I bought this for my kids and they love it. My kids are 6 and 3, it’s a great size for them now and should last for several more years. It’s a good size for our yard, some other play sets are much too big. I thought the amount of features you get for the cost was great, this was a third of the price another local company charges for playset with install. My only complaint is how many pieces it comes in and the time to install however we were prepared from reading other reviews we just secretly hoped it would be faster. My husband took a week off of work and it took the majority of his regular work schedule but he did it alone with my help on a few minor things with the twisty slide.

I bought the Skyfort w/Tube Slide as a present for my 5 year old daughter. I consider myself an amateur DIY'er with wood. I work on my own cars, do some major repairs there, but not too much of a woodsmith, if that tells you anything. This review is both a review and tips and tricks. I hope it's helpful. REVIEW: The boxes arrived via a friendly freight company. Minimal damage to one of the four boxes which resulted in about six pieces of wood needing replacement. Backyard Discovery was very quick to replace them after I registered online. Unfortunately, once they shipped those parts out, FedEx damaged and delayed my order further. Backyard Discovery went above and beyond and reshipped the order as quickly as they could. The wood was all medium to high quality. I looked over each piece and found few defects or warping. In total, I would count approximately five pieces that had some warping straight out of the box. Not a biggie. The stain applied was appropriate. The pieces had a few splinters to be expected, but I found nothing excessive. The assembly went well and although there are tricky parts (the Crow's Nest can be difficult in portions), I built it 90% myself with my wife running into the garage to feed me more wood to build. Two people make handling the large portions much easier. Doubtful I could have handled moving the tube slide myself, for example. But again, it was easy to construct about 90% solo if that's the route you want to go. I took well over the advertised timeframe of 20 hours or so, to ensure it was being built level and sturdy. Not sure I'd honestly trust this to a contracted company. My daughter loves the playset and especially the two entry methods into the fort, the A frame with shingles (most playsets have very boring tarps), and the Crow's Nest. I found the pricepoint to be better than other similiar DIY playsets and I've seen my fair share out there. Other parents were really impressed with the quality and very surprised when I told them the price. I do have plenty of tips though that I feel will weed out complaints listed below. 1.) Yes, there are tons of pieces of wood and they do appear to come almost totally disorganized in the boxes. Do take the time to pull them all out, count them (we did this like it was an inventory), and then sort them. Start the return/replacement process now to get your pieces shipped out quickly if you need to. 2.) Backyard Discovery requires you to waterseal the wood at some point. I took the long route for better results. You can spray down the playset after it's fully assembled, but you'd miss a lot of parts and angles. I took out each page of instructions, located the wood, gave a very quick sanding of 120grit (very lightly!) and then applied a water-based seal. Let one side dry, then flip and repeat. I used about 2 and half gallons total. Use a normal pump sprayer for quicker work. The very light sanding also helps remove small splinters and defects! I was extremely pleased with the texture of the wood after doing this treatment. I ended up using Olympic WaterGuard with good results but I would think any water-based product would be just as easy. 3.) Before you assembly, I'd really recommend you use a covered area like a garage to set out all your pieces. Once I had sealed all my pieces, I essentially laid out the wood for say, Pages 1-4 in one pile, then 5-10 in the next, and so on. This made running the pieces of wood quick and non-frustrating. A lot of larger pieces can be assembled in a garage or indoor area before final assembly (the ladder, the rock wall, the slides, etc). 4.) Before you mash in a T-nut, test fit a bolt to ensure good threading! Overall, the quality of the hardware is very good, but you will inevitably find a t-nut that was machined poorly or a bolt that has a bend to a spline. Test your hardware by joining it a few rotations, then assemble. This avoids frustration. Backyard Discovery ships plenty of extra pieces of every bit of hardware in case you run into trouble. I found several defective pieces, but had plenty of spares thankfully. A+ to Backyard Discovery for doing this ahead of time and not forcing customers to order extra spares. 5.) One drill will do the job, but you are much better with two or even three cordless drills if you have them. One for screws, one for drill bits, etc. I even brought out a lower level impact driver which made lags go in much easier. This will prevent you from constantly swapping bits. Don't even think of doing this playset without a good drill and extra batteries. 6.) Use the BILT app! The paper instructions they provide are adequate and I used the paper ones for maybe 80-85% of the work. But sometimes the 3D view of BILT made it WAY easier to understand. This app was a lifesaver in a few unusual sections. It's free. Use it! Overall, would I want to build one of these again myself? Probably not. It's a lot of work, but it is far from DIFFICULT work. It's very do-able if you plan ahead and take your time and add in extra work to prep the wood. It's a big playset, please don't think you'll pop open the boxes and set it up overnight. This does require a gameplan. I have been on the verge of tears before because of frustrating DIY auto and home repairs. In comparison, this playset didn't once bring me to that point, so I'm a happy customer. And my daughter loves every bit of it, so that's the important end result.

It can seem a little intimidating to build this yourself, but the packaging and instructions are very simple. No one in our family has construction experience, just Grandma/Pappa, Mom and Dad with anxious little ones eagerly awaiting lots of play time. The anchors have held the playset securely in 50-70 MPH gusts!

High quality. Extremely pleased. The assembly is intense, so budget plenty of time to complete. Instructions are thorough and detailed. Best to work on with two adults. Well worth the investment of time and money. Will last for many years to come.

I absolutely love the finished product and so does my four year old. Assembly was easy and straight forward, just time consuming which we expected. The negatives are how thin boards are. We will spend an hour making a list of all the parts that split during the building process to get replacement parts.

Got this for our daughter’s second birthday and she loves it so much. It did take a few hours every night for my husband and I to put up. Note that the boxes are not in order of what you need, one project could be in 4 separate boxes. However, the hard work paid off and she plays on it for hours! The tube slide is her favorite!!

I don’t really know how the assembly went—we hired a local company to do it for us. They did use the BILT app, so you may find that useful if you plan to DIY. The final product is phenomenal. My four-year-old loves it. Some of the reviews show this product with a balustrade and picnic table on the bottom but those aren’t included. That is a feature on the “Skyfort with a Tube Slide” and not a feature of the “Skyfort III.” The reviews for the two products are combined and it makes it confusing. Otherwise, I recommend this play set 100%.

Beautiful playground set a complete pain to build. Took my husband and I 4 days working from sun up to sun down. The wood splits and some parts don’t go in evenly. The tube slide was a complete nightmare. You have to manually put in all the bolts and there’s SO MANY which makes it that much worse! The instructions for the tube slide were terrible as far as lining the parts up because we had to rebuild it 4 times just to get it right. We regret not paying someone to build it for us. If we have to do it again we are definitely paying someone. Not an easy project.

We've had this set for a year. To be perfectly honest, putting everything together was a long process. All the pieces were scattered throughout 4 boxes, so we had to sort everything; and then we decided to seal each piece before putting it all together. However, it was totally worth the effort! The play set looks great. The kids love playing on it and are out there every day that they can. They even ask to eat lunch out there. Definitely worth the time, effort and cost!

Went together pretty well, good alignment overall. Could use some minor improvement in instructions to ensure predrilled holes and pilot holes are clearly shown in figures and some pieces did not have legible part number stamp (dark wood pieces). Again overall well planned and actually pretty easy assembly. Nice product and quality materials!