LEGO Shows Qatar 2024 has come and gone, and what a show it was! Being the largest and longest LEGO Shows event, it proved to be quite different from LEGO Shows Kuwait six months ago.

If you’ve never heard of LEGO Shows before, it’s a large-scale interactive convention organized by ATW/Events aimed at showing everyone who attends what LEGO is and what it has to offer.

This year had 26 different zones spread out across the hall for both kids and parents to explore. Some of these zones were very similar or the same as in Kuwait so I’ll focus more on the new zones and talk about some of the social aspects of attending a 16-day event.

Fan Zone

The AFOL presence at this event included six builders total, two from Brazil (Ildefonzo Zanette and Guilherme Constantino), two from Japan (Will Galbraith and Takamichi Irie), and two from the United States (Alysa Kirkpatrick and myself).

Together we filled about fifteen 8-foot-long tables with a huge range of MOCs, from Mindstorms robots to large-scale basketball players to Mad Max road war.

The AFOL Fan Zone is just one of the many attractions at this massive event. We were there to educate the public about our side of the LEGO world as LEGO does not yet have much presence in the Middle East. Instead of this show being based around AFOLs like they are in Europe and the United States, there were only a small number of us and we were there to educate the public about the LEGO community.

New Zones

Besides the AFOL section, there were plenty of other themed areas for families to explore. Starting with the largest of all the zones, a giant bouncy castle took up a huge corner of the show. Having tried it myself multiple times, I’m convinced it helped greatly in tiring kids out during the show so they were much less crazy. You feel like you’ve just run a marathon after about five minutes in that thing!

In front of the AFOL area were two more new zones, Mini Golf and an Art Zone. Mini Golf is pretty self-explanatory. The art gallery was full of different mosaic portraits and other display pieces made out of LEGO.

There were a pair of LEGO wings and a Banksy mural located at the entrance for iconic photo ops. In the back, millions of LEGO Dots pieces were loaded into building troughs for visitors to create any mosaic they could onto 8x8 plates.

Around the center of the hall were some carnival game booths with four different games to play and win prizes at. The games were Ball Drop, Bucket Ball, Ring Toss, and Can Knockdown. Bucket Ball was my personal favorite mostly because I was better at it than any of the other games.

Live Performances

During LEGO Shows events, there are live performances for families to watch and engage with to connect better with the LEGO characters and themes. This year, the main stage shows were split up with a Ninjago performance or Friends musical every hour. Across the 16 days, the total number of shows came out to be 64 for Ninjago and 80 for Friends. By the end of the event, the crew and I had just about every part of the show totally memorized.

The Ninjago show consisted of two original ninjas, Master Adam and Master Heidi (the names of the performers) along with Master Kai. It was a wonderfully choreographed acrobatics and stunt show that led into a training session. The training session taught the kids about the five elements of Ninjago (fire, water, earth, lightning, and ice) and had them act out special moves and poses for each element just as the ninjas did on stage.

The Friends show was a musical performance aimed at getting the audience to move and dance along with the LEGO Friends Paisley, Leo, and Liann. The characters and show proved to be very successful at drawing quite the fan base as repeat spectators came multiple days in a row just to see the Friends.

Whenever the cast wasn’t on the main stage, they were in their respective zones getting more personal with the kids through various fun activities like building together and playing games.

In the Ninjago dojo, there was a more involved training session of learning the movements of the five elements that were performed on stage and a training regimen that had the kids jumping, rolling, and making their best Ninjago battle cries.

Friends held a dance class that taught everyone a small portion of their stage performance. Following the class they would always play a game, normally a LEGO Friends version of Simon Says or Run-To-This-Side-If-You… All day everyday you could hear the distinct sounds of happy kids having a blast.

Surviving a 16-Day Event

LEFT TO Right: Guilherme, Ildefonzo, Aiden (ME), Will, Alysa

My absolute favorite part about any LEGO event I attend is meeting new people and building new relationships. This is what makes these shows extra amazing. You meet some new faces and get to develop relationships with everyone you’ve met before.

Because this show was scheduled to start every afternoon, each morning, we AFOLs and the performers would have breakfast together, go out and explore the city for a few hours, and then ride the bus to the show and back to the hotel together every night. This really helped all of us grow closer and made working at the shows together extremely easy.

Left to right: Master Adam, Paisley (Charlotte), Leo (Conner), Liann (Georgia), Master Heidi, Kai & Emmet mascots (Aaron)

LEFT TO RIGHT: Aiden (ME), Simra, Takamichi, Alysa, Aisha, Will

Whenever we were out in the city exploring, we loved seeing advertisements for LEGO Shows and made it a point to take pictures with most of them. It is a very cool feeling being part of an event that’s being advertised on giant screens across the city.

Being friends with the performers meant helping them with building some LEGO when they got bored during the slower hours. Each of the Friends built their names out of red 2x4s, and I helped them touch up some of the trickier letters (or rebuild them all after this one kid destroyed them). In the same way I shared my building experience with LEGO, they shared their dance experience by helping me learn some of their dance moves.

Building with LEGO is something I don’t think I’ll ever get bored of, and it is the perfect activity to keep me occupied during these long shows. I think I enjoyed it a little too much because now I need a large bin of 2x4s to play with at home whenever I want!

Aside from the AFOLs and the performers, getting to meet local organizers and ushers adds to the excitement. It ensures you’ll see new faces at every event you attend. They all work so hard to help the event run smoothly and keep it fun for everyone. What they say is true: ushers really do make the event!

These shows are definitely not all just play, though. 16 days is a long time to be displaying MOCs at any show, much less a show all about LEGO that’s full of energetic kids. Unlike at AFOL events such as Skærbæk Fan Weekend and Brickworld Chicago where you represent yourself as an exhibitor and can present yourself however you please, with LEGO Shows, we are an ambassador of the LEGO Brand. This responsibility requires being personable and sharing our love for LEGO with the public all day, every day. Doing that for all ten hours of public time each day can be a lot.

My throat is not used to the dry air so I’ve been learning more and more how to take care of my voice at shows. The desert climate of Qatar is a lot different than the humid climate back home. Unlike Kuwait six months ago, there is a very dry heat here, and like Kuwait, the indoor air conditioning is very cold and very strong. This, in addition to talking to hundreds of people each day, can and will destroy your voice. I also took some good advice from the performers on this trip as they have more experience with keeping their throats healthy and voices intact.

At other AFOL events, it’s easier to just push through the few days with late nights and early mornings every day; that’s just not possible with these shows. Almost every night, all of us would crash once we got back to the hotel.

I love building with LEGO a ton but nothing will compare to the lifelong memories made on trips like these. I could not have asked for a better group of people to spend 16 days with, and the prospect of doing it again and seeing everyone at future shows this year made the goodbyes a little bit easier.

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