Customer Reviews

Ravensburger Tropical Impressions - 18000 Piece Puzzle

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a beautiful puzzle -- four tropical scenes that can be taken apart or put together to form one gigantic puzzle. The colors are not your typical, bright "primary" tropical colors; they're olives and deep reds and slate blues. Very pretty. As has been the case with other Ravensburger products we've bought, this is top-notch. Their puzzles seem better constructed than others -- really built to last. The pieces are thicker and more durable, and the quality of the workmanship, overall, is just excellent. The price on Amazon.com through dianastoystore.com was really good, too -- less than $100. I bought this puzzle as a Christmas present for the family. Neither my husband, son, nor I have been graced with very much patience. But with an 18,000 piece puzzle -- I think we're going to have to learn some patience. I know it's going to take us a long time to put this together, and there's no question this is going to be a challenge. But once it's together, I imagine we'll have some good memories of the the time during which we worked on it. I can't wait to get it all together and mounted -- it's going to be a lovely piece for our living room. I would love to hear from other people who have put together the puzzle -- to see what their experiences were like.

The border is VERY difficult. Many of the pieces are very, very similar (some have exact duplicates), so it took me awhile to get the border finished correctly - At one point I had a clean break in the border of my puzzle and thought it was defective - but I just had to move the pieces around. Another time I had one hole and one leftover piece, but they didn't fit together! I had to search around the border and finally found a similar piece that was only slightly smaller. But I like that is is difficult - it made finishing the border more rewarding. Not done with it yet, but the amount of time I spend enjoying putting this together totally makes it worth it!

Have purchased and been very happy with the Ravensburger Puzzles in the past. This is the first 18000 piece I have bought. So far it has provided a lot of fun and the whole family is working on it. 4 weeks into the puzzle and we are only 1/16th done. So far I am pleased with this puzzle, it has the same quality (in picture quality and strength of pieces) as previous Ravensburger puzzles. If you want a puzzle that will consume a lot of your time, then this is the puzzle.

I purchased this for my aunt, and when the package arrived I was flabbergasted. The box is so large and so heavy that we just couldn't believe it was a puzzle. My aunt's been working on it ever since and is extremely pleased - she says she's going to leave the unfinished monster to me in her will as revenge! :)

If you like puzzles this one is one must have, lol, just consider you need a lot of free time to try it.

I've had this puzzle for a year now and have only gotten the parrots put together. This thing is hard. What distinguishes it from other puzzles is the lack of primary colors and distinct lines (Except, of course, the parrots). Every piece is some shade of olive. There's dark muddy olive and there's white watery olive, and of course, solid green. A lot of solid green. I mean a LOT. Not green of different hues, like water or sky in most puzzles. When I say solid green, I mean solid green.
My only complaint is the ink seems to 'bleed' slightly. Most of the pieces, when looked at closely enough, seems to have some shade of purple, or green, or brown in it, much like what you get when you try to print 'black' on your inkjet printer, but don't have a black cartridge, and have to combine your yellow/blue/red cartridge. Since most of the pieces are blurry olive, fine-tune sorting based on their hue is extremely difficult.

For all puzzle "freaks" out there, this puzzle surely is a must. What a challenge it is! But once you have done it... Man!!! There are no words to describe the feeling.

Regarding the quality... It is a Ravensburger puzzle. Enough said. Well... I'll elaborate a bit more :D. Great quality pieces, fantastic assembling, and awesome picture quality.

Not for the faint hearted though. The puzzle includes a fantastic poster inside, to make easier the job, but even with it, and even making one bag at a time (each picture is a bag of 4560 pieces), it is incredibly tough, and really annoying sometimes, but as I said... when you have finished it...

My advice is to try it only when you have done some big "one bag" puzzles (4000 - 6000 pieces). Only then, you are ready for this "monster". Only three stars in the "Fun" part cause it can be incredibly annoying sometimes, and being annoyed isn't fun.

If you like puzzles, and are looking for something that will leave you speechless when finished, and your friends too, and something challenging... THIS is the puzzle.

In a few words: Challenging, awesome, beautiful, educative... and cheap if you know where to look.

Not easy to find, I was forced to buy it in Amazon.com (Being from Spain, I usually buy in Amazon.co.uk), and be ready to pay import fees and a fairly higher amount of money for the delivery. But it was still worth it buying it here. It costed me just a bit more than a new video game, and there is no comparison between this and a video game. (Well... not for me) The service from Amazon, was once again Top notch.

This was really an amazing puzzle. The interesting parts were fun to do, but the green solid part was pretty aggravating (my husband called it a "unique challenge") -- often there would be up to half a dozen similar pieces that could fit in one spot, but only one of them would allow the neighboring pieces to fit together properly. I kept putting them together in a way that looked right but wasn't. (I think he probably did too, although I couldn't ever be sure --it's hard to tell which little green piece was the one I put in.) There were no missing pieces -- we would have been devastated if there had been after all that work! The painting is quite beautiful, with fine detail that was rewarding to put together. We still haven't figured out how to glue it all up though. This isn't the kind of puzzle you do twice.

The puzzle has missing pieces and no phone number to get the missing pieces. Nothing worse than a puzzle that you cannot finish as it is not complete. For the price it looks good but not worth it unless it has all the pieces.