Lifestyle
Legoland grows up. What it’s like to ride the new Space Mountain-inspired Galacticoaster
Legoland is growing up.
The Carlsbad theme park will on Friday open Lego Galaxy, a new 2.4-acre themed land that will feature its most adult-focused attraction yet in the Galacticoaster. An indoor, space-themed thrill ride, Galacticoaster is brief but impressionable, a spinning race through a darkened landscape to save a Lego-infused galaxy from an “asteroid of probable destruction.”
At 40 mph, it’s the park’s fastest ride, but coming in at about 60 seconds and focusing on banking and turning means it still has full family appeal. Expect it to serve as an introductory, big kid coaster for many. It’s infused with lighthearted humor — floating farmers and barnyard animals cruise among the stars — lending it a rather relaxed atmosphere for a save-the-world, fast-paced attraction. In other words, it’s sleek, it’s hurried and it’s cutesy.
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“My favorite is the surfing alien,” says Tom Storer, North American project director for Merlin Magic Making, the creative team behind Lego experiences. “She’s my favorite thing to see in there. It’s right after the blast. It will sneak up on you.”
The Galacticoaster is the centerpiece of Lego Galaxy, which also includes two smaller outdoor attractions, a vintage-style shoot-’em-up video game and a play area for little ones. Its part of a $90-million investment in Legoland’s California and Florida parks on behalf of parent Merlin Entertainment (an identical Galacticoaster can be found in Lego’s Florida park). Lego Galaxy hopes to draw visitors — and perhaps new audiences — by focusing on slicker, more modern technology and injecting in the park the sort of excitable ride more commonly found at Legoland’s Southern California competitors.
Storer, for instance, isn’t shy about the Galacticoaster’s inspiration.
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1. Visitors wait to ride the Galacticoaster. 2. Los Angeles residents Veronica and Eloy Navarro with their children Zoe, 10, left, and Levi, 9, right, ride the Galacticoaster. 3. San Diego residents Yesenia Auer, 38, left, with her cousin Kelly Luquin, 34, right, and Luquin’s sons Emiliano and Leo, from left, are all smiles after riding the new indoor coaster.
“What is the space roller coaster of 2026? Space Mountain is a classic from back in the day,” he says, referring to the Disneyland Resort staple launched in 1977. “But this is kind of the new way.”
It is faster and brighter than Space Mountain, as the Galacticoaster is heavily populated with twinkling stars, planetary projections and many a Lego brick creation. But while Space Mountain tops off at about 32 mph, it likely still has Galacticoaster beat in the intensity factor due to its lift hill, sudden dips, jolting turns and near pitch-black darkness. No matter, says Storer, as here the objective was to place guests in a welcoming adventure with plenty to look at.
“When you think of outer space, you instantly think of stars and planets,” Storer says. “We have a really cool digital planet and we have stars everywhere.”
The Galacticoaster sits four per car, loading attendees parallel in a row via a moving platform. Once seated and locked in, it nearly immediately takes off, jetting riders into a darkened hallway with white lights before injecting them into a Lego galaxy. Lego aficionados or those who grew up with the sets will likely spy many an allusion to past toys. In the ride’s queue, for instance, guests in line will walk past a wall that features a timeline of many a Lego space set. Action comes fast, but surrounds guests, as the coaster cars rotate around a hurtling asteroid.
Visitors wait in line to ride the new indoor coaster at Legoland designed for families.
While it twists from side to side, which has drawn light comparisons to Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind at Walt Disney World’s Epcot, with some referring to this as sort of a starter version of that more powerful coaster, it’s a smooth and relatively unobtrusive twisting. Those prone to motion sickness — and I am one of them — likely need not be too concerned here.
While Legoland has other coasters, many are known as what Storer refers to as “pink knuckle” coasters, slang for safe for kids and families. Galacticoaster, with a minimum height requirement of 36 inches, certainly is as well, but the creative executive hopes it falls somewhere between the pink and white knuckle level of force, the latter term reserved for the most thrilling of coasters.
“We’re known for having ‘pink knuckle’ coaster, where it’s not too scary,” he says. “It’s kind of, ‘My first coaster.’ This is family-friendly. We’d never do anything that’s not family-friendly. We want to make sure our guests from 5 to 12 have lots to do, but it’s a little more punchy and has that cool launch with a space blast-off feel.”
