Grand Carousel (10196) - "Turntable"

Last night saw a big step forward in the build. We built the base of the carousel itself - the piece that not only supports everything above it but that rotates and moves.

It wasn't easy to do - there were a lot of tight connections between each of the platform sections.The fit, in general, is very tight. As you can see from the pictures below, there is virtually no space between the carousel and the operator station. Virtually the entire board is taken up with the carousel and its supporting pieces. That leaves little room to stage the minifigures and set up any of the expected "fair ground" activities and booths. *Note that this set doesn't contain anything aside from the carousel but if you were interested in building this out to a full theme park, more "green space" is required.

Very tight clearance between the carousel and the operator booth

The base runs fairly smoothly. I say fairly because in the clockwise direction, it seems to always get caught up on one of the platforms. On closer inspection, the leading edge of that platform keeps getting caught on one of the tiles that protrudes up from the "ground". I am not sure of the purpose of this tile on the ground but if, by the end of the build, it proves to have no real purpose, I will remove it so that the ride operates more smoothly.

The ride turns due to a series of small wheels that are mounted on the underside (on every other platform). These wheels run on the round dark-red track that was built during the first part of construction.

Close-up of wheel

Underneath of the rotating base

Grand Carousel (10196) - The Start of the Base

We got a little more done last night - finished off the motor/operator station platform and started on the base of the carousel itself. We spent a lot of time futzing with the power functions battery box - I put in the requisite 3 AA batteries but the block refused to work. So then I had to find my test meter to confirm that the batteries were fully charged (which they were). When the on button is pushed, a green LED on the side of the power function pack is supposed to turn on to indicate that it is functioning. That did not happen in our case. According to the Lego site, a possible fix is to use a different brand of batteries that has a larger + terminal. If you ask me, they should re-design their battery box so it's not brand specific to batteries!!

I'll have to see if I have any other brands of batteries around the house - I used Energizers last night. There will be some dis-assembly required to test out any new batteries as the battery box is built into the center of the control platform.

We made a little bit of progress on the base of the carousel as well. We were happy to see that everything looked symmetrical - usually a good sign that no mistakes have been made!

And a shot showing everything on the board.

Super Star Destroyer (10221) - More parts gathering

My SSD is a few steps closer to being build-ready. Did a few more local pick-ups this weekend and the only things left are in 5 mail shipments that I am awaiting.

I was really hoping to start this build before the Grand Carousel but mom just couldn't wait to do that one. I think I have created a monster by suggesting that we build these sets together. She needs her addiction fed on a daily basis now hahahaha.

Take Saturday, for instance. We were out for most of the day, doing the Lego pick-ups and then tackling a few chores while we were out. I confirmed the count on my pick-ups as soon as we got home and then put the packages on our Lego table, planning on knolling them as our Sunday night Lego activity.

Well, mom just couldn't wait until Sunday night. She had those pieces knolled and sorted early Sunday morning and was prodding me to start building the carousel on Sunday night instead. I am guessing that had we not been busy with other plans on Saturday evening, she would have had them knolled then!!

Grand Carousel (10196) - Mom couldn't wait to start ...

After almost a whole week with no Lego building, mom started going stir crazy. Knolling was apparently not enough to feed her addiction and she insisted we start the carousel despite a few missing pieces. On that front, I did get in touch with the seller, who was more than happy to send the missing pieces. Unfortunately, as the Chinese Spring Festival is beginning this Saturday, the factory is no longer accepting orders and will not re-open until mid February. Thus, we will be waiting a few weeks for the missing pieces.

On the bright side, 1 of the pieces, while required early on the build is decorative and can be added at any time so it's not a show stopper. The second piece won't be needed until the middle of the build, so we have a lot we can get done in the meantime.

As excited as mom was with all the different colors while we were knolling this set, she quickly came to dislike the multiple similar shades we had of several of the colors (3 shades of blue, 2 of gray, 2 of tan). The coloring in the instruction manual makes it difficult to determine with 100% confidence which shade we are working with.

