My grandmother gave us this playground as a wedding gift 4.5 years ago. The rust on the tower is outrageous. I have been in contact with a customer service rep at lifetime for the past couple of months. They will not honor the warranty because I cannot produce the receipt. My grandmother passed 2 years ago so I can't ask her for it! I explained this many of times to them but they're unwilling to help except for giving me a discount on the faulty parts(which will be almost as much the playground with shipping to Hawaii). They even said to discontinue use of the play set as it is not safe anymore. The monkey bars and swings are fine. The tower however looks like it is 10 years older than the rest of the play ground. To be fair I do live in a humid environment. Still doesn't explain why half the playground is rusting and falling apart at an exponentially faster rate than the rest. My kids are so bummed that they can't play on the tower in fear of getting cut by the rusty metal or the whole thing collapsing from not being structurally sound. Especially right now during this "stay at home" period. I normally don't leave negative reviews but I don't want anyone else to have to suffer through this like we did. I have a 2 lifetime plastic folding tables that work great...not too sure what happened with the playground.

We bought this for earlier this year and the kids love it. We have a 7 year old girl and a 3 year old boy. Even the neighbor kids come play on it. I love that it matches the rest of my durable lifetime products. Like all the lifetime products we own- this too is a hit when it comes to value and quality. My in-laws purchased another brand swing-set from a big box store and it barely lasted them 6 months before it started swaying and getting loose;and it was in dumpster within 2 years. We had an installation party and we had about 4-6 guys on and off for about 8 hours to get it up, definitely not a one man set up, but it gave us a reason to have a cookout so it was all good in the end.

[This review was collected as part of a promotion.] The assembly went very well. I put together by myself over a period of 3 days about 2 hours each day. The assembly was so well written that my kids 14 and 10 were capable of reading them and helping me put together items without my help. This was also done mostly in the dark, as it was winter, with headlamps. I did run into some confusion with the end pieces that cover the holes. The instructions had the part label written on them while the bag had a different label written on it. And in the instructions you're looking for a series of letters that don't exist on the part. You have to pay very close attention to the bag letters which was very confusing. That cost me about 30 minutes of digging to realize what happened. Other than that I appreciate the extra screws because things get lost in the grass. And everything went together very smoothly. I was able to do it with one adult and two kids. The quality of the materials is truly top notch, solid and heavy duty. We've had big kids and teens even swing on it without budging or feeling anxious about the structural integrity. With 8 kids (ages 1-14 have used this so far!) we've had a decent amount of experience with various playsets and backyard toys. The best thing about this set is just the great variety of ages, skills, and interest that it can work with. The little ones love the lower level "play house" while the older kids love the second story. The sensory seekers and parkour star hopefuls love the swings, monkey bars and especially the trapeze bar has been a big hit. The grey and green color scheme is calming compared to the visually jarring primary color scheme used by a lot of companies, and I appreciate that. It is definitely necessary to make sure that you have an adequate flat area with enough clearance (especially if you have fence line landscaping) for the slide and swings. For this reason, It's a great feature that the panels and rock wall/slide/ladder can be changed between sides. Overall, this play is a wonderful investment for a lifetime of imagination and play for kids of nearly all ages. I could not recommend it more to families who are interested in top quality, heavy duty, play equipment.

We purchased this play set when we bought our house. After reading the product description of Lifetime products lasting 10 years, I thought this would be a perfect addition to our backyard play space until our kids outgrew it. We followed the assembly instructions and even added a rust preventative just to ensure it would last and be safe for the kids. It has rusted so much that it has become a safety hazard and we are going to disassemble it and bring it to the dump. It is a shame, because our kids were so excited about it.

