old.

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