A great part of our favorite playmobil sets is the building aspect. If you are looking for a "pop it out of the box" barbie style project, no, this is not the toy for you. If you love something akin to legos, but with balance between the building process and delicious, life-like details that allow for hours of creative play.....you and your children are likely to LOVE this playmobil castle. And, its made in Germany! On Christmas Day, our 7 year old and I put together 12 year vintage Playmobil castle 3019. It was so much fun, I ordered this castle on sale for our daughter and Grandpa to build together while on vacation 2 weeks after Christmas. A couple hours into the experience, Grandpa quietly commented "its addictive". It was so special for Grandpa and Granddaughter to find parts together, read instructions, and learn to teamwork with the nearly 70 year age gap. They will always remember the time they spent with each other & the castle. And while it can be taken completely apart for storage (and rebuilt for fun and learning), we'll keep our castle together so we always have those 2 special evenings of bonding time. A few helpful notes: yes castle construction will take 3-4 hours. Set it up somewhere high from children under 3 (an island or table) where it can be left until completed. Have some plastic bowls on hand to help organize all your fun little parts and pieces. Moving the castle after construction is actually pretty easy! If you stack the box bottom and lid inside one another, you can take out the middle gate section of the castle, & remove the steps (both take only a few seconds) and then the 3 castle parts will fit nicely in the box standing up. If you need to store it for long periods, get an outdoor lawn bag, or pretty piece of fabric to place on top to prevent dust inside all the little parts. The lid inside the box allows you to take it to another room, or store without totally dismantling. The castle does NOT come with dining table etc, you need to purchase those separately. Both Amazon and the Playmobil site sometimes run special offers on various royals set. If you only want to add 1 furniture set, I recommend the dining. Our daughters other favorites are the playmobil "add on pink princess bed" and the royals nursery. Favorite castle features: The "dancing floor" with knob that allows the playmobil figures to spin around together by turning a handle was a hit with our 7 year old, and enjoyed by our 1 year old as well. Yes, I may have played with it a few times as well. The chandelier is beautiful. The greenery and flowers add a special touch of nature. The rooms are definitely not large as in the vintage playmobil 3019 castle with Moroccan styling, but sets will fit in the rooms if placed carefully. The architecture of this castle truly is like many little girls imagine a castle to be: from the turrets and flags to the scrolling, translucent pink, opening windows. Further enhancing your castle: playmobil makes a royal garden with fountain that is wonderful to set up outside this castle for additional greenery. There is also a no longer produced fairy garden with willow tree that makes a great castle garden, and a 40th anniversary edition Elizabethan style garden with fountain and gondola that is perfect (sometimes available on Amazon). Check out the "original online re-sale/ bidding site" for lots of additional vintage sets to expand the greenery around your castle. Playmobil also currently produces a pink capped fence with gilded gate that is perfect to create a yard to add your gardens, horses, knights and court & carriage (all sold separately if you can locate them). Room for improvement: The rooms could be larger. The newest Playmobil castle 6848 (I do not feel that it has as nice of detail as this castle, and it does not have the turning dance floor) has add on rooms available. This castle may have add on rooms available too, contact playmobil directly to ask. Also, the dining set is shown on the box, it would be nice to include it. And lastly, finding dark skinned Playmobil princesses with ball gowns is a lot of work. There is an Indian princess available in a beautiful red dress, and an Egyptian princess. Several of our nieces and nephews are mixed race, I was able to finally locate a beautiful black princess in a green ball gown dress on the bidding site. More playmobil pieces (look for Playmo Friends) come out in Malta (a figure production country) and other parts of Europe than in the US. Playmobil, please step it up with the princess variety available in the US. Playmobil figures can be customized, check out youtube for videos on how to accomplish figure customization - adult help required. An interesting note that an article explained that due to the cost of their initial production molds, some Playmobil items are apparently only offered in non-European markets (like the US) a year after they are released in the primary markets. Makes us all want to take a trip to Germany to collect toys? You can visit the German Playmobil website to see the Playmobil goodies that we wish we could get here now. I even tried signing up for Amazon UK to get Playmobil items only available in Europe, it did not work out with shipping. C'mon Amazon, help us out and make it easier to ship the European releases to the US as they are released:) .
