Review:71040 The Disney Castle/Jack Phoenix
Jack Phoenix
Country: Finland Age Group: AFOL Gender: Probably?
Joined: Quite a while ago 
№ of Reviews: 2 
№ of Featured reviews: 0
Building Experience: A few decades' worth
This year Christmas came somewhat early — right after the summer, in fact! That was my first reaction, and even now I can't believe this is actually happening.
Before we get any further with the actual review (and pictures!), I want to say thank you to the LEGO Group for donating this set to me and everyone who supported my request on the set giveaway requests page. Thank you, your support means a lot! Additionally I would like to thank in advance everyone who reads through this (long!) review and bothers commenting.
Let's get started, shall we?
Background[edit | edit source]
As I wrote in my request, I have always had a soft spot in my heart for all things Disney (although somewhat embarrassingly I've yet to watch certain Disney movies that most people would consider classics or modern classics) and the recent Disney-themed minifigure series got me seriously back into LEGO after a long time. Like many other people, especially on a LEGO fansite such as ours, I, too, had heard of 71040 The Disney Castle back when it was first announced. It looked mighty impressive, for sure — but also mighty unaffordable, given the US price tag of $349.99, which I'd imagine translates to at least 399.99€ if not more. Not exactly a set you'd be able to buy on a whim, because $349 is quite a lot of money. Words cannot accurately describe my gratitude to the LEGO Group as well as the Brickipedia community for giving me this unique opportunity to enjoy this set for free!
It's more than fair to say that I have experience as a builder, but it still feels like jumping off to the deep end of the pool, because before this set, my biggest set was the Studios set 1382 Scary Laboratory, which contains 492 pieces — to go from about 500 to over 4,000 is quite a leap! It's nevertheless also very exciting at the same time.
The box[edit | edit source]
LEGO released official high-resolution promotional pictures of the box back in early July when the set was announced. While these pictures are exactly what you'd be looking as a journalist or someone who specializes in printing, what they don't accurately portray is the scale. The set itself is massive, and it's a given that the box isn't exactly the tiniest one either!
The box art certainly conveys the magic across. Isn't there just something iconic about the Disney Castle with fireworks in the background?
On the back of the box you can see the complete castle from the back as well as "snapshots" from individual castle rooms.
Given the set's size, the cardboard is somewhat thicker than with smaller sets, and unlike with most sets, it's also glossy. On both top and bottom ends of the box there are three small-ish pieces of tape which keep the box sealed.
One thing I noticed is that box I got is slightly different than the official press rendering. Typical to European LEGO packaging, the total amount of pieces is again omitted (why must they do that? I'd really, really, really like to see the total amount of pieces on European packaging, too, instead of it being limited to North American packaging only) as are the "Ages" and "Building Toy" texts. The left-hand side has the text Disney Castle in various European languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese (I think? I'm not 100% sure here) and Hungarian.
On the bottom of the box, it says that components are made in Denmark, Mexico, China, Sweden, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Given that globalization is a thing, I guess this is pretty common these days. The box of a small Pirates set from 1996 (pretty literally the only box I have available right now) says that it is "Made by LEGO System A/S, DK-7190 Billund, Denmark. Distributed by the LEGO Group, DK-7190 Billund, Denmark". Does anyone know if there are any currently available sets that would have components exclusively made in Denmark? (I'm guessing the answer is a resounding no, but I don't know for a fact.) Let me know in the comments section!
The contents of the box[edit | edit source]
Inside the box you'll find:
- plenty of numbered plastic bags
- the plastic bag which contains the instructions book[sic] and the stickers
- a white box, which, upon opening, seems to contain more numbered plastic bags!
The instructions book[edit | edit source]
Normally we call these things "instructions booklets", but "book" is more appropriate here, because this thing is about 1,5cm thick and has 491 (!) pages.
On the first few pages, there are screenshots of the various Disney movies depicted by the various castle rooms as well as an intro text which is available in English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Hungarian and Chinese. Before we get to the actual building instructions, page 8 shows how to "use" the numbered plastic bags (i.e. open up bag #1, build it, then move on to bag #2, etc.) and how to use the brick separator. Pages 9-483 contain the actual building instructions with 758 steps, and pages 485-486 show the finished castle. Pages 487-491 contain the parts listing, which features images of each part, their quantities in this set and the element IDs. Very handy!
