Customer Reviews

Thomas And Friends Wooden Railway - Felt Playmat

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

 

 

We purchased this playmat for our 18-month-old son for Chirstmas because we felt he was too young to spend so much money on the train table. The first mistake was assuming that the mat was the same size as the table. The mat is not designed for use with the tracks. This means that the figure eight set is too long and extends past the edge of the mat, making the tracks uneven. The biggest problem, however, if your child sits on the mat or crawls across it while playing, the felt top comes unglued from the rubber backing. This makes the felt top really wrinkle up so that his trains do not run smoothly across it. I tried to smooth it out, but it seems to have warped and will not smooth out. So far, this doesn't seem to have bothered our son too much, though. He continues to play with it, although he does prefer to use his train table that his grandfather made for him to put his tracks on. Much cheaper than a [...] train table!

I completely agree with one of the other reviews. This is an expensive mat when you see that that the backing comes unglued. Our mat also is now warped. Yes, the kids do not know what the problem is, but they do realize that all of their cars do not run on the mat properly. This would be better if not a felt top, but rather an actual woven carpet with design. We barely used this carpet when the ungluing happened. Find a different product.

My son is a Thomas fanatic and has trains at home, at his grandmother's house and at his great-grandmother's house. We have tracks at two of the houses, but we wanted to get him something to play with the trains on at the third. I was looking for a playmat with both train tracks AND roads so that my son could play with his cars and trains on the same mat. This was one of the few mats that fit that criteria!

As other reviewers have said, this mat was not as big as I had expected (though to be fair, we all should have looked at the dimensions listed!) and it is significantly thinner than the play-rug I have on my son's floor at home. However, for our purposes, the smaller size did not matter at all. We have only been using the rug for a couple of weeks, but so far it has held up just fine. If the backing begins to peel off eventually, I'm sure it will be able to be fixed with fabric glue. I would definitely agree with the reviewer that posted that the tracks did not work well on top of the mat, but my whole purpose of the mat was NOT to have to have the 3-D tracks! The dimensions of the roads and tracks are great and all of my son's little cars and trains fit well on them.

Ultimately, I'm very pleased with the product I got for the amount of money I paid. Obviously, I like our train table and the more epensive play-mat I have at home better, but I also spent much more $$$ on them! I think for $30 (including shipping!) that this was a great buy!

This mat serves its purpose well enough: my son is a little young to assemble railroad pieces by himself, so I got this mat as a stand-in railroad. He doesn't quite get the concept of keeping his trains on the mat's available tracks, but he nevertheless enjoys playing on it and (miraculously) keeps all of his trains on it when he's playing, instead of scattering them all over the house. It's a little smaller than I expected, but not impossibly so.

I bought this for my son's extensive Wooden railway system. It is great for traveling to see our family. He then uses the mat on the floor to set up his train set. He also just uses the map to play with his trains. Our son is two and I think we will get a lot of use out of it. when he grows out of it I will use it as a door mat in the muddroom!

The mat is okay, but it will likley not replace you child's desire for the track systems. It does however provide a nice surface to not scratch up table/floor with trains and other toys. My son does seem to like it, but if I had to do over again would have gotten him a large piece of felt and more track.