Customer Reviews

Hot Wheels Criss Cross Crash Track Set

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

It's not that easy to get four cars going around the track. The track is small and the cars go whipping by quickly. The motors launch the cars pretty fast so that they get around the steep banked curves (or they fall off). The four 'D' batteries must be in top notch condition as each car will decrease the motor speed slightly as the car travels through the launcher housing. The motors must recover their speed before the next car arrives or else it won't launch it fast enough and the car will fall off the curve. Given the variables at play: batteries, car quality, track placement wobbliness, user's ability to time it just right, I found this toy somewhat frustrating. When I tried only two or three cars, they'd traverse the track just fine, go for awhile, and eventually one or all would fall off the track, but seldom crash. The more cars, the higher the likelihood of a crash, but getting more cars on the track is a pain (maybe fun for some). Overall, I don't like this Hot Wheels set and wouldn't recommend it. If the product had only been $20, I'd have given this 3 stars, but at $40 it is not worth it. One last minor gripe is that the battery housing is too tight (it's harder than it needs to be to insert/remove the 'D' cells) and the cheap battery cover barely stays in it's hinges.

This is my sons favorite toy, and whenever his friends come over they always ask to play with it as well. Luckily, that is no problem as setting up this toy and putting it away are both very easy. My son can play with this for hours. The cars are able to fly around the track so fast, and the crashing is always very excititng to him. For as much fun as he and his friends continue to have with this, I know it was a great purchase at a great value.

DO NOT USE BLUE SUPPORT BEAMS!!!

We got this set for Christmas this year. We set it up as instructed and found it very difficult to get more than one car around the track. The problem is in the design of the set. The blue beams raise the tracks up high but they decrease the stability of the tracks. One car will go around just fine but the force of the car causes the opposite loops of the track to jostle back and forth severely. If you have two cars going this jostling is strong enough to cause the cars to fall off the track. My kids decided to remove the support beams and guess what. The tracks are way more stable and we were able to get multiple cars going at once for many laps around the track. We even got five cars around a couple of times but this is very tricky. I can not understand why Hot Wheels put these support beams on the set. Once you take them off it will make this toy a million times more fun for everyone.

Also, the kids found a trick for getting mulitple cars going:

Place a car on one of the arrow stickers and let it sit.
Start a car on an opposite loop.
The moving car will come around with enough force to knock the sitting car into the spinning wheels and still have enough movement to go through the wheels itself.
We have tried placing three sitting cars on three arrows and we were able to send another car around and got all of the cars going around the track.
This is a great tip for little kids to not get frustrated trying to get multiple cars on the track.


In conclusion: DO NOT USE BLUE SUPPORT BEAMS!!!

I bought this for my nephew that just turned 5. He loved it. Me and my sister set it up on the table with no problems in setting it up. It was fast and easy. My two kids and her two kids played with it for hours. It only comes with one car but I had bought some extra ones for him. They each had a car and would see whose car stayed on the track the longest. Me and my sister even jumped in there and took a turn. We had a ball. I am planning on getting my son one for Christmas now.

As a child I had many hot wheel sets. Most of them were the first ones made. They were durable and lasted for years. They were interchangable and expandable. Now as a grandfather I bought my grandson the criss cross crash set. It set up easy and was a lot of fun, but after only one month the connector rails on the bottom of the track have split off. I have looked for replacement parts at Mattel and they have none. I have seen straight track in stores but none of the banked corners that are in this set. Not a good purchase.

This is the best set I've seen from Hot Wheels in awhile. I'm so glad I got this for my 6yo. It's been a blast...even for me! Certainly true that not all the cars work with it, but since we over 500 of them it wasn't a problem to find a bunch that zoomed through the track. The lighter, slimmer cars fling the best. If you're gonna buy any Hot Wheels package set, this is the one I would lay out some cash for!! It was easy to put together too...only took about 5 mins. The batteries were a bit pricey (four D cells), but they haven't run out yet and we run this thing all the time.

I got this for my 3 year old son for Christmas and the whole family is in love with it. I'll start with the things I don't like. The track is a bit flimsy, the battery compartment don't lock, and it is loud. The track seems like in the future it might break where it snaps together. It does take up a big area but it it easy to assemble and take apart. Also it could be stored under a bed fully assembled.

I have read that people are having problems with the cars staying on the track. For one don't use the blue beams. They raise the track up really high and it takes a lot more momentum for the cars to go around the track. Second you have to get all the cars you own together and find the best ones. My son has about 100 and about 75% go around the track. Out of the 100 there is about 10 that work awesome. Most of them are older muscle cars. Low and light is the answer. We had a ton of fun going through each of the cars and making a junk pile, a good pile, and the best pile. If you get the best cars going you can get 3 cars going no problem. My 3 year old son has no problem getting 3 cars on there. 4 is a bit more challenging but we have done it many times. We got 5 just a few times. You have to get the best cars because every time you add a car it slows down all the cars so if you start with a slow car when you put 3 on it will fall off. So far we have played with it for about 4 hours total and the batteries are still fine.

If you don't already have a lot of cars then try buying the set especially for criss cross crash or buy cars that look sporty. Low and light. Trucks or bigger vehicles don't work well with this. I would definitely buy this again. My son is actually asking me if we can go play with it right now. It is a ton of fun for kids and grown ups. A lot of his toys I get bored playing with but I actually like playing it to. I can play for an hour and never get bored. Experiment with it. Try not using the blue beams or just moving them all around until you get the desired track you want.

I bought this for my son, and he plays with it quite a bit. He has a lot of hot wheels cars, and he tries them all out 1 or 2 at a time and has set up an informal ranking system. Unlike some of the battery powered sets that essentially play on their own, this set requires fairly constant tweeking of the connectors, etc, to keep the track from coming apart and/or the cars from coming off. I view this as a plus. Toys that play completely on their own with no real input from the child are not so hot in my book. The batteries seem to last a really long time, too, probably several hours of playtime per set (at least). I had a SuperChargers(?) set when I was a kid, and I remember that really going through the batteries (non-Alkaline in those days). The only real down-side is that it's pretty loud, but that bothers me more than it seems to bother my son.

My 4 yrs old nephew thought this was pretty cool.....I was amazed at how fast the cars go, and it seemed to work pretty good. Lasted through one day anyway.

I too grew up with Hot Wheels and have noticed a lack of quality they once hand! This track is pretty fun for my 3 y/o who loves it. The only problem is the motor is very loud!!! and my wife gets tired of the noise real quick. Other than that, we bought this for him as he is in love with "Cars" the movie and has a lot of the vehicles, the only problem is that the Disney version of Hot Wheels are to wide for this track so be aware!! He still has some Hot Wheel cars and still wanted to keep this track and loves it. I've heard some complain about the difficulty of assembly and if you're comfortable with the U.S alphabet, you will have no problems with this! It went together in about 5 minutes. I've also heard some problems with the blue braces needing to be taped down. You can adjust them to get them to the perfect spot and on a hard surface we've had no problems, i.e. train table!

Hope this helps someone,

I forgot to add that we found if you give the cars a little push on the flat portions of the track, they will have enough speed to stay on the track!!