Let's Go Lego

Jason Miller,an inspiration to college dropouts everywhere, has a dream job. His title says it all: Lego Master Model Builder.

That’s right. He gets paid to design, build and maintain fanciful structures made from the world’s most popular plastic toy.

Over the next few weeks, Miller, 27, will put the finishing touches on creations for display at Legoland Florida, the latest and largest of the world’s five Legoland theme parks. It’s slated for an October 15 opening at the old Cypress Gardens site in Winter Haven.

“I’m very happy and blessed to find a job at Legoland. It’s the greatest place I’ve been, which is saying a lot,” says Miller, an unabashed theme-park fan with years of work experience at Walt Disney World and Universal Studios Orlando.

A natural entertainer, he waxes nostalgic about his days as a parade performer and a Jungle Cruise skipper.

But it was his last job at Downtown Disney – at the Lego Imagination Center, the world’s biggest Lego store – where he honed his skills working with Lego bricks, and realized how rewarding that work could be.

He would build an elaborate Lego model in the store – such as a 10-foot replica of the Washington Monument, which he assembled in one day – “and kids would come up and ask, ‘How did you do that? Can I do that?’ It was amazing. It’s one of the few jobs where you’re a superhero to kids.”

Miller’s road to superhero status was anything but straight. He loved Legos as a kid growing up in Roswell, Ga., but he sold his collection when he left home to attend the University of South Florida. He dropped out after one semester and spent the next eight years working mostly part-time jobs at Disney and Universal.

He credits his wife – then girlfriend – for rekindling his interest in Legos four years ago. After learning about his childhood hobby, she bought him a Lego set, and continued buying him sets every few months. He was hooked. (His wife, Tara, a pharmacy manager, occasionally builds Lego models, Miller reports. “She likes it, but not like I do.”)

Last year, not long after the announcement that Florida was getting its own Legoland, Miller paid a visit to Legoland California, which also serves as a hiring hub for Lego model builders. While there, he applied for a job.

He had no special connections, just an iPhone video of a Lego model he had designed: a Star Wars mountain cave, featuring a tiny Yoda endlessly chasing a slightly less-tiny Darth Vader on a motorized belt.

The model wasn’t particularly elaborate, Miller says, but a Legoland staffer he showed it to was impressed. “It was the idea and ingenuity behind it. He knew I was creative.”

Miller was one of just 10 model builders hired out of more than 5,000 applicants. After five weeks of intensive training, he earned his Master Model Builder title – a designation held by just 300 people worldwide.

All Lego toys, stores and parks share a single-minded focus: creative play for children, specifically 2- to -12-year-olds. “It’s all about kids,” Miller says, echoing The Lego Group’s overarching philosophy.

The focus is so strong that Legoland Florida’s usual closing time will be 5 p.m. – hours earlier than other family-friendly theme parks. As a Legoland Florida official recently put it, “We’re going to be reasonable and not keep the park open all hours of the night so the kids get tired and grumpy.”

But Legos aren’t just for kids. “AFOLs” – Adult Fans of Lego – are a major constituency. There are more than 50 adult “Lego Users Groups” worldwide, including the Greater Florida Lego Users Group (gflug.org), which has been active for more than a decade. Club member Michael Huffman, a 41-year-old Windermere computer programmer, says the Lego allure is strong.

“The power of creativity and imagination is contained in the brick itself. It’s the enjoyment of creating something out of a different type of medium,” Huffman says. “It’s something very cool on a geek level.”

In a recent example of geek coolness, staffers at Legoland California “borrowed” the car keys of one of the park’s top executives and moved the vehicle from its assigned space. Using a forklift, they replaced it with a full-sized, 11/2-ton Lego duplicate.

No such pranks have been reported at Legoland Florida – at least not yet – although Miller has the talent and raw materials to pull it off. His workshop at the park contains more than 3 million Lego bricks and pieces, in row after row of sorting bins.

You’d think spending all day designing, building and working with Legos would satisfy his habit. But Miller works on models at home, too, with pieces he buys on his own. He has accumulated, he estimates, about $5,000 worth of Legos.

Miller’s personal Lego creations are on display at his Lake Buena Vista home. It features a large-scale Batmobile (“the one from Batman Returns”) and a 5,195-piece Millennium Falcon spaceship from Star Wars.

His professional creations include “The Legofriend Tourist,” a 3-foot tall, smiling Lego figure sporting a diver’s mask and a kiddy float that will be displayed in Legoland Florida’s partner “Bed & Brick” hotels. Working with computer-generated 3-D images, Miller and another model builder made a dozen Tourists in all, each requiring four full workdays to finish.

“I can’t draw; I can’t sculpt with clay,” Miller says. “But give me Legos and I can make anything.”