I bought this for my 5 year old nephew, who simply adores Thomas. It is based on the movie that will be released sometime this year. Even though it was fun seeing Thomas load the rocks at the quarry and then dropping off the bridge, it was hard to set it up. As an adult, I had difficulty setting it up and it is time-consuming. With that said, I don't mind it being time-consuming as long as it remains put together, but I noticed that the tracks didn't remain fitted together and every few minutes kept on popping off which in turn affected the assembly of the other tracks and subtracted the toy's overall enjoyability. The tracks from the other Trackmaster Sets are better than this one. Plus, for its price, it would have been nicer if Fisher-Price designed the crane to be brought back and forth along the zip line automatically instead of manually. My nephew no longer plays with this toy and uses some of the better-fitted tracks to create his own layout in conjunction with his other trackmaster set. I honestly don't recommend this Trackmaster. I hope you find this review helpful.
()
My 4 year old and I saw Thomas & Friends: Blue Mountain Mystery the Movie DVD at the theater and he loved it.He has always been fascinated by bridges and is forever acting out faling bridge scenes with his Thomas sets.Blue Mountain Mystery starts out with scenes from the Blue Mountain quarry, which is a narrow gauge quarry. Thomas And Friends Wooden Railway Rheneas, Thomas the Train: TrackMaster Skarloey, Thomas & Friends: Rusty to the Rescue, and other old-time narrow gauge engines are at the quarry, and start out the movie with a bridge collapse accident.
There are a couple of new characters introduced in the movie, including Merrick the quarry crane and Owen the quarry lift.Merrick is featured in this TrackMaster set and Owen is featured in the Take and Play set Thomas the Train: Take-n-Play the Great Quarry Climb.The box mentions that it is the tallest TrackMaster set and it is indeed tall.
We are more of a wooden railway family, but we have a couple of TrackMaster sets like Thomas the Train: TrackMaster Cranky and Flynn Save the Day Playset and the Misty Island TrackMaster set Thomas the Train: Zip, Zoom, and Logging Adventure).My son is more of a push-the-train railway maven, so he doesn't enjoy the motorized TrackMaster sets as much. To put that into perspective, he's played with his wooden sets for a year and a half, and the TrackMaster sets we've given him get about 3 weeks of play.I saw the Blue Mountain Mystery wooden set in stores but I don't yet see it on Amazon.
I have an "assembly required" scale of 1 to 10:
1 = my husband and I get divorced at the end of it.
10 = we sit back with a warm afterglow of teamwork and accomplishment as our son plays with it.
This is about a 6 on that scale.We didn't get on each other's nerves but it did take some time.Most of the tracks and pieces have letters and numbers on the bottom, and there is one page of the manual that has the b&w stick track layout on it with the numbers on each track and piece.I had the pile of pieces, and my husband would ask for each letter (a couple of pieces annoyed us by not having them!).It took about 20 minutes to get everything set up.Just as with Zip, Zoom, and Logging Adventure, you need a railway engineer to take care of the track once it is built.
We put an AA battery in Thomas and my husband ran our son through the interactive elements.First, we put the `boulder' in Thomas' car, then sent Thomas up the hill to the highest point.He is stopped there and my son was able to lift the top of the car and drop the boulder down a chute.He then tripped a switch that let Thomas continue on, hitting another switch that sent the boulder down the zipline.Thomas then comes around the bend to...BROKEN TRACK!The track collapses under Thomas' weight but of course, Thomas lands safely, accompanied by squeals and cheers all the way.Since it is hard to describe, I have included a video of the action.Just keep your eye on Thomas and not my son's messy playroom.=)
He was fascinated by the keystone coming loose in the movie and causing the bridge to collapse, and although this set doesn't have the keystone and bridge, he found a way to act out that part.There is a piece that clips on to a curving track near the top that gives it rock edges...he shakes the track and gives that a push and it falls off, while he says "oh no, the keystone fell out!"
