LEGO 71040 – The Disney Castle



Day Before Purchase:

The Disney Castle, set 71040 by LEGO releases tomorrow to us VIP members and we’re so excited to buy it right when the LEGO store opens. At over 4,000 pieces, it’s going to take quite some time to assemble, but we plan to get started right away tomorrow once we have the set in our possession. We hope to post videos on our YouTube channel all along the way in stages! 🙂

Day One of Building:

Wow! This is set is pretty amazing. I would classify this as an expert set and definitely more of a collectors item then a toy, but if you and or kids are up for the build, it is a pretty amazing setting for some great imaginative play for your children and of course us adults who still act like children too haha!

The build:

It is NOT easy to build and will probably take at least several days, even if you are highly experienced. It has over 4,000 pieces and they are not all simple, straightforward pieces. The instructions seriously look like a small novel! So just know ahead of time that this set is going to take a very long time to assemble, but it’s totally worth it and very cool as you begin to construct it.

The characters:

I was honestly shocked that this castle does not come with Cinderella. I’m sure there’s some sort of weird licensing conflict with Disney and LEGO that prevented it. There is another Cinderellas LEGO castle, the “romantic” castle that you may have seen. So maybe they didn’t want to kill sales of that set or something. We are lucky enough to have that castle as well, so we have the Cinderella mini-figure which we can use in addition to the Tinker Bell, Mickey, Minnie, Daisy, and Donald that you get with this set. Besides the Cinderella mystery, the characters that come with the set are really cool and great additions to our collection!

Today we assembled the entire base of the castle (as seen in our speed build video) and we plan to have the rest of the castle built over the next few days. So far, it’s really cool and has tons of nice details. We will update this review once we have built more of the set or completed it!

Part 1 Speed Build & Time Lapse

Part 1 Live Event – Filming Our Speed Build & Time Lapse

Day Two of Building

Coming Soon

Part 2 Speed Build & Time Lapse

Part 2 Live Event – Filming Our Speed Build & Time Lapse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iiq1MsbqyU

Official LEGO Movie/Review:

[learn_more caption=”Transcript for Hearing Impaired”]

Hi, my name is Marcus Bessa, and I’m a Legacy New designer, and you won’t believe where I am right now. It’s Walt Disney world. Hey Mickey, how are you doing? Do you remember me? We met two years ago in Disney land. It’s so great to see you again. I have something really cool to show you guys. Do you know how I can get to Denmark from here, like a short cut or something? Hmm. Yeah? You know? Where?

Just over there? There’s a lake over there. Oh, okay. See you. Whoa. What a journey. Next time, I’ll take a plane. Oh, I forgot the model. Yeah, there you are. This is the Cinderella castle and it actually has over 4,000 bricks. It’s also one of the highest models we’ve ever designed. It has over 74 centimeters. By the way, that’s 29 inches. One of the hardest challenges I had was actually to come up with this cylindric shape that the towers have. Lego bricks are naturally very square, so to replicate that with our bricks was definitely one of the biggest challenges especially in this area here. There’s a lot of repetitive details and small windows that had to go all around the curved towers.

I spent a lot of time, reiterating and creating different versions and trying to find the best way of using the elements. I’m quite happy with the final result. Another thing that I had a hard time with was actually building this tower over here. Not only it’s very steep and very tall, it has a conical shape and it had to be in gold. That’s why I actually had to build a couple of different iterations. These are just some examples of the different things that I tried with different elements to achieve that shape. Eventually, this was a solution that I was happiest with. I think it has some pretty cool texture to it, but now let me show you what’s actually happening on the inside of this model. This is Cinderella castle, but there’s a lot of space and we thought it was a perfect chance for us to bring references to some of the most classic Disney movies.

For instance, we have the flying carpet on the wall from Aladdin, or a reference to Beauty and the Beast with a red rose in the glass case. We also have a reference to Fantasia, a movie very old with an amazing musical score, and it has the dancing brooms with the buckets and they make a mess with water, and Mickey goes crazy. We also have a reference to Snow White with a mirror on the wall and the red poisonous apple. All of these are really cool and we have so much more for you to discover. There’s one thing that I really need to show you. Over here in this secret compartment, we actually have the perfect fairy tale book. It has a special printed cover, and a first page says, ‘Once upon a time’. It’s the perfect start for any fairy tale.

