WINTER HAVEN, Fla. — Legoland Florida is beginning its 10th birthday celebration with a new water-ski show that features pirates-in-training and nods to the attraction’s heritage. “Brickbeard’s Watersports Stunt Show” opened to the public at the theme park Feb. 12.
The production, set on Lake Eloise, includes a range of skiing tricks and maneuvers, some of which go from dry land to water and back on stage again. Live actors keep the story going, which revolves around Captain Brickbeard’s pirate academy and encourages crowd participation through irreverent cheers of “Bloated barnacles!”
“What we wanted to do was really create a show that showcases our talent and the water, but also ties in kind of that Lego brand of humor,” Phil Raybourne, show director, said after a preview Thursday. The script is peppered with pop culture references such as SpongeBob SquarePants, “Baby Shark” and “Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life for Me).”
The 25-minute show also introduces a costumed Lego character unique to the theme park. Calico Jade, sporting a kicky black haircut with a patch of purple, was developed for the show. Her role is to run the academy for Brickbeard. She gets in lines of Lego humor as well.
“Sometimes you have to take matters into your own C-shaped hands,” she says.
“Calico Jade is fresh. She’s rad. She’s got some great style going on,” said Jeremy Pancoast, head of entertainment at Legoland. “She has got some sass with her that, you know, is really going to keep those pirate athletes in line.”
A new crowd-pleasing stunt may be the use of a FlyBoard, which is introduced into the show as a kraken. A performer goes aerial — as far as 40 feet above the surface — on the skateboard-esque equipment and completes a series of backflips, dives and sweeping swirls midair.
Eventually, Brickbeard makes a grand water-based entrance and puts his prospective crew members through final tests. Those who graduate are awarded golden eyepatches.
A human pyramid, built three-people high while on skis, is a salute to the shows of Cypress Gardens, which operated on this Polk County land and lake from 1936 until Legoland took over in 2011.
“We have always tried to maintain some of the nods back to the Cypress Gardens heritage that we do have here,” said Rex Jackson, general manager. “The ski show was extremely popular back in the Cypress Gardens days, and we feel like we’ve been able to give it a nice, thick layer of Lego DNA and make it something of our own and really targeted toward families with young kids.”
Dennis Speigel, owner of Cincinnati-based International Theme Park Services, said he’s bullish on Legoland and owner Merlin Entertainments Group, based in England.
“It’s a place — and it always has been — where the grown-ups, the family who comes with the children, it grabs them because they have such a great time seeing their children enjoy the facility,” he said.
The new show also ties in with Legoland Florida’s new PirateFest Weekends event, which start today and run for three weekends in February.
The park had gone without a ski show since reopening from its pandemic-inspired shutdown last summer. The stadium now has stickers on the seats to guide with social distancing.
“We have our actors socially distance on stage ... they distance from the audience itself,” Raybourne said.
After the pandemic subsides, additions could be made to the show, he said.
“We’ve set it up for success. … In an environment like we are currently, we can operate in an outdoor setting. And then once we’re able to get back to some sort of normalcy, we can always adapt and even make it more interactive,” Raybourne said.
“I think there’s always a moment to where we can add more interaction with actually, like, children coming up and firing [water] cannons, things like that.”
