Playmobil Princess Fantasy Castle Construction Set

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:) .

I had a lot of pieces (592), that needed to be put together in order to build it. Seemed many of the parts could have easily been one piece instead of 3-4 or molded into other parts for example. The bags were not labeled and the parts were in random bags and hard to find, making it that much more harder to build. It took many hours to put it all together and we ended up super glueing many of the pieces together to make it sturdier. Even though it took a long time to build, it was worth it, because my granddaughter absolutely LOVES it!!

This isn't my first playmobil set and it's not my favorite either. It gets played with at my home but some parts are a bit awkward. Parts of the "rooms" that are round or around corners are just hard for little hands to get to! The crown and bracelet that come with it are substantially lower quality than everything else playmobil. I knew the dimensions ahead of time, but didn't realize just how impractical it would be to take it apart. Plan at least 3 hours to put it together. If you've never put together playmobil before, I'd even add more time! It's a very large castle!On the plus side, this is a long lasting toy! Having any other playmobil increases the fun but as with everything playmobil, the details and cleverness of it is top notch.Overall, I'd recommend this castle if you already know that the child you're buying for enjoys playmobil. If you're uncertain, start with something smaller and less involved.

This was a Christmas present for my 8 year old grand daughter, but when they were awakened on Christmas morning, the 3 year old went straight to it and played with it all day. It was a great hit as she continues to play with it each morning. Their mother had to buy a table to put it on and their dad said it took quite a while to put it together. It is quite large, but despite the labor involved, they both say now that it was worth all the effort. The girls share play time with this toy and really seem to love it. It was placed on their Amazon wish list. Great find!

Beautiful product. My granddaughter loves it. It takes time and lots of dedication and patience to complete the set up. I had to glue it together because it can easily come apart. Expensive product.

This was a great purchase! We bought this for our daughter's 4th birthday and she plays with it daily (she is nearly 5 now).It comes with plenty of dolls and accessories, so even if your child doesn't have other Playmobil sets, this is perfect right out of the box.We have ours up on two Ikea "Lack" tables, which makes it easier to interact and play.

This was pricey and took my husband and me 10+ hours to put together. BUT, it is beautifully made, we had fun making it and our 7 year old granddaughter loved it! Well worth it!

Difficult to put together ... don't, for example, give it to your kid on Christmas morning and expect he or she will be playing with it by evening. Instead, you will be up until 2 a.m. wishing you had never bought the **** thing. But once you finally get it together, it's fantastic, and you'll block out that horrible assembly period from your memory.