Theme park aficionados will be keen to know that this is the first attraction in the park to feature an animatronic figure. The character of Biff Dipper, an engineer, will be found in the ride’s preshow, familiarizing guests with the story of the asteroid that spells impending doom. Stout and slightly gruff, Dipper has a digital face that can approximate more than 40 expressions. The animatronic, says Storer, was an important investment for the park, as Legoland in Lego Galaxy was cognizant of guests becoming bored in what will surely be one of the park’s longest lines this upcoming spring and summer season.
The character of Biff Dipper is Legoland’s first animatronic figure. Dipper is in the preshow of the Galacticoaster.
There are interactive elements throughout Lego Galaxy. In the Galacticoaster, for instance, riders will build a virtual approximation of a spaceship from a touchscreen, selecting options for wings, cannons and more. Some are militant. Others look like burgers or rainbows. There are 625 variations, and the creation will then appear at the start and finish of the attraction, injected into the ride’s projectors via a guest wristband. Legoland officials like to refer to Galacticoaster as a 10-minute experience, a time that takes in the preshow with the Dippper figure as well as the construction of the spacecraft.
Elsewhere in Lego Galaxy, there’s a full video game-like experience called the Rocket Assembly Bay. Here, guests will first build their own spaceship, and then have it scanned into the game for a cooperative shoot-’em-up. Rocket Assembly Bay is good fun, and rewarding even, to see a virtual scan of a hand-built ship injected into the game, this despite that fact that the play experience is largely a modern update of old coin-op “Asteroids.”
“There’s something about the simplicity of some of the things that have been done,” Storer says.
Two other core attractions dot the land. The G-Force Test Facility is a spinner that’s pitched as an astronaut training experience. Guests with a minimum height of 40” will be elevated off the ground via vehicles situated on rotating arms. There’s plenty of swinging and rotating action in this more standard amusement park-like creation, although Storer notes that riders won’t experience any actual G-forces. Still, here’s one that those with a propensity to motion sickness may want to take a pass on.
Austin Rafie, 7, poses with characters at Lego Galaxy, a new space-themed land, at Legoland in Carlsbad.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Lego Galaxy is rounded out with a play area and the preschool-focused ride Launch & Land. For those with a minimum height of 34 inches, this is a casual, patient experience, one in which seated guests will gently lift off into the air for a slightly elevated view of the land. Nominally designed as a spaceport, Lego aliens and spaceships populate the area. Press a button near one of the ships, and initiate, for instance, an engine test.
But don’t expect anything too serious. The Galacticoaster, after all, has a farting space cow.
King Charles III talked eloquently of its historic importance in his speech to a joint session of Congress. President Trump praised it in his toast at the state dinner for the king’s visit to Washington. But nowhere was the special relationship between the United States and Britain more obvious than in the wardrobes of Queen Camilla and Melania Trump. They didn’t just compliment each other. They looked complementary.
Their husbands may have dressed to represent their offices, the king in his trademark Savile Row pinstripes, pocket handkerchief nattily puffed, the president in his red, white and blue. But the women, in their multiple outfits, did a lot of the subliminal work, practically shouting through their seams “hands across the ocean.” For a story that would be told mostly in photo ops and brand values — Trump brand, royal brand, fashion brands — that mattered.
In this at least the queen and the first lady seemed visibly on the same page. And while that may have been expected from Camilla, whose job is built on and defined by symbolism, it was more of a surprise from Mrs. Trump, who often seems as interested in pursuing her own agenda and protecting her privacy (all those hats and coats) as she is in supporting her husband’s or catering to the public eye.
Which may reflect not only the first couple’s well-known esteem for the royals, but also how much the royals understand and can leverage their appeal to the Trumps.
The sartorial outreach started as soon as the king and queen deplaned on Monday, Camilla in a light pink Dior coatdress — Dior being one of Mrs. Trump’s go-to designers and the brand she wore on the first day of her state visit to Britain. Dior, as it happens, is also synonymous with well-appointed luxury. Owned by the French billionaire Bernard Arnault, the chairman of LVMH and a guest at the Trump inauguration, the label is designed by Jonathan Anderson, who is from Northern Ireland. In other words, it ticks both the diplomatic protocol box and the Trump taste box.
And if that wasn’t bonding enough, a Cartier pin on the coatdress Camilla wore had been given to Queen Elizabeth II in 1957 on her first official visit to the United States and features a conjoined Union Jack and Stars and Stripes, a reminder of just how long this particular allyship has existed.