We resorted to using Lego's online manual to double check. We would not be surprised if we had to backtrack at some point to fix a color issue. On the topic of backtracking, we had to do that yesterday after only getting 30 minutes into the build. The set contains multiple lengths of tan tiles and we accidentally used a shorter length. We didn't realize the mistake until we went to mount the motor and found that the holes were not lining up. Then, as we examined more closely, we found that the carousel foundation we had built wasn't centered perfectly on the base plate but was slightly up and right of the center.

What made it somewhat funnier is that just as we started, Mom joked around that she hoped she didn't end up building a lop-sided carousel. Guess she predicted the future quite well!!

Anyway, we didn't get very far last night. Got a little bit of the foundation laid out and started on the motor platform.

Grand Carousel (10196) - Knolling done

It took longer than expected to finish knolling the last 30% of the pieces (in hindsight probably 30% by volume and not by quantity). It seemed like we had all the small pieces left to count last night. Even though this set has slightly more pieces than the super star destroyer (3263 vs 3152), a lot more of them are small 1x1 plates, tiles, and "greebles".

Nonetheless, we plowed through it and got everything finished last night. Mom has developed a passion for knolling and finds it really enjoyable. There were even several types of pieces that I was just going to count and bag but she insisted on knolling hahaha. Anyway, to my surprise, there were only 4 pieces that were missing. I had honestly thought there would be more, particularly given how many tiny pieces are in the set. I sure do hope that our counting was correct .... I caught mom counting out 2, 4, 6, 10 at one point ....

Hopefully, the seller will be willing/able to send the missing items - not sure how good the Lepin customer service is. Lego would have no problems sending out the items. Time will tell, I guess.

So with pieces missing both in this set AND the super star destroyer, we are at a bit of a standstill. I was hoping on building the star destroyer first but at this point, it looks like whichever set gets all its pieces first will get priority.

Grand Carousel (10196) - Let the knolling begin!

We spent a good hour and a half on knolling last night. One of my larger concerns with this set is missing pieces. One of the critiques of Lepin sets is that they seem to have a higher probability of missing pieces. We knolled about 70% of the parts and found 2 pieces that were missing - which is actually a lot fewer than I had expected. At the same time, we also found about 6 extra pieces (though you'll never hear of anyone complaining about those).

I'm still hoping that as we go through the rest of the bags, we'll find that those 2 pieces accidentally got packed elsewhere. I have to admit I am somewhat doubtful though as ever other piece has been properly bagged with its brothers and sisters.

A couple shots of some of our knolled pieces from last night.

Grand Carousel (10196) - De-boxing and Initial Thoughts!!

Upon opening, we found that the pieces were packed in a similar manner to what you would expect in a Lego set. The type of plastic used for the bags was the same crunchy, crinkly plastic that Lego uses.

It was a pretty impressive haul - covered the better part of our assembly table.

One difference we spotted was the lack of numbering on the bags. The parts are not divided into the chapters of the build but are sorted by color and type. We actually prefer this style of packing as it is more conducive to the knolling process. Due to this style of packaging, there are also a larger number of bags, each containing a smaller number of parts.

Pieces bagged by type and color

The colors themselves look pretty good - they aren't faded and look as vibrant as the Lego pieces do. Mom was really excited at all the different colors there were - 3 shades of blue, 2 shades of red, yellows, etc.

Look at those colors!

The instruction manual looks exactly as the Lego version - with the small exception of the Lepin logo in the top left corner. Otherwise, the print material feels the same and the print quality seems to be equivalent.

Some reviews I have read of Lepin sets complain about the quality of the print on the minifigures - issues with the faces not being centered, eyeballs being printed on tops of heads, lines on the eyes not being crisp. I have to say that I did not find ANY of those issues with the minifigure parts on this set thus far.

As you can see below, the detailing is of good quality and all eyes are on the face and not the scalp :)

Another difference we noticed was that the point of injection on the Lepin pieces was larger than those on a typical Lego piece. A typical Lego piece has a small pinprick where the liquid plastic is injected into the brick mold. As you can see below, the Lepin pieces have a pretty noticeable injection site. Aside from being less aesthetically pleasing, it does not seem to affect the fit of the pieces at all.