Lemax 75189-UK Christmas Village Sights & Sounds: The Garden Ballroom

This is a beautiful piece, with lots going on inside it. The ball is being held in a giant glasshouse and there are detailed ‘ironwork’ patterns to the roof.Inside, four couples whirl round - both separately rotating and with the floor moving clockwise. There’s lots of detail to the couples, in particular the ladies as each of the women is wearing a different, elaborate style of gown, unique hair colour/style, and white gloves. The menfolk are a little more cookie cutter, though there is one chap with long blond hair, tied back.The effect of the number of dancers is multiplied by the positioning of three mirrored panels at the back of the room, look directly in at this and you see masses of dancers instead of the four couples actually present.A plastic chandelier built in to a removable top piece sparkles, amplifying the effect of the little inbuilt warm white lighting.Although a sign outside advertises that what’s taking place is the Winter ball, this is a green piece - with no snow on the ground, and flowers in bloom outside the building. The bespoke instrumental soundtrack is not at all Christmassy, giving versatility for this to be used in an any time village display.For me, the ballroom floor could be prettier without becoming intrusive (it’s a large expanse of rather uninspiring grey) and there is one issue with this (apart from the price) that has me dropping my rating by a star.That issue is the switch. For some reason, instead of the regular Lemax Christmas village white volume/power switches the one cabled on to every version of the garden ballroom I have seen is the black and orange version usually kept for Spooky Town pieces. This is a weird, jarring note that just looks plain wrong. Especially when the adapter and plug inlet on the back of the piece are the usual white. I know it’s easy enough to tuck the switch out of sight, but on a piece this expensive it should be right.