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Disclosure: I received a sample of Planet Orbeez’s Ali’s Adventure Park to facilitate this review, any opinions are my own. If you aren’t familiar with Orbeez, they are simply small little pellets that when immersed in water over night (or for at least 4 hours), they grow to be small, colorful bouncy balls. If you squeeze or step on them they don’t burst, but they will break into small pieces. Lose them in the house if they bounce away and Orbeez  just shrivel back into a tiny pellet, making them easy to vacuum up, or place them back in water if they haven’t been broken and they will grow to their marble-like size again.

Aside from the extremely popular Orbeez pedicure spa, (yes a little container where you can place your feet in Orbeez!), brand new to the toy aisles from the Maya Group are Planet Orbeez.  With a compact play set, like Ali’s Adventure Park, children can grow Orbeez, then use them within the Adventure Park playset.

Orbeez can fit inside cute little animal heads to be their faces. The animals and people can slide down a slide into an Orbeez pool, float in the Orbeez lazy river on a raft, order food from the food stand, or watch Orbeez roll down the twirly slide into the rotating ferris wheel. Most of the contents can be stored back in the original playset. When we opened the package, we immediately put several different colored Orbeez in a bowl of water. My son expected them to grow within 4 minutes, not 4 hours, so thankfully it took us another hour or so to affix all the sticker decals and set-up the adventure park. I eventually took him to the library for a few hours to pass the time because he could not A) keep his hands out of the water bowl and B) stop asking when they were going to be ready to play with. He’s also a little younger than the target age range, which is 5 and up, but Orbeez are pretty unique, so I don’t blame him for being so intrigued. I’d suggest growing them overnight while  your children are sleeping, or plan ahead for 4 hours of additional entertainment and distraction while they grow.

The playset arrives with enough Orbeez to keep your children entertained for a long time, also considering they can be stored back in the playset and “re-grown.” There are dozens of small pieces with this playset and for children who enjoy this type of  play, there are a lot of different pretend play experiences. Some of the pieces aren’t functional. For example, the people can’t sit on the chairs that go with the food stand. Many of the pieces are small and fragile. My son stepped on the gate almost right after I assembled it, and I had to throw it away because it wasn’t able to be glued where it broke, but he didn’t seem to mind.

My favorite features are the ferris wheel that will automatically load Orbeez into the seats when it is rotated with the handle, and the large ball at the top of the set that stores and dispenses Orbeez down the ramp into the ferris wheel. Orbeez are a really unique substance that are slippery and bouncy. If you drop them they will roll and bounce all over the place, so definitely try and keep them contained as best as you can.

Though Gavin liked the playset, he had fun just playing with a container of the Orbeez using some of his toy dump trucks, loaders and excavators inside a 13 x9 pan, which is a great alternative for younger players in your home who want to experience Orbeez, but who aren’t yet into this type of pretend play.

Want to win your own Planet Orbeez Ali’s Adventure Park? Enter the Rafflecopter here:a Rafflecopter giveaway

    The Maya Group has some great videos that help with assembly of the Planet Orbeez Adventure Park, and I’ve embedded them here for your reference.