This is a great playset that we will likely enjoy for a long time. The installation process was long and tedious. I recommend watching the videos even if the written directions seem straightforward. We found that there is information in the videos that is not in the written directions. (such as where the swing bar is located in relation to the other parts while building the tower). There were also 2-3 places where the written directions had mistakes and called for the wrong hardware and caused some frustration, but we were able to figure it out with some logic and the help of the video. My only dislike of this playset is the ladder. The arch and distance between rungs is not safe for younger children. The top of the ladder is especially hazardous as the child is stepping from the ladder to the tower. The gap between the top rung of the ladder and the tower is very large. A child could easily fall right through it if they slipped or misjudged the distance. I realize every activity has inherent risk, but they could easily make the rungs closer together, re-engineer the ladder to be steps, or a variety of other safer options. I'd love to see Lifetime offer an aftermarket addition to the ladder to improve the safety. In general, this ladder is not up to par on quality compared to typical Lifetime products.

First of all the set comes in a giant wooden crate, we now need to dispose of. Most of the holes don’t align, so a step that should take 5 minutes can take over an hour. Then there is a step where you need o drill through metal. I don’t have a drill strong enough to do that. We’re Pretty much over building this thing and my poor kids are heartbroken. I don’t know if we got faulty parts or what, but this does not take 8 hours to build. We’ve spent our entire weekend on this and we haven’t even gotten the roof on the tower on. Nightmare!

My grandson recently had the opportunity to play on this playset at our neighborhood church playground. He is four and was thrilled with all of the activities. He especially like, and wanted, the fort. My son plans to purchase a playset for him soon.

I have had this since last summer and it has been great. Assembly took several hours, but most of it could be done with one person. I took it an hour or two at a time at night over the space of about a week, and only needed help with a couple items. I had all the parts and hardware I needed, with exact counts up until the final steps, where I found spare parts. Everything is well built, and mostly modular. It looks like I could rearrange the panels on the tower and slide and ladder placement without a problem. One small note, the red climbing holds (or rocks) have faded, one in direct sunlight, one on the shady side. All others are holding their color fine.

If you've ever installed a wooded playset, had to maintain and re-stain it every couple of years, and then had to uninstall it because it's deteriorated and you fear the city will arrive with CAUTION tape and CPS to keep your kids safe, you would realize what a perfectly genius idea it was for Lifetime to make these playsets. It is bigger than it seems in pictures, which is fantastic because even my 14-year old likes to sit in the top and do homework. We purchased the deluxe set with monkey bars which I highly recommend, even though my 5-year broke her arm on it 15 minutes after we set it up. (It wouldn't have broken, however, if her sister hadn't been "helping" her by holding her legs up, which prevented her from dropping nicely.) Which leads me to my next point of following their safety recommendations and setting it up in a safety zone with something other than hard ground to land on. The monkey bars are solid, tall enough for older kids to enjoy, and the main reason we purchased this set. The slide is quite zippy. Maybe hold the hand of a toddler until they get used to it, although my 20-month-old landed on her feet the first time down. I'm not saying she hasn't landed on her bum plenty of times since. She also manages the ladder by herself quite well but I do get a little worried when my other kids are impatiently following right behind her. Mostly because I...ahem... did not follow the recommended safety instructions and installed it on grass. No falls yet though. If you follow the directions it is an easy installation, all things considered. It's not a 2-3 day job you might get with an equivalent wooden set. They package the hardware in individual packs labeled for each section. There were a couple of packets where the labels were different than in the instructions but the pictures of the hardware were spot on so common sense pulls through. As a general rule, I recommend having common sense if you put anything together. Make sure you don't over-tighten the bolts that go through any of the posts; with enough force you will slightly squish the metal. Also, make sure One change we did was not to install the fireman's pole on when the instructions tell you to. The swings/monkey bar section isn't attached to the main play structure yet so it doesn't make sense to ground it when you don't have it in its final destination. It took 2 adults and 1 good intentioned 11-year old about 6-7 hours to put it together. Because we happened to have an extra slide from a previous playset that is now resting in a landfill, my husband removed one of the solid panels, drilled a couple of extra holes, and added an extra slide to our playset. Our kids love it. So if you happen to have an extra slide sitting around not pulling its weight I recommend putting it to work on this playset. Lifetime of course cannot recommend this but it works great for us.

Finished building this set this morning. Great quality, excellent packaging and instructions! Husband and I, both in our 70s, put it together. It took us quite some time, but between our ages and Texas summertime heat, we took it slowly. Very pleased with the quality from start to finish.