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As part of my trip to the Malaysian round of the Formula1 this year (2014) I took a side-trip from Kuala Lumpur to Legoland Malaysia.

See interestingly enough while the Malaysian capital city is where you’d expect to find an international theme park Legoland Malaysia is actually located in the south of peninsular Malaysia in Johor Bahru – a mere skip across from Singapore. That’s where things start to make sense as here the park can leverage the attractions of Singapore and it’s Asia “Hub” status while enjoying the benefits of being in Malaysia.

Getting There:

I started my journey early, very early as I was booked on the first flight from the Low-Cost Carrier Terminal (LCCT) at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) and getting to the airport involved either throwing myself at the mercy of the local taxis for the whole journey or making use of the RM12.50 KLIA Ekspress/Bus combination to get from KL Sentral station to LCCT. As KLIA2 is now open this journey has increased in cost (to RM35) but is now a direct sub-30 minute ride.

As I said it was early, so I ended up catching a taxi from near my hotel using the MyTeksi App to estimate the fare before haggling with the driver over the “actual” fare to be charged. We settled on a price and within 15 minutes I was at KL Sentral buying my ticket through to LCCT.

Once I’d negotiated the mayhem that was LCCT I was on my AirAsia flight to Johor Bahru, Senai International Airport.

Welcome to Legoland!

I arrived after a reasonably long Taxi ride with a driver who was more than happy to talk MH370 conspiracy theories, social and political development news and provide some good tour-guide style information about the Iskander state. Back home in Australia Taxi conversation is always something I never go much for however I find Malaysian Taxi drivers to be very interesting and the issues after a lot more real than the “first world problems” that plague Australia.

After having my pre-purchased ticket scanned at the gate the park was mine – at least it felt that way, the first Tuesday in April 2014 wasn’t a big day for the guest count and I think at any one time I ended up seeing maybe 20 people.

The Attractions

Legoland Malaysia has a combination of child-friendly rides, Lego themed curiosities and of course the Mini-Lands which highlight the creativity and skills of the builders and the versatility of the blocks.

My first stop was the LegoLand Boating School ride. To be fair this is not a ride targeted at thrill seekers, yet unlike some many rides of this type it actually has a very real level of “control”. Yes you really do drive the boat and you can actually set your own course!

It’s a relaxing sort of ride and set the tone for the day where I’d just escape from adult reality and immerse myself in Lego.

After the nautical interlude I moved onto the Mini-Lands – here the Lego builders have created scenes from throughout Asia with some amazing detail.

From walking loops through the Mini-Lands I relaxed on-board the Legoland Express to get a “train tour” of the park. The Express is not a full loop of the park, it mostly circles the Mini-land zone and while it was nice to sit down for around 10 minutes it wouldn’t be worth queuing up for the loop on a busy day. Watch the video to see what I mean:

I did do a few more of the rides, in fact every ride where I didn’t need to borrow a small child OR where my 185cm put my outside the rides acceptable height parameters. As the park was quiet it was actually possible to re-ride some of the coasters etc multiple times without leaving my seat! Although, on one I had to get out, join the end of the queue and get back into a different car – no big deal and both the ride attendants seemed to see the funny side of it.

So was it really worth it?

Legoland Malaysia isn’t the largest theme park, nor is it the best for adult entertainment, however it is 100% successful at bringing the whimsy and fun to all comers. As an adult I was able to enjoy the rides, take in the breathtaking skill of the parks builders and appreciate the cleanliness and professionalism of the parks attendants. The park my have been virtually empty but everyone was doing there best to ensure the patrons had a great experience.

I didn’t see any unhappy children around the park, instead they were caught in that magic world of creativity and wonder. The babbling of voices and excited squeals told the story at the rides and games throughout the park.

I’m not sure I’d want to whirlwind trip from KL like I did with a child or two, but it is entirely doable and by midnight I was back in my hotel in KL with photos and a silly grin on my face!

LegoLand_Character

I’d only had the Panasonic DMC-TZ40 for a couple of weeks before leaving for my Malaysia trip and in that time had played around enough to learn where the basic settings were and understand how the WiFi function could be used.

As the camera itself is an “old” and now discontinued model there’s not much point in a full review, so consider this as a way of me reminding myself just how little I paid and and just how good it was on the trip.

One of the big reasons I bought the TZ40 was the Zoom, at 20x optical it was going to bring the action closer. Now in practice that zoom works well on a clear sunny day when the shutter speeds can be drop to deal with the camera shake. In practice newer generations of this camera and its competitors are going out to 30x zooms. I’m not entirely convinced that this is a good thing given the difficultly holding the camera steady enough.

The best zoom point for the camera is in the middle of the range though, the above shots were “easy” grabs and most from this position in the stands to the corner (a few hundred metres) were sharp and clear considering the hazy conditions.

When working with closer faster moving subjects the same middle of the range zoom point coupled with the burst mode on the shutter got me what I really enjoy – closeup clear sharp pictures. The success factors were again influenced by the ability to aim and stead the camera. So much so that I feel investing in, or making a “grenade grip” or large handle grip is going to be on the cards. That way the weight of the camera is better supported by the left hand while the right hand can guide the shots while triggering the shutter.

In short there’s not enough camera to hang onto solidly if you have larger hands, the same reason that makes the TZ40 a great travel companion is its downfall in these scenarios.

The huge amount of indirect light thanks to heavy cloud and haze cover did cause all of the automated functions some grief, the chrome finish of the Mclaren cars flaring out in most shots and confusing everything from shutter setting to focus points. I think had I not been relying on so much Automation I would have tweaked the Aperture and Shutter settings to specifically suit, however while the high-resolution screen nthe rear of the camera is bright and very sharp the lack f size still makes discerning these sorts of issues impossible in the field.

More conventional livery wasn’t a problem though with the mix of colours and contrasts being well picked up.

There’s really no true substitute for a DSLR at capturing super detailed pictures, but to be very honest I travelled to Malaysia with under 6kg of clothes, electronics and camera, I certainly didn’t have the space (or will) to wrangle more stuff.

The Panasonic TZ40 bridges the chasm between “good” mobile phone cameras with all their foibles and the new-generation of mirror less interchangeable lens cameras. The small external size packs a lot of useable features into a very pocket friendly package.

Overall I found the battery life to be very good, using a “power bank” to top-up the battery when walking around, having lunch and so forth extended the life and the change to the spare (at 199RM for a genuine battery) was completed quickly and barely interrupted use.

I had initially been using a Patriot Class10 32GB SD card which was “fast” enough for our DMC-TS3 indestructible camera but when filled I went out and splurged on a 64Gb Sandisk Extreme in MicroSD form (with adapter) to allow sharing with the GoPro. While on paper the specification difference between the two cards is not extreme it does play out in practice with the Sandisk card giving a faster save-time and consequently better burst mode performance.

At night the automatic Nightshot mode rarely faltered with the superbright lights and a colours captured clearly with minimal user effort. Motion blur in stills as expected but very little evidence of shake.

In bright light colour and detail are good, again this is a point and shoot (and the images are resized) but the level of detail captured is more than adequate for decent prints.

Overall I quickly became comfortable with carrying and using the TZ40 – I got good results most of the times I pulled it from the pocket and by contributing more effort on my part even better results would have been attained.

For the price of these super-zoom compact cameras I have no idea why some people travel relying upon mobile phone cameras to capture memories.

Tag: DMC-TZ40

Review: Legoland Malaysia; A day trip from Kuala Lumpur

Panasonic DMC-TZ40 Mini Review