Customer Reviews

Gorilla Playsets Blue Ridge Mountaineer Playground System

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

We bought this for our three-year old... a little young perhaps, but he really does like it. For us, we wanted to help maximize the short summers here, so we wanted as much covered space as possible. We opted to minimize assembly effort, so we did not build the picnic bench, the tic tac toe board (required cutting), or the decorative starbursts/suns near the peak of the roof. To build this, we hired a master carpenter for the day to assist. For best results we think knowledge of outdoor woodworking is recommended.

Pro:
-Sturdy, doesn't shake or wobble. I'm 210# and can climb the ramps and can ride down on the slide fine
-Will last: wood is treated to avoid moisture and rot, main timbers are beefy and coated with a dark green vinyl
-Tons of covered space (upper deck, slide, sandbox) to keep surfaces dry
-Came with a bonus ladder... mistake? In any event, if the rock wall or ramp ever need to be replaced, the ladder will be handy
-Came with a lot of other hardware and wood extras (e.g. extra vertical railings), which proved handy
-Gorilla customer service was top-notch... best customer service ever! No questions asked. No press 1 for this, 2 for that. Picked up after a few rings. Thank you!
-Military grade swings and hardware... beefy!
-At least 3 different shapes of rocks for the rock climbing wall... rotate them for more interest

Con:
-Assembly! Took us 30 man-hours to sort this out (took more than an hour just to move all the pieces off the huge pallet to the point of assembly and unbox)
-Instructions came in black and white... what!? Many items were nearly impossible to see, such as pre-drilled holes.
-Many instructions (and holes) were "approximate", so if you are a perfectionist, we recommend that you look at the objective of each step and think about was to achieve the same result (e.g. spacing decking 1/4" apart as directed results in a 1 1/2" gap on the other side, unsightly)
-Directions in all caps made it hard to read... would have preferred a larger font
-Hundreds? of wood pieces, none labeled... would have been especially helpful initially with the four main posts. The first 3 steps took two hours, and ~30% of the work we did had to be redone.
-Once piece was countersunk on the wrong side (although a replacement was in our hands within a week for free... see Pros for more)
-Took 3 1/2 weeks or so to arrive so don't tell your kid(s) they are getting one
-Do not recommend pre-drilling the vertical slats for the railing. Due to tolerance stack up, all the bottom holes would have missed. All 27 or so.
-Hardware box with swings arrived broken open... stuff was every where
-Would have loved the climbing wall rocks to be numbered 1, 2, 3 and/or be different colors... challenge your friends to climb without touching any of the "2's". You find this type of thing in rock climbing gyms and would have been awesome.

Neutral:
-We changed the order of assembly so that all needed two-man work was done first... I built the ramp and rock wall (etc.) on my own time
-We also changed some assembly sequence for what we thought would be easier assembly... read ahead, think, read again, think some more
-Recommend a hammer drill to drive the myriad of lag bolts used in the structure and bolts in the slide
-Tools used: vice grips, hammer drill, huge english/metric socket set, crescent wrench set, ratchet, level, square, cordless drill and bits, 5 fully charged 18V batteries (for cordless tools), rubber mallet.
-Download a color instruction on your own dime first, level the ground at that time too

Bottom line: Recommended, would do it again. Assembly is a one-time ordeal. Get through it and take some pride in having put this beast together.

We (two able bodied adults) are still working on putting this thing together, at least 40 hours; a leisurely weekend and every day after work for three solid hours and we are still not done. We hope to finish tomorrow. Seven days for completion... we hope.

Though we kind of figured it would take a long time.

the bad first:
-more then one set of directions were sent for tube slide, and other accessories, that were contradictory. The primary or "complete" book of how to put the entire thing together is more accurate.
-Having said that, there are errors in the manual such as how many of each piece there are or inaccurate assembly instructions, as if the manual was instructing to but something completely different together.
-the tube slide took as long to assemble as the ENTIRE remaining plays set. It's an engineering miracle/disaster!! The bolts could have been just a 1/4 longer to make attaching the nuts easier, it could have been color coded for aligning the sections accurately, DO NOT follow the tube slide directions they are WRONG the manual has the accurate directions.
-some of the wood was pre-drilled wrong, some of the wood should have been pre-drilled either by the manufacturer or my consumer, ex.; rope ladder support is one of the first things to go up on the foundation structure, and when it comes time to install the rope ladder, you need to drill up into the 1 by 3 inch board. Also the primary support for the swing beam a 4x4 with pre-drilled holes was cracked and split and split even more... making phone call tomorrow to see what to do to manufacturer.
-the wood stinks, i mean really smells of whatever it's primed with. I had unloaded all the giant, eight boxes into the garage, and then closed the doors and moments later mega fumes even other's complained of the smell.
-superfluous work for decorations. Such as chimney, dormer... not needed. Save the wood.
-difficult to level

the good..
-looks really nice
-Sturdy
-my 3.5 and 1.5 children enjoy it so far, even if the slides are not on it yet, all that matters..

wish list...
-some sort of stationary bar for flips, and hanging from
-pic-nick table in the way of sand box, if food drops... VERY sandy

buying/bought to add on:
-horse glider
-steering wheel

What worked for me...
-I was overwhelmed by the amount of pieces when the packages first arrived, so i organized all the hundreds of components and balled every "stack" of like pieces. Then it was easier to find appropriate pieces when assembling.
-i assembled the ladder, climbing wall, tube slide, tic-tac-toe board at night inside so that i could maximize my time outdoors building the structure.
-vice grips for the tube slide to squeeze the lips/joints together to fit the screws through.

will update after some use.

as of this post, the Amazon image with the product name is NOT accurate. Read the product description, it has two slides and not the ramp. But the rest seems accurate, though it's difficult to see in the small photo.

This playset took my husband and me around 12 hours to assemble. It really wasn't that difficult. The enclosed slide was probably the most challenging part. Now that it's together, we love it! The kids love it! It's perfect and we are very satisfied with our purchase. We highly recommend it.