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My three kids have fun on this play set for hours. Two swings, one glider for 2 people, monkey bars, slide, okay house and a fort. My backyard has become the fun zone. It took 3 days to put together, and it was a pain. If you can hire someone to do it, splurge. If you cannot here are some tips. Each step is on its own sheet, available to print right from the webpage. At the top of each page is the parts that are required. Group each step by sheet, wood pieces and hardware. This helps with inventory AND makes the assembly process smoother. I started this process by day two and it really helped. Also, make sure your ground is LEVEL. My set leans a little at no fault but my own.
My kids saved their money & bought this for themselves last summer, so they've had it for a year now. They play on it almost every day and have a great deal of fun. It's fun to watch their imaginations as the lower deck becomes a restaurant & the upper deck serves as a pirate ship or safe haven from our backyard when it turns into hot lava. Our whole family, however is fairly dissappointed in the fact that after we purchased other play structures with many more features were released in the same basic price range. Also the treatment is severely worn on the snack bench and upper deck where they walk, much more than I expected. If your kids will play with it daily you should expect to re-stain it annually.
We bought this swing set after my son turned 3. We wanted to buy a set our kids could grow into and use for many years. We researched many swing sets, and decided on the Thunder Ridge set. We liked that it had 2 swings and the and the third was for two kids to use- Little brother will be big enough soon! The space in the fort- both the bottom and "top" floor is a good height so that as my sons grow they will be able to stand and play in it comfortably for a while. The slide has bumps along the way. It really bumps my son quite a bit. I had to teach him how to hold the sides so he wouldn't go so fast over them. The manual was fairly easy to use. The day before setting up, I had everything out of the boxes and in alphabetical and numerical order- each piece was labeled. On set-up day, it made it so much easier to find the pieces we needed as we progressed through the steps. You will need at least one drill, two is better, as well as a small crew to help assemble. Not much arrived pre-assembled as I had expected. It took 2 days for our crew of 5 to put it together. My boys love the swing set and visiting friends have a great time playing on our "playground," too.
We purchased this play set for our kids after moving to our new home in Indiana. We had great luck with our Backyard Discovery play set we had before, so we wanted to stay with this company. We were not disappointed. Installation was not a problem to do on my own with a little help from my brother in law on the tall sections. Didn't even take a whole weekend to get together. I would highly recommend sorting all of the hardware and labeling it prior to construction. Also, lay out and alphabetize all of the wood. Saves TONS of time in the long run. My only other recommendation is to reinforce the door where it swings from the play set. My kids seem to like to "ride" on the door, so the reinforcement was needed. Great play set, great quality. Highly recommended. It performs much better than expected for the price and it looks great. We live in a neighborhood full of "overpriced" play sets, and ours looks just as good or better for a fraction of the cost.
We bought this set for our grandchildren and when they come over for a visit they go straight to the Backyard Discovery Thunder Ridge All Cedar Swing Set. The quality is excellent and I was able to put it all together with my daughter in just a few hours. We highly recommend this swing set.
Our set is approximately 10 months old now and is still in great shape. I put this together with some help from my 9 year old daughter and it did take a full weekend plus a few additional hours for the accessories. The instructions are clear and concise but the wood pieces should have been more clearly labeled with darker ink. Some of the pieces took some educated guessing. Trust me on this bit of advice - to save a TON of time and to keep your sanity; I highly recommend first going through and organizing all the wood pieces and lay them out in alphabetical order so they are easy to find. I also did this with the hardware. I built most of this unit in our garage and then moved it to the back yard in sections when it was ready to be erected. The wood pieces are very light and seem a bit on the flimsy side so I would be cautious with older/heavier kids on this unit. I have climbed up on it with my 2 smaller kids several times and heard some of the wood pieces groaning under my very fit 160 lbs. Be sure to use the anchors provided to make it safe from tipping over. My kids like to test the upper limits of physics with the swings and it does not budge. I also used real door hinges for the door because the first storm that rolled through tore the door from the frame. And lastly, be careful with the screws. Use the pilot holes when the are there and make pilot holes when not there and don't over tighten. The wood will split. Bottom line - your kids will love it and you will be their hero - unless you pay someone else to put it together. Then that person will be there hero because kids don't understand the money part.
We were pleased with this playset. It was delivered promptly in two long boxes that probably measured 8ft long, 12 inches high, and two feet wide, approximately. My husband had it put together in about 8 hours. Our 5 kids, ages 12m to 10 years, absolutely love it. It gets a lot of use and holds up well although the door came off after only a few months use because the full length hinge is essentially a longe piece of plastic that ended up cracking off. Not difficult to fix with a new set of all weather metal hinges though. We hung an infant swing we purchased separately for our baby, it was a perfect addition. My husband stained and sealed it the first fall as per the manufacture recommendations. We have had it just about a year and are still pleased with the purchase.