To tell you more about the decorations and all the special parts we have in this model, I’m going to bring you someone also special, one of our graphic designers. Up to you now.

Oh boy. Hi, I’m Austin Carlson, one of the graphic designers who worked on this product, and I would like to show you some of the magic behind the decorations. These decorated elements were provided by Graphic Design Mars who made sure to capture every bit of magic provided in this castle. You can see on the clocks that it’s about five minutes before hitting midnight which is a special detail, especially with Cinderella’s castle. We wanted to make sure we captured it here as well. For you collectors out there, you will notice that there’s a single tile in here, but if you get more than one of them, they combine together. Now, I would like to show you what I provided in the castle.

All the figures start with the magic of sculpting which was provided by [Gita 00:04:04]. Do you recognize this character? If you said Minnie, you’re correct. At the first, we have it sculpted and then we have it shrunk down to one to one scale. You can see how it’s been painted up to show where the split lines in our element molding’s going to be at. Afterwards, we have test samples set out and then sent back in to see how it’s going to be decorated. It’s always a big challenge to make sure that the 2D graphics apply correctly on a 3D surface. There’s sometimes a back and forth between that.

In the end, we have the final product. Look at Minnie, so adorable. An exclusive to this set are these five figures. Oh, there’s Minnie again, and there’s Mickey in his tuxedo outfit, and of course Tinkerbell providing the magic to the castle. She’s exclusive to this set and also has a very specific wig sculpted only for her. Then of course, the two ducks, Donald and Daisy. There’s a lot of love and care put into these figures, and I hope you appreciate them as much as I was able to work on them. Now, back to you Marcus. He’s gone.

Oh boy, I’m starting to like this sort of travelling. You know, when we’re developing products like this, there’s a lot of people collaborating and we had to work with Disney consumer products and it was a really cool experience, but I have a friend here to tell you a little bit about it. It’s Christian. Hey Chris, how are you doing?

Hey Marcus.

Tell us a little bit about what was this experience for you. What was your involvement in it?

It was great. We worked closely with Lego and the parks to insure that we brought the castle to life and it there was on model and we included storytelling.

What was it to get our input when we suggested that we should bring a bit of the references to the different tales to the inside of the castle?

I thought that was a great idea that Lego presented back to us, so we wanted to insure again, that it was true to story, so we worked with our studio content providers like Pixar and the parks to make sure that it was fun.

We’re so happy to have all of those little references. We’re sure that our biggest fans will love those.

I think so, it’s going to look amazing.

Well guys, we hope you’ll enjoy building this model and playing with it, and it was definitely a great experience for all of us to be involved in it. Hope to see you soon.

Here’s a Really Great, Detailed Review:

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[learn_more caption=”Transcript for Hearing Impaired”]

Welcome Brick fans to a LEGO Disney Castle Review here on The Brick Show. All right, 71040. That is the Disney Castle. Holy cow, the box is huge. You can see the thickness there. Some of the box are on the back. I got the extra pieces inside called, Disney Castle. As we know, this is Cinderella’s Castle from the Magic Kingdom Theme Park in Disney World, Orlando. A park that, because I’m from Florida, I’m able to go to quite a bit. It has references to so many other things in the Disney Princess World and beyond. We’ve got five manyfigs. Tinkerbell. That is your box again, 4,080 pieces. This retail is for $350 and what an impressive instruction manual.

I mean, that thing will do some damage. All my Batman minifigs just went flying. We’re going to take a close up look. We’re going to show you the castle. Show you the figs and then we’re going to give our thoughts and commentary. Maybe give you some things that we don’t like a whole lot. What a castle. What a set. Let’s look.

Here is your Disney Castle. We’re going to, first, show you the entire thing from top to bottom as we make our way up and then we will spin it just to show you an overview 360 when it goes. I’m spinning it a little bit. You will see the sides of my wall in the background because this is so big. You can’t really help but do that. I mean, we’re only about halfway up right now. As we continue up to our top spire here. The very coned top here, and we are almost here. That’s when it gets a lot of white. A lot of gold, and boom! You can see the top way up there.

