Thursday: Day 2

Today started with a short talk from the guy that used to be the CEO of Lego and is credited with turning the company around when it was about to fail in the early 2000s.  He looked really familiar, but I couldn't place him until we were told who he was at the end.  He didn't give us his name.

It continued with a quick overview on molds (again), although this time it was a bit more of the technical side and not the history side.  What I didn't realize is that your basic Lego block is sloped in order to come out of the mold and if you stack them up you actually can tell that.

Next we went on a factory tour.  Factory tours are fun, and this one was no exception.  We saw how robots and machines make the pieces and how robots pick up the full bins.  We learned that there are not many colored granules added to the clear ones in order to get the correct color.  We also learned that the first person's hands to touch the Lego blocks are the owners when they open the bags.  We stopped at the warehouse.  It was amazing.  It is only about 1/7 the size of the biggest one that they have, but it was still amazing.  There were buckets and buckets and buckets and you just imagined all the bricks that those buckets had and what you could do with them.

(This is the outside of the factory.  On the right you can see the warehouse.  Lego buckets go all the way to the top.)

Then we went to ...I'm not sure what the building was.  It seemed to house a lot of the customer care stuff.  It was the smaller warehouse were all missing/broken/buy a brick come from.  The customer service for Lego has been excellent in the past, and so now we know where the bricks come from.  Just a few people pushing around carts getting the pieces.  We also got to pick-a-brick.  It wasn't from a wall like normal, but it was a bunch of odd pieces that aren't around a lot.  Some animals, some people, and some miscellaneous items.

After lunch it was the speed build challenge!  We got one of the City sets and, in groups of four, had to build all of it and set it up just like the front of the box.  Exactly like the front of the box.  I thought we were doing really well, but we got beat by quite a bit.  It was a pretty fun challenge though; it'd be interesting to do something similar with the boys.  The couple we were working with already has four of the set, so they kindly gave it to us after the challenge was complete.  (It turns out that while we may be crazy Lego people at home, we are only average users here.)

Then it was time to go to the employee store.  Ben and I got the stuff that we really wanted and found that we only partially filled up the two boxes that Lego ships back home for us.  Score!  We went around again, getting the stuff we wanted.  This pretty much filled up the boxes plus a bit more.  So we went around a third time, getting some small stuff and stuff we remembered that we really would like.  This got us to a nice amount to bring back on the plane.  We both felt like we ended up with a nice amount of sets...I had been a bit scared that the boxes would fill up before we got halfway through our list.  Going out the door we guessed how much we spent.  It really had been like a shopping spree in that there was a lot of "this looks nice, put it in the bag."  (Although we still said no to a lot of items.)  Anyway, we both guessed over the amount that we had actually spent, so it was a nice feeling to leave on.

After a break there was another dinner with the designers.  This designer was much more positive about everything and made me feel like I could work at Lego again.  He was on the Mixel team as was so surprised to hear how hard they are to get anymore.  He sent me a picture of mixels on display at his house.  Joshua would be so jealous.

Then we had awards for the creations that we made last night.  While Ben and I weren't feeling very good about our odds, there's always that little part of you that wonders.  Anyway, we didn't win any of the awards (which were custom made by Lego designers and were awesome), but we did both make the runners up.  So still pretty impressive.  Ben's category was basically "things that move" and mine as "has a story."  They made Ben's rocket blast off and noted that my mine had 100 gems.  (Which it doesn't.  It only has like 15.  But kids love the gems!)

Oh, I forgot a picture!  Alice Finch is in our group.  Her Hogwarts and Rivendale builds made her famous within the Lego community.