[This review was collected as part of a promotion.] I have been purchasing Legos since my grandchildren were little. I have a collection for when I get to see them again.
I'm an adult builder with a young builder who likes to play with my vintage train sets. While he's not great at building things other than Duplo at the moment, he can start/stop my trains with the remotes and couple/uncouple the cars with minimal assistance.
Which is my biggest problem -- why on earth were the magnet style buffers omitted?? I understand the 18+ marketing, but this should be able to be played with by a young kid. Especially since it's shown in photos with the Family Tree set being assembled by people of all ages.
So not only is my kiddo unable to couple/uncouple the cars because of the technic pieces, but this effectively isn't compatible with the previous Winter Village train without modifications.
The only thing I wish about this that would be that he came with basic power functions from the start. It’s an iconic recreation of the classic Christmas train to go around the tree. The least you should do is make sure that the abilities to go around the tree are in the same opening box.
Got it for my Christmas village tree to run with lionel and marklin trains. For the price , I'm disappointed in it. For a Christmas house you get more pieces and people. The 3D piece is ok but I use a 3D printer already and with printers getting cheaper it's not a big deal to get a 3D printed part in a set. Especially when 3D filament is so cheap.