Customer reviews for Backyard Discovery Skyfort II Cedar Swing Set/PlaySet forMember photos









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Very nice play set!
This is a very nice pay set. My 2 1/2 and 5 year old love it! Some reviews say it is cheap and poor quality. I do not agree with that. After we placed our order it took about two weeks before it was delivered. It comes freight, on a pallet, with 4 large/long boxes. The weight is around 900lbs. The freight company was great and placed it in my garage. I paid for assembly and the company called right as it was delivered. Two weeks later the guy was out and it took him 2 1/2 days to assemble. Well worth the price! TONS of small pieces and bolts, etc... They assembly guy was great and knew exactly what he was doing! I would really recommend this play set for smaller children!
We are thrilled that your set is up quickly so your family has time to enjoy it as we are quickley approaching fall. Enjoy your Skyfort II and makes sure you get a clear sealant on the wood as soon a possible.
nice set
Bought this set at the store. No big deal getting it home in a regular pickup truck. Was happy to see that each board was marked with an ink stamp. Some of the markings were hard to read because they were very light and ran together. Was also happy to see that all of the hardwear (nuts,bolts,screws) were in seperate bags and each bag was marked. You should lay everythink out before you start building. I did not lay it all out and it caused me some minor delays. It took me 40.5 hrs to put together. Had help on the main club house part and a little help putting the swing and monkey bar pieces together. Must get yard level before you start and make sure you square the 1st few steps. I was short four bolts but local hardwear store had them. One reason I was short is that they give you handles for the climbing wall (also it shows handles in picture) but no where in the plans do they tell you to put them on. The plans are pretty good but you must read them carefully and it helps to look a few steps ahead as you go along. For instance the picture shows a window on the front top of the club house, but the window is actually on the back of the club house. Page 7 of the plans has it the right way. Only hardwear problem is the misc parts page on page 19 shows you to get 16 of the "y30-40g" brackets. You get 16 brackets but they are the wrong ones. I even looked at the set at the local Sams Club and it has the wrong ones also. You can use these but be carefull when you install the monkey bars to the club house. They will not fit in the opening easly if you don't have the brackets turned right. They should be 2 inch by 2 inch but mine were 2 inch by 2 and a half inch. Also makes a difference when you install the crows nest. Like I said, they do work just make sure they are turned the right way. I did have one problem with the main floor in the club house. The boards are all marked but some of them are hard to read. The plans show you use 16 floor boards but they don't tell you that one of the 16 is half the width and the plans don't show it either. I ended up just spacing the boards out so they would fit and it worked fine. The only good thing was that the board I had over I used as a brace for the monkey bar ladder. The two rail boards were warped so the ladder steps were falling out. I used a large wood clamp and pulled the rails together and then screwed two braces on the back side of the rails, it works just fine. It took a long time to put together but was worth the price for what you get. Very well made and very sturdy. Helps to have two people with one of them being good at reading and following directions. Helps to have two cordless drills. I would recommend buying this. My kids love it!
Thank you for your review
BETTER THAN ANTICIPATED!
The quality of this was actually better than we anticipated. Directions could have been a little clearer in many places but we got thru them. (Looking ahead in the directions helps at times.) Delivery was prompt - ordered Sunday evening & it was delivered Friday morning. We highly recommend you take the time to organize all the pieces & lay them out in the order they'll be used. That saved us a lot of time when we started assembling the set. Even doing that it still took us about 20 hours to put it together.
Not bad
We opted for the cheaper version by picking this up in the store. We had read all of the reviewes and pre-read the instructions before even buying it. Took about 4.5 hours to lay out all the boards for inventory. At night I would build later sections such as Monkey bars, ladder, and rock wall in the garage. This made construction go much faster. After the sorting was all done it took me about 28 hours to build it myself. I recommend you put down four to six cement pavers for the main structure and pre-level them all to each other. That as well as leveling all the boards as you go through will prevent you from having boards that don't line up well down the road. Always pay attention to the pictures. Look at the positioning of piece S2 to realize how S1 boards need to be installed as the instructions do not cover that. Also I recommend not building the small roof and trying to install it as a whole. You may also want to get an attachment for your drill to attach socket wrench bits to it to make putting all of the lag screws in go much faster. I did that half way through and it made a huge difference in time. As for the play set its sturdy and holds up well. My daughter loves it and we have spent more time outside now that its built then ever before.
Thank you for the review
Surprised by the quality. Larger than expected.
I was very surprised by the excellent quality of this kit. We had all of the pieces and they went to together like a well engineered puzzle. Instructions are lengthy, but very detailed and very accurate. All of the holes lined up with surprising precision. Hardware and pieces were all correctly and clearly labeled. Really don't have anything bad to say about this product. It is larger than I expected and looks pretty impressive in the backyard. Wish I had something like this when I was a kid... Highly recommended.
Great swingset
What a great swing set. We decided to redo out backyard by extending it so we bought this for my daughter whose 1 1/2 and she loves it. It did take about 34 hrs to build but well worth it. The wood isnt as think as the ones that sell for $3K + but my husband and I are able to stand in the little house together with no concern. We were missing some pieces but had them to the house within 4 days of calling. We made a few changes to how they wanted thing set up. We moved the stairs to the front, the rockwall to the back and the window to the front so it looks like the picture. We absolutly love our backyard now. I have to say for the price you cant find anythign better.
