This retail store at Disney World's "downtown" shopping and entertainment district in Orlando, Florida entertains, teaches, and sells merchandise.
Renovated in a 1970s shingled retail building, it is divided into three parts: a central two-story pavilion that displays and sells traditional LEGO brick toys, an attached licensed products pavilion, and an outdoor playground.
As is appropriate in this vacation world, fantasy rules, with the entire place being an imaginary LEGO construction site. The original, shingled building has been treated to brightly colored metal panels, fenestration, and doors in character with LEGO's color system and toys. Over-scaled LEGO bricks and their ubiquitous play figures are found throughout the site and building. The bricks become columns, portals, and walls on the exterior. Inside, brick arches form a central two-story octagonal space with a dome "starlit" with fiber optics. The play figures chase each other around, inside and out.
At the special licensed product pavilion, theatrical scrims stretch below the ceiling with backlit leaf patterns. Its backyard playhouse theme continues with a life-size tree made of regular-size LEGO bricks and board fence partitioning.
Lighting is also placed carefully to animate and dramatize individual scenes of LEGO creatures. Some creatures are sited outside and away from the building to attract visitors. These include "actual size" sea monsters and aliens created from real LEGO bricks. A few arise out of the adjacent lake, others stand around the store entries as "photo opportunities."
Photography © Steven Brooke