I have all the Winter Village sets - they make a wonderful collection especially now that Lego has produced white base plates. This is a middle-ranker, and is the third in the fantasy sub-genre, the other two Santa's Workshop and Gingerbread House being among the finest Lego sets period.

While any criticism is only relative, my problems are several. First, I love Lego boxes and have a huge collection but this one's awful black presentation is the worst Lego presentation I have ever seen. It also omits the invaluable list of pieces included. The inappropriate black follows through to the booklet, which is on glossy black paper making it difficult to read and poor to handle. As for the set, the four elves have the same green body - how more interesting were they when they first appeared for Santa's Workshop, in stripy blue on light blue, ink blue on red, jeans and Christmas red on green. Every one of them looks better than this generic green. As per normal, the roof is tricky and comes apart easily. The lights are a bit garish compared to the just-so-perfect lights in the legendary Santa's Workshop.

The best feature is the triple-bed and the way it tosses the elves out at wakey-wakey time (triggered by the clock - how clever!)

One more thing - this set is definitely suitable for anyone above 12. Lego has changed from giving meaningful age guidelines to "marketing for adults" which is their Coke-zero moment. Presumably the black goes with it.

This is such a fun set that highlights the adorable elf minifigures. I love their new costume design and the red scarf. The little computer build is one of the highlights, so incredibly cute and perfect for an adult set since only adults will recognize these old-time computers :-D I did swap out the "keyboard" for a printed one from my own collection. The pirate ship, plane and piano builds are fun as well. The Christmas tree is one of my favorite tree designs yet. I love the colors, sand green and dark tan. The roof design was very smart and looks great. It makes displaying next to the Gingerbread House cohesive. The waffles are a really great printed piece. A clever build for the waffle dispenser station and the beds that shake. The light brick is also a nice addition and the green round 1x1 plates were clever for the wreath. And the deer has to be mentioned, so happy for one of those. I was a little disappointed at first that there was only one deer, BUT it's not a deer for Santa's sleigh, it's just for the little elf sleigh so it's perfect. I do hope more will show up in other sets to collect more. While considered one of the adult sets, playability for the kiddos is excellent. I gave this four stars because I don't care for the dark instruction book. I will say that the darker colored bricks were hidden by the dark pages and it threw me a bit from time to time trying to figure out what color I was supposed to use. For example book 1, the tree build starts with a dark green plate, but then the next instruction showed two green plates. I completely missed seeing the dark green plate was actually underneath the green ones. Seeing the difference between tan and gold was tough at times, too. And a transparent piece is always tough to print, but I was searching for a gray one and when I couldn't find one, I discovered it was just transparent. I understand wanting to match the dark boxes and their nice design, but LEGO, I say stick with what works. When putting your sets together, the instructions are important which in turns means that seeing them well is very important for the fun-factor. All in all, another well-done and popular Christmas set!

I was fortunate to have ordered and received my Gingerbread house and Santa's Village just before they both went to "sold out" status on" on the On-line Lego site. If you can find this anywhere, get it NOW. The design is crisp, and architecturally beautiful! Thank you LEGO for demonstrating a new way to build steep ceilings! A 6 year old may come to an older child or to an adult for help, but an adult (AFOL, like me) will immediate appreciate its charm and usefullness for display. For a child, there are only two gingerbread characters, plus an non-descript baby tile, but when you add your own LEGO minifigs from other sets, this Gingerbread house promises lots of repetitive play. I would recommend helping the child create story lines about the visitors who come to visit and the way they receive happiness from their happiness.
In my pictures set, The Gingerbread Family has opened their home to travelers. Their first guests are the Happy Family. But there's a little situation. Mom Happy is 3 weeks and having morning sickness, and so we see her constantly in the bathroom. Dad Happy is wishing that Mom will feel better and the rest of their vacation will be better and in 9 months they will a healthy new baby.

Bought as a present for ourselves, not disappointed at all and would definitely recommend to anyone. Adds to the spirit and build up to Christmas festivity's.

Built with my daughter (in her early 20's) and we both thoroughly enjoyed the build, not overly complicated or tricky, didn't take that long to build, but more importantly, wasn't built in an hour, so you feel like you've got your monies worth.

Comes in separate numbered bags and easy to follow instructions, we methodically serrated out the bag to we were using into similar components and this helped, as some are small and you can end up spending 5 minutes looking for it... only a few stickers to attach for anyone not liking this. I think my only disappointment was the baby - a little tiny flat piece of lego with an imprint on - seemed a bit of a disappointment, surely Lego can produce a baby mini-figure ?

Looks really good, adds to the festive feel of the room and is a definite talking point. Would definitely recommend this to anyone thinking about it, indeed, a work colleague after seeing photos of my build and discussions, bought one :)

Have taken down now and stored the toys / furniture in 1 sealed bag, the roof structure in another and the main building in a 3rd, so hopefully will be able to find components in 11 months when I come to re-build it, took about an hour to dismantle, so okay. Double checked I didn't drop any small parts.