LEGO Friends Snow Resort Ice Rink Review

For those not familiar with the LEGO Friends range these sets are slightly different to what you’d call “standard” LEGO sets. Colours are bright and colourful and the characters stand taller with more human-like features than the traditional yellow-faced figures that have been such a trademark image for decades. With purple boxes and a more feminine palette of colours inside, these sets seem to be an attempt to draw more girls into the world of bringing out imagination through bricks and characters, and judging by the huge range available it’s doing a pretty decent job.

This set, helpfully geared up for a winter audience, offers up an ice rink along with performance stage, a table to sit at and enjoy a drink as well as a couple of other smaller extras. It’s not a small set by any means, coming with three bags of bricks and pieces which will take a decent hour at least for a confident builder to put together. The great thing about this set is the possibilities after the building. While the ice rink could have done with being a little bigger to allow more imaginative play options, the multitude of settings in one place means that younger builders will be able to simulate ice skating, singing and dancing, as well as manning the refreshment and skate hire areas. There’s some nice little movable parts too, with the rink doors swinging open, a deposit box for skates and the stage spinning round amongst a couple of others. It certainly helps with the interactive nature of the various parts in the set and are sized well for the characters.

This was the first LEGO Friends set I’d seen up close, and I was impressed by it. It’s worth knowing that the characters won’t really work with other LEGO sets so if you’ve got a big collection of LEGO City sets you’ll find these won’t fit into the cars or buildings, but as a separate collection and a new way to play with LEGO this is really great stuff. Definitely recommended for those with young girls wanting to get into the joy of LEGO, and with Christmas round the corner it’s an ideal time to look out for this set.