Thank you for your 5-star review.
Sturdy but short of awesome
Our neighbors have this brand but a different set so I was confident in the durability. I have a 3 and 7 year old so it was important for a wide range of ages to play for several years. There is lots of coverage on the assembly issues in the reviews (so just to reiterate) - very poor directions (especially at the base where the boards need to be inside the posts and not outside the posts as the pictures appear). From what my husband said, there were little to no instructions on spacing boards and just overall lack of direction in the instructions. There are also lots of comments on how sturdy it is so I don't need to cover that. So, as a mom, here are the things that I don't care for that this manufacture should fix. I thought I had done enough research, but I don't recall these areas of concern noted in other reviews but maybe I missed them. Because of all the coverage of the positives, I feel I need to note the following negatives. These are important to note as I would have likely purchased another set if I had known the following: First, the slide - why is it not molded plastic? Why is it a flimsy plastic sheet thread into two side pieces? I will be surprised if this lasts. More importantly the way the slide sits at the top of the platform it is very easy for little fingers to get caught between the slide edge and the wood posts as they steady themselves to sit down. My husband is looking for bolts to fasten the top sides to the post to prevent. Even the cheap sets have molded plastic slides so I don't know what the deal is with this one. I see us having to replace it with one from Lowe's. My second biggest issue is the spacing of the swings - very inadequate. When all 3 swinging items were in use there were a lot of near misses, so if any child isn't swinging perfectly straight then you will have a collision. The manufacturer needs to increase the beam length and space these out more. I passed over other sets because of this issue in those reviews. Third, I know monkey bars come with their own set of risks but my older daughter really wanted them. I passed up other sets because there was no place for the child to go at the end of the bars and this one allowed them to swing into the clubhouse instead of having to drop down or turn around and go back. However, seeing how the child has to maneuver to get into the clubhouse at the end, I see greater issues with falling because they have to get their legs up so high. Also consider the proximity of the monkey bar opening to the slide area and the increased fall risk for younger kids. When there are several kids on it and lots of them moving around very quickly, it would be so easy to misstep and fall out that opening as they wait in line to go down the slide. We will be modifying or removing the bars. Some of the kids in the neighborhood also have said the bars are just too far apart. The set is sturdy and is not as big as I expected (which worked in our favor with a smaller yard). It has a lot of options that others do not have which was one reason we bought it. The crow's nest has very high railings so I am very happy about that. The hole to get onto the crow's nest is quite small. I am not sure if a larger child could comfortably fit out it. As another reviewer mentioned, it is odd to have to walk in the sand to get to the lower clubhouse area and other side of the picnic bench. Somehow I wish they could have flipped the areas on the bottom part. Our delivery range was a 10 day period. We received it a day after the range, so it was a hard wait. I called SAMS customer service and they seemed happy help track it down, but never called me back. In the end I called the final carrier and begged to have it delivered since it would be a Friday and we needed the weekend to put it together. Otherwise I think it would have been several days late. They were then several hours past the end of the delivery range. At about 7 pm on a Friday night we figured we were just not going to see it until Monday, but it did come. We did have all our pieces so that was a good start. The instructions were not in box that was labeled to contain them so we printed the 117 pages from the internet so we could start sorting, but then we found them in the hardware box. So, look around before you do the same. In the end, I have mixed feelings about whether or not to recommend this set. Since it is not an overwhelming "yes", I have said "no" as I want to caution the buyers on the above points. This had such a high rating that I had very high expectations. Consider the above carefully until the manufacturer changes the slide and the swing spacing, especially.
Confusing Directions
The directions are very confusing, You have to look a few steps ahead to find out if a board is backwards or upside down(and believe me it matters) The Spanish version has close up pictures, but the English version does not. Now that it is together it looks great! My advice is to have it professionally installed!!!
1 Million Parts Ain't So Bad
Sky Fort II is a great play set. It looks good, is sturdy, and your kids/grandkids will love it. It is not hard to assemble, but takes preserverance. We used four fairly competent people to assemble it (all 4 adults have masters' degees and more) and the total number of person-hours was 60. Although technically there really aren't 1 million parts, you will think there are. The instruction manual is good, but at times confusing in just where and how you should complete a step. There are multiple bolt/nut/washer/screw sizes and you really need to make sure you use the right ones as per the directions. Recommend you gather all parts from each step together and figure out which bold goes with which bolt barrel before hooking them together. Bolts and nuts strip very easily so you don't want to minimize number of times you tighten/untighten them. Spray a lubricant into the bolt barrels to make it easier. Lots of holes to line up and we had to drill some to get them to do so. We also had to shave some of the boards to get them to fit together. If you have young kids, ship them to a foreign country during the project as they will want to help but will be a hindrance. Finally, if any of your workers are married to another worker, consult divorce attorney prior to starting this project. Bottom line, YOU CAN DO IT YOURSELF, but at times you will be frustrated.
Nice looking set......cheap quality wood
This could be a great playset if it was built with a good quality wood. The set came complete and was not too difficult to assemble overall. The quality of the wood was terrible, however. I had to set my drill to the lowest setting to keep from stripping the screw holes. During a strong thunderstorm about 8 months after assembly it cracked up into pieces and blew apart.