If you've been following the buzz about the Castle, you've probably heard about the mistake on step #291 regarding sticker placement. It's an unfortunate mistake, but thankfully it's pretty well-known by now. See, that is why I prefer printed parts instead of stickers (even though in my experience printed parts tend to wear whereas stickers will last a couple decades easily and still look brand new).
The instruction book is also available via service.LEGO.com: EU (V29) version, North American (V39) version. Given that both files are almost 100 megabytes in size, I'm somewhat surprised that the quality isn't better — if only all instructions available via service.LEGO.com were as good as those of 5978 The Secret of the Sphinx... (seriously though, try upscaling both .pdfs — the Disney Castle's instructions and The Secret of the Sphinx's instructions — to 200% or more and for the Disney Castle's instructions, you will see an obvious decrease in quality). Then again this isn't such a huge issue, because given the size of the instruction book, you're extremely unlikely to misplace it in the first place, which probably isn't true for most instruction booklets.
The minifigures[edit | edit source]
Again, you've likely seen the official press photos already. Included are five iconic Disney characters: Daisy Duck, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse and Tinker Bell. Currently this is the first and also the only set featuring Tinker Bell. The other characters made their first appearance as minifigures earlier this year, although the Disney Castle versions have been given unique variants in terms of clothes (except for Donald Duck, it seems). Mickey sports a tuxedo, Minnie has her trademark red dress with white spots in it and Daisy has a differently colored bow and brighter shirt and shoes. The head sculpts are the same, which makes sense, given that both Duck and Mice heads are brand new parts that were introduced earlier this year. I must say that what I think is a wonderful thing is that all of the characters are smiling.
They look like they're having fun, and that's what you should have when building (and playing with) this set! While I want to think that most people agree at least in the context of this set — hey, it is modeled after an entertainment park, which is a place where people go to forget their sorrows and enjoy life — I've read that some Finnish LEGO/Donald Duck fans weren't happy about the minifigure series Donald been given a smiling face. It's true that in the comics Donald Duck if anyone encounters more than his fair share of hardships, whether in the form of debtors, disasters or Uncle Scrooge — or all of them at once — but a smiling face was the default and only LEGO character face for decaces until 1989, when the Pirates theme was introduced. The classic smiley face has also made a return with high-end Creator set, such as the 10251 Brick Bank. If we'd be talking about regular human characters here, it'd be easy to bundle two facial expressions into the same piece, like the way certain Studios characters (Gentleman, Lady, Mad Scientist) have them, but that's a non-option with the Disney Castle figures due to their unique head sculpts. And I think that's just fine.
The castle[edit | edit source]
We know from the official press release that the set contains 4,080 pieces (yes, four thousand and eighty pieces, I'm not kidding here!) and that the castle measures over 74 cm (29”) high, 44 cm (17”) wide and 31 cm (12”) deep. That's somewhat of a verbose way of saying that this is the castle to rule them all; to put King Leo's castle (or should I say castles since there's the US variant and the non-US variant?), King Mathias' castle and the Crown King's castle to shame. Of course it should be noted that despite castles generally being a medieval thing, the Disney Castle is both modern and medieval at the same time whereas the other castles are more clearly located in a medieval or a medieval-like setting. But if you just want a really cool castle and you aren't a Disney fan, this is still your set, because even without the minifigures, the actual building is breathtaking.
Building process[edit | edit source]
The numbering on the plastic bags runs from 1 to 14. If and when this is your first time building a big, modern LEGO set, this seems rather useful...until you notice that there are four different bags with the number 1, etc. which somewhat defeats the point in my opinion. By step 10 I had opened all the bags labeled 1. but it was rather confusing at first because similar (if not the same?) pieces are found in different bags which have the same number! For the sake of consistency, I'll talk about "bag" below even if and when there are multiple bags with the same number.
Bag #1 build the base of the Castle. I actually somehow managed to get stuck somewhere between steps 13-18. Somehow some piece(s?) was slightly misaligned, which would've caused further issues down the road. It made me think that since the set has 4080 pieces, one could've simplified the base design about 80 pieces' worth to bring down the amount of parts to a nice, even figure and to make the building process slightly smoother. Yes, I know, I'm horribly biased.
