Jason

My daughter (now 11) seriously plays with them. She was never into doll houses, but she has built extensive interiors for all of the buildings. Really great kitchens, furniture, etc. During the summer, she invites her friends over and each one gets to "move in" to one of the houses, and they play for hours and hours. CC is currently vacant and waiting for a new tenant. :) We just got the GE, and she hasn't had a chance to mod it yet, but I'm sure it'll end up having a better selection of goods than Macy's. :) What's the point if you can't play with them! -Jason

Grabbed my Emerald Night from the Lego store in Anaheim, CA at lunch break today. Now I'm just waiting for the clock so I can go home from work and open her up!

Class of Entry: Large The Treasure of Skull Island Ahoy! Every pirate needs a secret hiding place for his loot. What better place than Skull Island, a craggy outcropping of rock in the South Pacific. The only way to reach the island is by a rickety footbridge from a smaller nearby island with a tiny patch of sand. The island is partially hidden by jungle growth, and is home to the rare Blue Parrot. Captain Grayhook only trusts one other living soul with the secret location of this island -- Stubby, his first mate. Of course somebody has to bring the shovel to dig out the treasure. Stubby does occasionally have trouble jumping out of the rowboat though. Once the boat is safely beached, Grayhook and Stubby carefully climb the path to the bridge, cross to the island, go down the old wooden stairs, and swing open the skull face in the rock. Inside is the captain's treasure (a gold ingot, a silver crystal, a giant emerald, and a gold coins). The treasure is safely guarded by a skeleton with a silver sword that will scare off anyone trying to steal the treasure! This was a lot of fun, but very hard to stay at 200 pieces! I had to make some tradeoffs, such as using the one-piece palm trunk rather than the better multi-piece trunk. If I could have another 100 pieces, I would have made the rocks craggier, the jungle growth thicker, and the treasure bigger! For those of you interested in the details, The large island is made up of two 8x16 blocks on top of about 30 normal and inverted steep slope bricks. On top of the platform is 2 BURPS, 2 LURPS, the skull piece and a few bricks here and there to hold it all together. The small island is essentially 3 8x8 blocks stacked off center. The bridge is connected diagonally using flat hinge pieces. I promise there are not more than 200 pieces - I counted a couple times to make sure I don't get DQ'd! If you want to see some closeup pictures, I put a couple additional picture files on brickshelf (give them a couple days to make the folder public) http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=312987 -Jason