It set the tone for the trip.
The women also mirrored each other’s choices in shade (springlike) and sourcing (local designers) at their first meeting on Monday. The first lady wore a buttery yellow form-fitting skirt suit by Adam Lippes, the New York designer who made her inauguration coat, and the queen, a white Anna Valentine coatdress edged in floral embroidery.
Which turned out to be simply a prelude to the official military greeting the next day, when Mrs. Trump wore white (Ralph Lauren) and Camilla’s mint green look by Fiona Clare, a London couturier, was so pale it seemed white. And the similarities didn’t stop there. The outfits had similar nipped-in besuited lines and were topped with wide-brimmed straw hats that almost matched.
Even more strikingly, Camilla wore another historic piece of jewelry: the Cullinan V brooch, which features an 18.8-carat heart-shaped diamond, one of nine stones cut from the 3,000-carat Cullinan diamond originally given to Edward VII. (Two other Cullinan diamonds were incorporated into the British royal scepter and the imperial crown of Britain.) It was a souvenir from the notional vaults of Buckingham Palace, the place Mr. Trump posted he “always wanted to live,” and a canny nod to the president’s admiration for royal trimmings — and the equation of size with importance.
Still, perhaps no images were as striking in their subtext as those unveiled Tuesday night at the first white-tie state dinner since 2007.
That was when the first lady opted for a light pink strapless gown, also by Dior, just like Camilla’s pink arrival coat. (Coincidence? Doubtful.) And it wasn’t any old pink; it was delphinium pink, delphinium being one of the king’s favorite flowers. (Notably, the dress was custom-made, like Mrs. Trump’s Ralph Lauren suit before it. Clearly, designers no longer have any reservations not only about seeing their clothes bought by the Trumps, but also about working with the Trumps.)
Camilla was also in pink, albeit more of a fuchsia shade, again by Fiona Clare, this time paired with an enormous amethyst and diamond necklace that once belonged to Queen Victoria. The king may have given the president a golden bell as a dinner gift and offered a toast that was a master class in tact, but the queen in her opulent gems gave him something else: the opportunity to feel like royalty for a night.
Fashion, it turns out, can be as effective a tool when it comes to flattery as any words.
Who doesn’t love a seaside soundbath or a spa day? But wellness is expensive — and self-care shouldn’t break the bank. So we’ve curated a handful of free wellness activities for the month of May to keep you stretched, sane and grounded.
But first: One of these events is blending wellness, culture, community and healing in an interesting way.
For more than 38 years the World Stage Performance Gallery, in South Los Angeles’ Leimert Park, has presented live music, poetry, spoken word and other forms of cultural expression in its performance gallery. On May 23, it will stage its first annual Sacred Music and Healing Festival in Leimert Park.
It’s an ambitious undertaking, says Executive Director Dwight Trible. The idea behind the festival, he says, is that “music is medicine.”
“At a time when many are seeking restoration, grounding and connection,” he said, “we are creating a space where sound, rhythm and collective presence become tools for healing.”
We caught up with Trible to learn more about the free event in a conversation that has been edited for length and clarity.
You’ve been thinking about staging this festival for years. Why finally do so now?
The time is right to do this. Democracy is just barely visible and hanging on. I think we have a rogue administration and I do believe that they’re pushing swiftly towards a fascist regime. Most people that I encounter are very, very angry about [that]. And whenever there is some upheaval in the world, or in our community, Leimert Park has always been this galvanizing place where everybody comes together to learn what’s going on, to find out what the solutions are and what the marching orders are. Usually it’s about some kind of injustice that’s happening to the black and brown community. This time we just felt that the way of counteracting the upheaval and negativity that exists currently in our country was to look at it from a different perspective: with love, compassion, faith and education.
(Illustration by Robbin Burnham WACSO / For The Times)
How is the festival different than a traditional music festival?
It’s a wellness experience shaped through culture, where jazz, Indigenous traditions and healing arts come together in one shared space. We wanted to make it as diverse as possible. To not only have the African-oriented or African American music, but music from Mexico, Indigenous Native American music, Asian music, so people can be exposed to different forms of spiritual music. Most of the time in South Los Angeles we will go to the church and hear this sort of gospel Baptist music — and there will be some of that too — but there are all sorts of ways to express your spiritual views. So we wanted to have something that everybody can relate to.
