I'm not going to lie to you; this thing was a BEAR to assemble. If you are a "viner" or other customer, I am going to point out a few things that I hope will help. First of all, you might want to do it on a weekday. Their Customer Service is open Monday-Friday 8:30am to 5:00pm, Central. I am sure they are very friendly and helpful, as the enclosed literature repeatedly states, "Please, let us help!" My husband (who is an engineer and very good at assembling things) and I worked on it on a Saturday, and it took awhile before we got everything right.
The Assembly Instructions consist of simple line diagrams, which take some good deductive and spacial skills to figure out. For me, photographs would have been very helpful, therefore I have published photographs above. The actual table is pretty simple to assemble. Then I did the buildings. You have to figure out the pieces from the line drawings. (Note to company: it would have been helpful if the parts themselves were numbered. For example, hubby put together a child's kitchen set by this company, and the parts had stickers with numbers on them.) When you are doing the buildings, please note that there are TWO kinds of screws--the larger gray-headed ones will be used for the "Large Building", but when building the "Airport" make SURE you use the smaller screws. Once you get the pieces right, it can be difficult to determine the orientation of the pieces once you have them. Some trial and error went into this. Again, photographs.
Ah, then you have the tracks themselves. Sure they are so easy to take apart and put together that a child could do it, but, seriously, there is only one way this thing can realistically go together, and if the kids want to take it apart they will end up with dead ends. You will need to pay close attention to the enclosed diagram, and be sure to keep it in a safe place, or make copies of it, so that you can refer to it when you have to put it back together. The thing is somewhat stable once together, except for the track blocks on the bridge which are intentionally left without fasteners so that they can be dumped over with the handle. Actually, we are considering gluing the main parts together for stability.
The buildings, by contrast are quite stable. I like them quite a lot, actually, especially the revolving watch tower and conveyer belt. I like the painted details on them inside and out. A little bit of paint is scratched off here and there, though.
Lastly are the million (OK, maybe just a hundred) other little parts. The train is OK. The magnets work well, and the cars have features that you can take apart and put back together. Same with the street vehicles--take apart parts. The little airplane and helicopter are pretty cool. You can move all the stuff around--cars, signs, people--even trees! This is both the advantage as well as the disadvantage of this toy. There is a small blue plastic bin that you can store parts in, which slides under the table itself. It does not slide on the runners as pictured, though, just a tad too small for that. But there is plenty of room under the table to slide other toy containers or whatever.
Basically this is a huge toy with many parts that can bring hours of imaginative play to youngsters, and I applaud them for that. It is the kind of thing that several children could enjoy together. Just be sure you set aside plenty of time to put it together and enlist the aid of a mechanically inclined person.
Review By.
K. Draper
