CKB LTD Space Rail Perpetual Rollercoaster Glow in The Dark Level 2 - Marble Roller Coaster Run DIY Track Build Kit Space Rail Track Run

I bought this as a Christmas present for my brother and something to keep us away from the TV during the festive holiday. Honestly, it's one of the best things I've bought on Amazon. Hours of fun/stress building it and then even more hours of switching it on and watching it work. I had read some of the comments before I bought it so I knew that it would be hard to build, and it didn't let us down. It was a challenge to build it and was touch and go at times, but it was so great to have something to build together as a family. One small criticism would be the durability of the clips which we broke while building the track, especially the intricate parts like the loops. Luckily there are spares, around 10 or 15 i think, but we used all of them, which is why it was touch and go.

I got this, constructed it and have it working properly. Sounds simple; it wasn't! But it was thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish. The kit comes as a variety of separate plastic pieces, separated into bags of identical pieces. First off is to connect several pieces together to make the supporting arms. All 54 of them. No problem, a bit tedious but acts as an intro. Then you put the base together, assemble the elevator, and start the challenge. You do have instructions, and for the most part they're as useful as they need to be. The one exception is when building the track that splits into two, as for this it does not tell you how long you need to cut the rails. But you can roughly figure it out (I think I made it about 2 metres), and cut down once you've got it almost complete. And there is a LOT of spare rail, so don't worry. There are also ten joining pins should you need to connect two lengths together. The instructions tell you where to put the arms and in what position on the rails. They give you a 'to scale' double page of where to position them on each support strut, but to be honest I found that once I was building, I had to move them, so it's only really useful for getting them to face the right way, and a very rough idea of the spacing. It seems previously that the instructions have had incorrect lettering on the key for this part, but my product had these corrected with stickers. The hard part is getting the rails shaped and connected. I started with the triple loop-the-loop track, and it took me about 3-4 hours to get it right. I did begin to get a bit frustrated towards the end, but once I sussed it out it was well worth it. That track is by far the hardest one to do, and so once you've done it, the others are only a mild challenge, as you understand the principles much better. Also, you don't have to follow the given track shapes exactly, for example I fed the latter part of my see-saw track through the middle of the triple loop-the-loop rather than around it. In fact, if you've the mind for it, you could create your own tracks from scratch (I'll be doing this once I'm bored of the current set up, and am really look forward to it). As for the positioning of rails, the instructions give you just about enough, and the diagrams are invaluable. The photos are either very helpful or utterly useless. Once the track is assembled, you pop the ball in and watch it fail. Then you make slight adjustments to where it fell off and put the ball back on. This will probably happen quite a lot - I found myself making dozens of tiny adjustments to get it right, but there is a lot you can do: - spacers are provided to keep the rails apart, but they can also be twisted to bank around corners, or you can make the rails narrower/wider to speed up/slow down the ball - the arms move up and down, left and right, and also twist so you effectively have pitch, roll and yaw that you can adjust - the rings that make up the start and finish points can be moved, but only up and down - the base is full of holes for the struts, so you can move them if you think it'll help There are a couple things I've found that are problematic, but they can mostly be compensated for: - the struts fit only loosely into the holes, so they don't necessarily sit square off the base, and they can pop out while you're assembling the rails - the balls only sit on the elevator (there's no dip or anything to keep them on it), and if a ball comes in at speed and at a certain time relative to the others, it can and will knock them off - the see-saws are not firm enough and after several passes tend to sit in a 'drooped' position, which can either mean the bottom one catches on the rail below it, or it misses the rail when it tips the ball off - yes, it does glow in the dark, but not very brightly, and obviously the balls don't glow so it feels a little pointless To sum up, if you've the patience for things that require many tiny adjustments, don't mind spending hours and hours (it took me a total of about 12 hours to get right) constructing what feels like a small section of something, and you've an understanding of the basic related rules of gravity/physics, then you'll love it. If not, you'll hate it.

I bough this for my 7 yo boys birthday present. However, this setup is a little bit too complex to build. The rail is in one roll and you have to cut into different length to fit what you want to build. And after the first ones you will not want to dismantle it for another design and just sit there. The joint quality is not good enough to hold the weight of the ball for running, you have to adjust and retry many times to get balance. It use a size C battery, so get prepared! I will say, why not just put 4 x AA batteries!!!! It is fun, but very messy to build!

Worst toy I ever bought. Took over 3 hours to set up and get the ball to go round the loop and stay on. Then it would run for a while no issues, and out of nowhere the ball would start bouncing off the track at the top of the ball lift, and take forever to get it working again. Only for the same thing to happen a while later.

This could so easily have been a 5 star review. The build itself is great and it absolutely eats up hours, which is exactly what I wanted. It does take a lot of time and patience though. They say around 8 hours but I don’t think that’s even close. I’d say at least double that if you’re taking your time. The big problem is the clips. They just aren’t durable enough. More than 20 of mine snapped during the build and you can’t buy replacements separately. In the end I had to freestyle the build with the clips I had left, which is a real shame after putting so much effort in. If the clips were stronger and you could order spares, this would be an easy 5 star product. As it stands, it’s a very fun but very frustrating experience.

Looks great not assembled it yet

I've had this for 3 nights now and have just managed to get a whole rail working. It doesn't sound like much but I was very pleased with myself. This is a really fun puzzle toy and you really need to treat it like that. The instructions will show you the basics of putting together the struts, supports and smaller elements but when it comes to the track, it will only give you a guide. You will have hours of fiddling and deciphering the guide to get the tracks to run smoothly. The black and white instructions don't really help with differentiating the track from the struts and colour would have been a real bonus. Instead I had to resort to Googling hi-res images of the coaster to try and work out how elements of the track went together. Step 2 of the instructions is building the split track rail and I've yet to figure out how long that track needs to be cut to. It may be an oversight in the instructions or it may be my myopic problem. Oh yes, the track comes as one long strip that you need to cut down to the individual rails. I'm finding this quite a challenge and in spite of the less than perfect instructions I'm loving it and would wholeheartedly recommend this to someone else. Just bear it in mind that it doesn't hand hold you through the whole process. I've been at it for three evenings (approx 6-7 hours) and I've only just managed to get a single rail working and this kit has 5 (1 splits to 2).

Looks good on the box, but, you need to have a degree in engineering just to put it together, my son-in-law, spent 5 hours on the damn thing, and gave up, and sent it to his dad, he also gave up, the instructions are bewildering, it would be ok if you didn't need an I.Q of ultimate genius level, so far between the 2 of them, 14 hours and it's still not complete, whoever designed it needs to re-write the instructions, or simplify them....