How exactly is music healing, in your opinion?
We’ve all been to concerts — whether symphonic music or jazz or new age music — and we go in with one mindset and when we come out, we have a completely different disposition. I think music is one of the strongest ways of healing. Music is medicine. It’s sometimes better than taking pharmaceutical drugs. It changes your mind, your mental state, your spiritual state. When you surrender to the music it’s definitely something that’s going to transform. Music has a direct impact on the nervous system. Hopefully it will calm the body, shift emotional states and create a sense of connection. I hope that people from all over the city will come.
What other wellness offerings will be at the festival?
We have a main stage, which will have [musicians]. But there will be two other tents. In one, there will be people doing yoga, tai chi — the more physical things of peace and healing. Then we have another tent where there will be presentations on herbs and meditation and other ways of healing people’s bodies. There will be about 25 booths with other people [showcasing] healing remedies and some of the hospitals will be talking about mental health.
Who will be performing?
One of our founders of the World Stage, he’s a poet, Kamau Daáood. We’ll have Carlos Niño & Friends and I’m sure he’ll bring a special guest. The great pianist Eric Reed. Jimetta Rose Voices of Creation. I do progressive music and I’ll have a group playing there as well. We’ll also have people from our spoken word workshop who will be doing presentations throughout the day. There’s a store called Nappily Naturals & Apothecary in Leimert Park — they do healing remedies and meditation — and they will be curating the healing tent.
You’ve said the festival reflects “a deeper narrative emerging in Los Angeles.” What is that?
I think the narrative is: there has got to be another way to do things rather than to try and use force against force. We [can’t] bring peace by bringing war. I know that a lot of people are getting tired of what’s going on and thinking about how do we stop this? You have a person leading the country and they’re prepared to use guns and ammunition to be able to make sure they can keep doing whatever they’ve set out to do. You have to go at it another way. The power of love is stronger than the power of hate.
Sacred Music and Healing Festival, 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Saturday, May 23; 4321 Degnan Blvd., Leimert Park.
Here’s what else is happening across the wellness landscape in May.
Mindfulness with Christiane Wolf at the Wende Museum of the Cold War in Culver City.
(Stella Kalinina / For The Times)
Midweek is “Wellness Wednesdays” at the Wende Museum of the Cold War in Culver City. The museum will host a free, hourlong, guided meditation — led by Christiane Wolf — in its Glorya Kaufman Community Center’s A-frame theater, a refurbished, century-old MGM prop house. Afterward, the Cantilever Collective will lead a free movement workshop in the sculpture garden, helping participants shake out any remaining remnants of stress. There will also be complimentary garden refreshments such as homemade soup and fresh bread from Clark Street Bakery. 9-11 a.m. every Wednesday in May; 10808 Culver Blvd., Culver City.
Similarly, the Hammer Museum hosts free, guided Mindful Awareness Meditations every Thursday in its Billy Wilder Theater, a collaboration with UCLA Mindful. Can’t get away midday to attend? The museum broadcasts the event live on its website. 12:30-1 p.m. every Thursday in May; 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood.
Los Angeles County Parks & Recreation is hosting a week of free “golden hour” wellness experiences in dozens of L.A. County parks in a program it’s calling, not surprisingly, “Parks at Sunset.” Activities include yoga, guided meditation, painting and dance; they’re meant “to help attendees relax, recharge, and reconnect in the heart of L.A. County parks.” The best part? They’re all free “drop-in” happenings, with no registration required. 4:30-6:30 p.m. May 14-22; check the site for park addresses near you.
ace/121 Gallery, which is operated by the nonprofit Glendale Arts, will host a “Mindful Art for Wellness” workshop for participants over 16 years old. The instructor will start off by giving attendees a prompt to spark creativity along with stress-reducing breathing exercises. Then the art-making begins. No experience is necessary. Simply “slowing down is the point,” the organization says. 7-8:30 p.m. May 18; 121 N. Kenwood St., Glendale.
Clockshop is an arts and culture nonprofit that puts on free programming in public spaces with the goal of connecting Angelenos to the land they live on. Its annual kite festival is a much anticipated, colorful “gallery in the sky.” This year, the festival’s theme is: “Take a Breath.” That includes visitors’ own deep breaths to slow down and feel relaxed as well as “the wind that lifts our kites, the air that sustains us, and the open sky we’re committed to protecting,” Clockshop says. 2-6 p.m. May 9; Los Angeles State Historic Park, 1245 N. Spring St., downtown L.A.
