LEGO Disney Encanto The Magical Madrigal House Toy, Building Playset for Kids, Mirabel Disney Princess Doll Figure, Disney Toy for Girls and Boys Ages 7 and Up, Fun Construction Encanto Toy, 43245

I am obsessed with Encanto and try to collect everything I can from it. When the original round of Lego sets for the movie came out I got them, and the Casita set that was originally produced had a lot to be desired, from structure to lack of character minifigs. Fast forward three years and with the release of this new set, I am in AWE of how much of an improvement it is. Not only is it more sturdy than the original, the huge expansion to the family is perfect! While I would have loved to have the rest of the adults outside of Abuela, especially Bruno, finally having all the kids is much better in rounding out the ensemble! Everything just feels so much more cute from the design to the interactable elements! There are still downsides, but they are much less impactful than with the original Casita set. When assembling each segment together it is tricky to get them to stay together, I constantly would place a piece on only to have it fall off if it got bumped slightly out of place while trying to press it into place. Even when fully assembled the top level pieces still have some instability. I can imagine this being frustrating in play, but not so much that it would ruin the play experience. My set was also missing one of the small green three leaf pieces, which luckily I had an extra of that piece leftover from Isabela’s flowerpot I was able to use, and even if I hadn’t it at the very least wasn’t a piece required for structural integrity, but it is still a rough oversight that if it had happened to a kid who didn’t collect every set and happen to already have an extra, it would have been devastating to get so far into the set only to be missing a piece (this was on manual 7 out of 9). Final issue may just be a me problem, but because I challenge myself by having all bags open at once rather than opening bag by bag (specifically because it helps me space out my building time so I don’t do it all in one day) there were a lot of pieces that were too similarly colored on the instruction booklet and I had to keep going back to fix when I realized my mistake. Even now I still can’t figure out which lamps the two sparkly transparent yellow pieces belong to versus the 4 regular transparent yellow lamp pieces and had to make an estimated guess. Lego has always had this issue when it comes to the instruction booklets making the colors look always so much darker or lighter than they actually are with inconsistency between them, but for a set where there are so many pieces that use different variants of pink and orange for pieces with the same mold, it can be especially frustrating to differentiate which one the manual is asking you to use at that moment. It may be easier if you do it as intended building bag by bag, but I can’t say for certain. Overall, the set is super cute, and the few negatives there are aren’t so distracting that it ruins the build experience. It is great being able to display both Casita sets next to each other and see the differences. Definitely worth the cost and I would recommend to anyone who also loves Lego and Encanto!