Took me and my wife about 35 hours to complete. I am a mechanic and I know my tools. If you organize the material hardware on a picnic table and organize the wood withe the lettering faseing up or where you can see it eassily it wold be just a matter of time. The customer support was there ready to help when i found myself in a situation where some parts were in bad shape or there were wood knuts and or semething broke in the prosses. Good enough for the price. You can eassily add more wood to make it stronger and or add fitures to it.
This is a fantastic swing set! We have 7 grest-grandchildren and they have all enjoyed it. They are all too little to use the monkey bars, so we added a baby swing by drilling holes in the cross bar of the monkey bars. They have "served" many meals through the little window to each other.
This was bought for our grand children and they love it. My son-in-law put it together and it looks great and the kids are excited to play on it every day.
We bought this a year ago and at first we were very happy with it. It has a lot of features we really like such as the ship swing and the monkey bars. I'm not a huge fan of the slide because it has the waves in it and these waves launch my kids almost completely off the slide sometimes. It would probably be better with just a straight slide or a tunnel type slide. The slide also doesn't hold much weight as adults cannot go on the slide without it collapsing because it is just thin plastic with plastic supporting bars underneath. My biggest complaint with this playset is that over the past year, pieces have begun falling off and the wood doesn't seem to be fairing well in some places. The wood seems to be cracking in places and I'm a little concerned it won't hold up for the long-term considering how expensive it was. This playset is just okay. My kids like it but I would probably buy something else next time.
Phew, talk about a project! We are a pretty handy DIY couple and thought we knew what we could handle. Brace yourself for just unpacking this set. It will seem like a million pieces in so many different sizes and cuts. The hardware bag alone is overwhelming. Don't let that fool you though. It is doable if your realistic about the scope of this project. It took us three work days with our children at Grandma's and the help of 2 friends. We used a system where one of us was always prepping the next page. Fortunately all pieces were included. We did have issues with cracked boards and keeping the set square as we built it. The company was great and immediate sent replacements for the cracked boards. Overall, we think it was worth it. The boys love playing on it. It's a great value for the size. We looked at A LOT of sets. It seems sturdy and we are optimistic that it will be a great place for them to play for many years.
My Thunder Ridge swing set came right to the door with no problem. I hired a friend to assemble for me and he was able to put it together in about 13 hours. No missing parts. 5 year old jumped on all the features and the 1 year old can open the door by himself. We are very pleased
When we first decided to buy this swingset I was had my reservations about the quality. I studied all the reviews and everybody seemed pretty happy so we went for it. We just got yesterday, took less than a week to get here. A+ When we opened the two large boxes you could smell the cedar wood and when we took the wood out of the box it was really good quality cedar that has a stain on it. A+ I was now feeling really good about the purchase! My wife and I organized all the pieces by letter, which each piece was very nicely marked. A+ We did the same with the hardware that is also marked. We then started to assemble the swingset. We started about 1:00 in the afternoon and stopped at 7:00 when the bugs came out, we were nearly finished. The instructions were easy to follow if you read each one and had an amazing wife pulling parts for the next step!! We just finished this morning, for a total of 8 hours all together for setup and the kids love it!! We are really happy with the purchase!!!
This playset looks beautiful. It's got the 5 foot high play decks of the bigger sets and the monkey bars are really high! The swingset side is where it loses points. The main beam is thin and a bit flimsy. Creaks when 3 kids are swinging.. Seems unstable. Half wondering when board will break. Also, an adult cannot sit on this swingset. I've had to race out to tell adults the weight limit.. Which isn't ideal
The instructions that came with this swingset are not very good. Things are not clearly marked. This set took my husband and I more than a weekend to assemble and we are both pretty handy. Also the pre drilled hole can be off by a bit which causes more problems, and not all holes are pre-drilled... also there was some wood splitting which we have to fix ourselves. It is a nice swing set and my kids love it but that is lot of problems for the price. Wouldn't buy again.
Very happy with this purchase. Built the swing set by myself. All the screws and bolts were a bit intimidating but took me about 16 hours to complete. The boards are all labeled so a little time to organize helped. Would definitely purchase another from Backyard Discovery.
This swing set is fantastic. My 3 year old plays on it daily. The directions could have been a little clearer, but overall it’s pretty easy to assemble. Just give your self a weekend to do it.
My parents got this playset for my children, they are so excited about it. It seems to be ok quality , except for some minor issues...the roof which was already put together fell apart the first wind we had. Also don't expect average or small children to be able to use the monkey bars, the are extremely tall, my 6ft husband could use them. Overall it is a pretty nice set and my children love it.
It's a VERY cute swing set. My husband and I put it together in about ten hours. Four of those were while also caring for a 10 month and 3 year old. Once you anchor the set down, it is solid. However, while my 160 lb husband had no problem bouncing around the top deck while putting it together, I felt it was going to crash at any time! So we are planning on putting in some reinforcement under the floor and maybe the support corners, just as reassurance for when my girls get a little larger. Compared to the large super expensive sets, this was a really good deal. Hopefully, with maintenance, it'll last a few years for my daughters.
Backyard Discovery Thunder Ridge All Cedar Swing Set