That's a lot of bags, no kidding.
Here we go...four bags numbered 1 and the one unnumbered bag which contains baseplates.
So I heard you like plastic bags?
Contents of the first bag. Here we'll build the base of the castle.
Hey, this is starting to look like something!
Floor detail.
Five spare parts, one of which is a golden crown.
After bag #1 has been built, you'll have the base of the castle built. Note the green kissing frogs on the right side of the castle.
Bag #2 builds the first minifigure, Mickey Mouse, and four pilars. This part of the building process is somewhat repetitive to be honest. Only three spare parts here.
Work in progress.
Three spare parts here.
Bag #2 built!
Bag #3 builds the brown castle doors as well as some of the walls near the doors.
After bag #3 has been built.
Spare parts.
172 steps behind and we're ready to move onto bag #4, which builds the lounge, the archery as well as some base to eventually attach the part of the castle containing the rooms.
Bag #4 being built, on step 201.
The building techniques used here are pretty clever. The wall doesn't attach to the base the way you're used to, yet it's solid enough when complete.
After bag #4 has been built. The first floor now has the chandelier, the flower vase, the two knight statues and the clock in their proper places.
Knight statue detail.
Shields, or a concrete illustration of why I'm not too fond of stickers in LEGO sets.
Spare parts from bag #4. One of 'em is rather shiny!
Bag #5 builds the left wall as well as the Minnie Mouse minifigure. Be aware of the mistake in instructions in step #291 when building this.
Mickey, Minnie and the left wall. Note how I decided not to apply most of the stickers at this point due to the aforementioned mistake. I figured it'd be better to be safe than sorry and I could deal with the stickers once the build is otherwise complete.
Detail shot of the almost stickerless left wall.
Spare parts.
Bag #6 builds the right wall. It's similar enough to the previous phase that it feels slightly repetitive since you're largely doing bag #5 all over again, merely flipped.
Bag #6 build. (Apologies for the blurry picture, of course this had to be the only one I took...)
Spare parts, once again.
360 steps done and we've reached bag #7, which builds most of the castle's exterior above the entrance, including the clock.
One bag later, the castle's starting to look rather nice, don't you think?
Detail shot of the castle exterior.
Another detail shot, because why not?
Spare parts.
Bag #8 builds the left-side towers some more and also includes the Donald Duck minifigure. This is somewhat repetitive again because you're largely doing the same thing twice with only some very slight color changes.
Bag #8 has been built and Donald's there with his friends, Mickey and Minnie!
Detail shot of the leftmost tower (or where the tower will eventually be, rather).
A closer look at the tower(-to-be) closer to the door.
Spare parts.
Bag #9 finalizes the towers. It feels somewhat like bag #8 all over again. The flagpoles were somewhat of a pain to put together because the golden cones just wouldn't go to their proper places easily and I had to push them really hard. 473 steps behind, only 285 steps to go!
Shiny, huh?
Tower detail shot.
Close-up of one of the golden flags.
You know the drill already...
Bag #10 includes the Daisy Duck minifigure and builds first actual "rooms", the kitchen and the dance hall. There are some interesting and pretty clever choices made here, such as using bricks instead of cloth for the dance hall curtains.
Back — here you can see the kitchen and the dance hall as well as the empty space that will house Cinderella's glass slipper and a story book later on.
Front — looking pretty good, though obviously not yet fully complete.
Spare parts.
Bag #11 literally builds on top of the previous work to bring us a few more rooms as well as some exterior details, which were obviously not yet fully completed by bag #10.
Mickey's room, where you can find his old wizard hat, a book as well as some mops and buckets.
The spinning wheel from Sleeping Beauty.
Spare parts from bag #11.
Bag #12 finished up the work started by the previous two bags. The towers are looking nice 'n' blue at this point. We also build the container for Cinderella's glass slipper (p. 429) and the book (p. 430) and finally the tower that goes on top of 'em to hide 'em but which can be easily removed (p. 431-434). I must say that I'm a huge fan of the book — it consists of two parts (three if you count the book's "contents") and it's definitely sturdier and more LEGO-esque than the old-school Belville book (you know, the one we put into Mickey's treasure chest in step 573, on page 375). The hinge on the Belville book just doesn't seem sturdy enough to me — but I gotta say that so far I've yet to break a Belville book, whereas the briefcase (such as the one included with the banker minifigure on the set 6326 Town Folks) simply fails the test of time all too often.