Los Angeles State Historic Park will be busy in May! The National Alliance on Mental Illness — NAMI — has dubbed May 16, 2026, “the day of hope.” As part of that, the annual NAMIWalks Greater LA County Mental Health Festival will take place that day at Los Angeles State Historic Park. The donation-only event, with free wellness activities, includes NAMIWalks, a roughly 1.5-mile walk on a path around the perimeter of the park. The fair will include about 60 booths as well as a “mind and body area” with soundbaths, yoga and other wellness activities. 8 a.m.-1 p.m. May 16; Los Angeles State Historic Park, 1245 N. Spring St., downtown L.A.
Nearly 50 years ago the Venice Art Walk debuted as a one-day fundraiser. It’s since grown into a 10-day-long Art Exhibition + Auction benefiting the Venice Family Clinic. The VFC provides comprehensive healthcare services to more than 45,000 Angelenos. The free exhibition will showcase works by established, mid-career and emerging artists, with Alison Saar serving as the event’s signature artist. Auction bids will be accepted online. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. May 8-17; 910 Abbot Kinney in Venice.
A line in Mark Binelli’s fascinating piece in The New York Times Magazine about Michael Jackson’s estate-led rehabilitation campaign really jumped out at me. Referring to the early ’90s, the period in which the biopic “Michael” ends, Binelli writes, “It was also among the last moments that Jackson looked cool: the white V-neck and the unbuttoned white dress shirt, black pants, hair pulled back.”
What an astute observation. By this point in Jackson’s life, he had already given us his most iconic looks: the Sky Masterson-esque ivory pinstriped suit and cobalt blue socks in the “Smooth Criminal” video; the leather jacket from “Thriller,” as red as pulled taffy; and the black Florsheim loafers worn with sparkly socks, which he pulled out for his inaugural moonwalk in 1983.
In images of him from this time, he’s still just the musical magician who vanquished MTV. The allegations of child molestation that would dog him through his later life (and afterlife) haven’t yet appeared. It’s this period that fashion designers have long been selectively fixated on, with little room for his personal life.
In 2017, Supreme sold a series of hoodies and tees showing a bow-tied “Billie Jean”-era MJ. In January 2019, Louis Vuitton, then under the stewardship of Virgil Abloh, created an entire collection inspired by Jackson. Abloh, in an interview before the show, described Jackson as “the most important innovator in men’s wear history,” a plaudit that, even then, came off as too generous.
There were ensembles with characters from 1978’s “The Wiz” (including Jackson’s Scarecrow), a cherry zip jacket owing to “Thriller” and a T-shirt with an airbrushed rendition of some gleaming socks parked in black shoes.
Abloh’s timing was terrible. Eight days later, “Leaving Neverland,” about Jackson’s alleged pedophilia, premiered at Sundance. With the public reminded of the child molesting allegations that trailed the singer’s latter years, his reputation was again upended. After the documentary premiered on HBO in March, Louis Vuitton halted production on items that directly referenced Jackson.
What I had forgotten about this backlash was that it didn’t take hold immediately. Two months after the show, in a March 2019 New Yorker profile of Abloh (who died in 2021), the designer is asked about “Leaving Neverland” and the allegations that Jackson had molested two boys. He said he hadn’t heard of the documentary but that he had been inspired by “the Michael that I thought was universally accepted, the good side, his humanitarian self.” It would take four more days for Vuitton to nix the Jackson goods.
Yet one can see why Abloh might have thought his explanation would fly. Fashion has, after all, always been capable of pushing past a controversy, if the person’s image is indelible enough.
The photo of Jackson in his black loafers, as I’ve seen on infinite mood boards over the years — that’s strong iconography. And now the box office might of “Michael” seems like proof that the singer’s defenders have won in the court of public opinion, even with a new lawsuit against his estate filed by four siblings who knew Jackson as children.
The invitation to the Jackson-inspired Louis Vuitton show was a single white glove coated in chandelier-sparkly rhinestones. I still have mine in storage. It felt important to keep as a token of a luxury house trading on the image of a contentious figure. Today it is really the only existing piece of that collection that is actually tied to the singer. You can buy one on eBay for as much as $3,000.
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