Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This review is on the KidKraft Shimmer Mansion Doll House. This thing is absolutely huge! Once assembled, it is over 5 feet tall and over 4.5 feet wide. It is taller than my daughter who is about 4 feet tall. The house is about a foot deep. It has a garage (in which a Barbie convertible fits perfectly), exercise room, office, elevator, bathroom, living room, patio, a kitchen/dining room, 3 seasons room with a hot tub, and a bedroom loft with open staircase. The dollhouse is constructed of wood and pressboard rather than the plastic that the competing “Dream House” is made of (and it costs less!). It comes with all of the furniture you need and I love that the accessories are almost all wood rather than plastic. It is very sturdy and well constructed. The walls, floors, and ceiling have beautiful details printed on them such as wood planks, rugs, wallpaper, decorations, and more. For Included furniture there is a couch, ottoman, beanbag chair, end table, desk with chair and laptop, kitchen table and chairs, fridge cupboard, patio grill, house plant, a cat with a bed and food bowl, ceiling fan, treadmill, yoga mat, bed with mattress and pillows, bathroom sink, huge soaking tub, toilet that flushes, and a living room floor lamp that actually turns on (and automatically turns off a minute later to save batteries). The flushing toilet and light-up floor lamp came with batteries included in them. The dollhouse comes completely in pieces, and every single little piece needs to be put together. Assembly takes a long time. Don’t try to do it with kids waiting to play with it! It took my husband and I about 5 hours total. The most annoying part of assembly was tediously peeling all the film off the front and back of the windows- It only came off in small pieces and took forever. The house comes in a large, 50+lb flat box and comes with all of the hardware needed. An Allen wrench was included but we needed a screwdriver and a 2nd Allen wrench to get it together. The instruction booklet was decent with numbered pictures, and each piece in the box has a numbered sticker on it so you can follow along with the instructions. There were a few instances where the pictures were confusing, but we figured it out. I’m not sure how you could possibly assemble it alone. There were many times when I needed to hold something while he lined something else up, or he needed to tilt the whole heavy thing backward 45 degrees so I could get underneath, etc. If you really have assembly troubles, there is an app you can download on your phone which supposedly has more detailed instructions, but we did not use it. It took about 5 hours total from the time we opened the box until it was completely ready. We assembled it after my daughter was in bed and surprised her with it on Christmas morning. She spent the entire day playing with it for hours at a time. Since then, she’s spent any free play time she gets playing with it, even when she doesn’t have any playmates to share it with. It’s so nice to find a toy which uses her imagination and will keep her entertained for hours without involving any screens or electronics! Her Barbie dolls fit perfectly in the house and on the furniture. The only part she has trouble with is the elevator. It’s hard for her to push up and down. I wish we could figure out a way to make it slide up and down easier. This mansion retails for over $200, however I got it for $89.00 on Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend and while I don’t know if I could stomach the price tag at over $200, I definitely feel $150 or less is a great price and well worth it. It is a well-made quality toy which will be played with for years to come. I’ll admit, even at 30+ years old I play with it now and then! Any child would be lucky to have it.