I also like the bed a lot. As an idea, it seems simple enough, but despite — or maybe even due to — its size it's actually quite detailed. I wonder what an official bigger version of this bed would look like — it'd probably be very cool! Speaking of which, LEGO should totally release a System-scale modular-like house and "expansions" to it (new rooms, accessories). I mean, with Scala we had 3119 Sunshine Home and 3149 Happy Home, so surely it wouldn't be out of question to build a smaller house and sell accessories and whatnot to it? (Okay, so this is slightly off-topic here, but only slightly!)
Before we get started with bag #12, this is what we have (front side pictured).
And here's the backside. Note the unfinished bedroom and its floor above the room with the treasure chest.
And this is what the backside looks like once it's complete.
Ditto for the front.
Bedroom detail shot.
The "cannon tower" doesn't get built until the next bag, so you'll notice the empty space where it's supposed to go.
There's a secret in here!
What is it? Why, the glass slipper (in its container) and the fancy, new-style brown book (which contains a 1x2 tile which has the words "Once upon a time" printed in it).
Detail shot (kinda anyway) of the glass slipper and the book.
Spare parts.
Bag #13 builds the last minifigure, Tinker Bell, an exclusive to this set, as well as the room with the mirror and the tower with the cannon. At this point there are barely a bit over 100 steps left to complete the build. Hooray! So, the cannon (build steps 658-664) is pretty simple but extremely effective, and a lot slimmer than the old Pirates/Western cannons. I was actually quite surprised by this. The ammo for this cannon is also shinier than most cannon ammo you've used to (see step #721) — or when was the last time you saw the diamond being used as cannon ammo? In the same room with the cannon there's a treasure chest with a hair brush, scissors and a ponytail (from Tangled).
Tinker Bell, the minifigure exclusive to this set
Another shot of Tinker Bell, because why not?
The treasure chest and the most expensive cannon ammo you've seen in a while!
After bag #13 has been built, you get a cool tower out of it.
And here's the backside of the tower. The lower floor contains the cannon and the treasure chest whereas the upper one contains a magic mirror and there's also a red apple.
Spare parts. Here you have some cool parts, such as Tinker Bell's magic wand and the scissors, in addition to the usual tiny spare parts.
Bag #14 finalizes the build and puts together the two parts (castle base floor and the part containing the rooms, towers, etc.).
There it is, at last!
Left wall detail.
All the five minifigures posing at the entrance.
At the end, you not only have a very fancy castle, but also some plastic waste to take care of. Please dispose of the empty plastic bags according to your local laws and regulations.
Last round of spare parts.
All the spare parts in the same picture. Quite a few of 'em, eh?
And the minifigures: Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy and Tinker Bell.
Close-up shot of Donald Duck simply because he's my favorite character.
Peter Pan and Captain Hook fighting in the lobby (both figures sold separately).
It's certainly been a while since I've seen Donald Duck this happy right after he woke up!
Mickey and Minnie dancing in the dance hall.
"Now what shall we cook today? Pumpkin, perhaps?"
"Mirror mirror on the wall..." (Maleficent sold separately)
Beautiful, just beautiful.
Lots of awesome details in these rooms!
A different angle to the castle.
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Final verdict[edit | edit source]
Was the building process time-consuming? Most definitely — no matter your experience, you just don't build a set this big in an hour or two. I'm not quite sure how many hours I spent on this — somewhere between 13 and 20 hours, I'd estimate; I built the set over a period of four days and took generous breaks every day, so I can't definitively say "I spent X hours on building this".
The big question is actually rather simple: was this set a rewarding building experience? Absolutely! I know for a fact that the price tag is scary, but I'd argue that this set is worth every penny (or cent), so if you're considering saving up money for this, better start now. It's what I would do if I wouldn't have this set — let's just hope that LEGO isn't retiring this splendid Castle anytime soon!
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