PROS
-Lots of action
-Interactive elements for my son (switches to change tracks or stop Thomas, car with dumping mechanism, boulder (2 of them), zipline (with Merrick crane release switch), collapsing bridge)
-Huge set (note that although you see it in the video on our Thomas table, it doesn't fit the Thomas table...on the other side it was hanging over the edge supported by a Candyland box)
-It's a good representation of the quarry, complete with Merrick
CONS
-Takes a while to set up (20 mins)
-Some pieces don't have numbers/letters
-If you don't set it up right, which can be fairly easy since there are so many pieces, it will come loose and Thomas won't travel the rails correctly.I reversed two pieces and my husband had to fix it when we had problems.
-If your child doesn't enjoy being a railway engineer and putting things back together, he or she could get frustrated with this toy.
Buy Thomas & Friends: TrackMaster Risky Rails Bridge Drop Now
My son got this for his birthday..after the entire hour of fighting with instructions, parts, and keeping it together it was finally finished! My son put his trains on and as they went the whole thing collapsed. The pieces do not snap together well enough to keep the thing together. It is a waste money! I do not recommend buying this unless you plan on super gluing the pieces together.Read Best Reviews of Thomas & Friends: TrackMaster Risky Rails Bridge Drop Here
Do not bother with this one.
First of all, it took FOREVER to set up. They need to hire some writers/diagram people who are native English speakers and who have decent art skills. I ended up using the picture on the box more than the diagram. There are so many pieces that it's completely ridiculous. Many of these pieces could have been made as one part, so I'm seriously questioning the intelligence of the person who designed this.
As your child plays, the set will come apart every single time Thomas climbs the hill or goes down the dropoff thing.In fact, when he goes over the dropoff he flips over and your child will have to manually set him back up. Basically the set doesn't work in the way it was designed at all.
It doesn't fit together well. There are pieces that are clearly mean to snap together, but instead just kind of loosely fit. They're wobbly and fall apart constantly.
There is one piece that constantly falls off and doesn't seem to serve any real purpose.
The set doesn't fit, so stuff isn't lined up correctly. And again, pieces don't snap together where they're supposed to. The tracks just kind of precariously balance on top of the tower things.
We were all nearly in tears by the time we got it put together, and were so hoping it would at least be worth it. Nope. As I said, the toy doesn't even work right once you put in all that time and effort.
Definitely DEFINITELY skip this one.Not worth the time or price and it's a piece of junk. Very disappointed kid on Christmas day.
Want Thomas & Friends: TrackMaster Risky Rails Bridge Drop Discount?
()This is a great set, lots of fun for all ages and both genders, with plenty of opportunity for imaginative play.Like all of the Trackmaster sets, it can be configured a variety of ways and the parts integrated with other Trackmaster track to make even more train layouts.It comes with a Thomas engine and a side loading car to haul the two included "boulders." If there are any drawbacks, it is that is is BIG.You will need some floorspace to set this one up, probably around a 3 ft X 3ft space, not counting kid room.It's pretty tall, too, with two levels above floor level.It's worth the real estate though.There is a nifty zip line delivery system for the boulders, a chute they roll down to load into the zip tram, a pick-up station at the bottom of the "mountain", and of course the drop down bridge.The bridge isn't really so much a bridge as a ramp that drops the train down to the track one level below.We had a little trouble keeping the bridge aligned on multiple trips down at first.This is probably because we were set up on a thick textured carpet as well as the fact that the "conductors" were a bit rambunctious as they moved around the set to play.Even then, the high sides on the bottom track caught the drop well enough to allow the train to pass without a wreck.Once I tweaked our position on the rug, the problem was solved.My conductors are aged 18 mos. and 3 ½. (Small parts may not be suitable for all younger kids, we always have close supervision and have no problems.)The parts are easy to put together, both kids can do it, and they snap securely so clumsy toddler moves don't cause it to fall apart.I definitely needed the instructions, even after the first set-up.You'll want to keep them for a while with this set as there are some unique pieces that only assemble in one spot.The kids have spents hours playing with this, both alone and with others.They like to see how many trains they can get going at the same time without a pileup.Educational values include socialization, roleplaying, planning and visualization to assemble track layouts, cause and effect experiments.
Save 50% Off
0 comments:
Post a Comment