Legoland Billund

Why it works

By the mid-1960s about 20,000 people a year were turning up at the LEGO factory in Billund, a small town in Jutland, to look at its model displays, more than the building could cope with. Godtfred Kirk Christiansen's answer was to move the showroom outdoors. He hired Arnold Boutrup, a Copenhagen department-store display designer, while model builder Dagny Holm's team filled a stretch of moorland with miniature towns made from ordinary bricks. Legoland opened on 7 June 1968 and, according to the LEGO Group, drew 625,000 visitors in its first season against a forecast of half that; Wired reports the same figure. It is studied as a product demonstration that became a destination: its Miniland is in effect a giant showcase of what the bricks can do, and a New York Times travel writer marvelled at the detail in 1991. The format was exported from 1996, starting with Windsor, and the parks were sold to an entertainment operator in 2005.