# China opens its first Legoland in Shanghai
China’s first Legoland resort opened to visitors in Shanghai on Saturday, bringing a major new theme-park property to the country’s largest city and adding another stop to the global Lego tourism map.
The resort was greeted by a towering 26-meter Lego figure named Dada, a visual centerpiece that immediately signaled the scale of the project. Built with 85 million Lego bricks, the Shanghai park is one of 11 Legoland resorts worldwide and was developed by Merlin Entertainments and the LEGO Group in partnership with the Shanghai government.
The park’s design leans heavily on spectacle and recognizable imagery. One of its main areas, Miniland, recreates well-known sights from China and beyond using Lego bricks. AP reported that the display includes Beijing’s Temple of Heaven and Shanghai’s Bund waterfront, giving visitors a brick-built version of places many domestic tourists already know well.
The resort also includes a boat tour through a historic Chinese water town built from Lego bricks. That mix of local landmarks and a globally familiar brand is central to the project’s appeal: the park is meant to work both as a theme park and as a showcase for the Lego universe.
Opening-day visitors described the site as a convincing recreation of a Lego world. One fan, Ji Yujia, said the park felt like “a real fairyland of Lego,” according to AP’s account. Performances featuring Legoland characters added to the launch-day atmosphere.
Tickets are priced from US$44 to US$84, placing the park within the premium end of family entertainment in China’s major cities. That pricing suggests the resort is aiming for a large audience of domestic and regional visitors who see theme parks as part of broader urban leisure spending.
The opening matters beyond novelty. It gives Lego a first foothold in the Chinese market with a dedicated resort, not just retail stores or exhibitions. It also places Shanghai in a more prominent position in the competition among Asian cities for destination entertainment projects that can draw repeat family traffic.
For Merlin Entertainments and the LEGO Group, the Shanghai project is also a test of whether a globally exported brand can be localized with enough Chinese landmarks and narrative touches to feel rooted rather than imported. The early design choices suggest the answer will depend on whether visitors respond to the mix of familiar icons, family rides and highly engineered visual scale.