As we make our way down from the spire, front of the castle, you can see a little bit closer, some of the elements. Some of the references. There is Tinkerbell. We’re coming up on the clock. When will it strike? Yes, there it is. A printed clock there and some beautiful stained glass-type paneling there. Printed on those tile pieces. It’s two pieces to make one. Our minifigs of Donald, Daisy, Mickey, and Minnie. Just to give you a little glimpse of the bottom area as we turn it around. That’s our main entrance. If you’ve been to Disney World, you’ve probably walked through that little are that Mickey and Minnie have just walked through. You can see how we give it the rounded look.

Those are stickers that you see on these areas and then a lot of mason bricks, a lot of grey mason bricks, an area there that we will show you. Take off here of a lot of open space there in the castle to have some more fun with. Then, this is our bottom portion. This is the area that you walk through. Right here. If you are entering the castle through Fantasyland, I believe, there’s a restaurant right over here at the actual castle in Disney World. We do have some nice statues there, but that is something you will notice. You can walk right through the middle when you are at the park.

This is more like your mid-section and that’s where you see some more tan mason bricks throughout here. The top of a lot of our spires here that were given that cone-look with two, three pieces and then our little small cones at the top. The gold with the flag also gives it a nice look so this is at about a mid-range section. This is where you’re going to find a lot of the rooms in the castle that we will dive in a little closer on these. It’s like two floors here of rooms and then we do have some upper rooms as well throughout.

This is our upper section and you could see we’ve got quite a tower at the top. This is where we have our gold cone look to the top of our tower and then right on the other side of it. Let’s dive in and take a closer look at the rest of the set and our minifigures. Now, we see the castle just in its front section where it is, mainly, the navy blue and the grey. Wanted to show you how the castle is basically in three sections here that we’re mainly going to use and they will add on so you can see back here. This is the next section that we will put on. Then, two, as we make our way over here, we find what is going to go on the top of it. I’m just going to show you from a distance how that looks.

Again, this is the top part here of the bottom section and what we’re going to do is take this piece so when you build it, you build this piece. We’re going to place it right here and there are jumper studs in the back that it fits on that looks as so. This is the angle you’ll recognize so you will take your castle and then take the jumpers. Then just push it down and it does stay pretty nice once you do that. You make sure it’s nice and tight here. One of my critics of this set, I would say one of the few, is this are here is a bit wobbly. You would have to modify the bottom a little bit if you wanted to keep this place to make it sturdy. As far a playability goes, you’re going to want to take this off probably. If you’re kids are going to play with it, take this off, play with it separately. As in, two separate models which would probably even be more fun. If you want it for just display or keep in play like this, you may want to modify the bottom a bit.

Now, we have our mid-section area and we’re going to take our upper area here and this then will fit right here. That holds in place pretty descent too and then you have the rest of your castle and the rest of the cool look there that we have going up, as you can see.

Now, starting with out minifigures, we have the two main ones. The big cheese, Mickey and Minnie. Mickey Mouse in Tuxedo. Love the outfits of both of these. The red with the polka dot for Minnie and, yes, the dress. Then, there is the back of both. You can see, Mickey does have his Tuxedo coming down the back which is a great add on for our Tuxedo-dressed Mickey Mouse. Next stop is, my favorite, Donald Duck and Daisy Duck. She does have the purple toe print and then a pink shirt and a purple bow tie. There is the side of both Donald and Daisy and then the back print for both of our ducks.

What’s probably going to be many of you favorites, very desirable, our first ever Tinkerbell with a great hair piece. Nice print. Does have the green printed toes for the slippers and a little cloth piece there too for Tinkerbell. There is the back of Tinkerbell with the blue wings and, yes, holding the green one. She does not have a double-sided face.

We will start at the top of the castle here and work our way down. Our first room that you can see here is a room that does have a little observation area. You could stick Tinkerbell in there but there’s really no need to because she can fly. A minifig can fit in this tower area. Then, right below it, you’re going to see our first reference in Mirror, Mirror on the Wall. You probably see my shirt in the background and now you can see my fingers. This is our reference to Snow White with the red apple in our little glass bowl, which is a nice little build. You’re going to find many of these small little mini builds throughout the set. Then, just below it is our little treasure box and, what do we have inside? Well, what did Snow White find? A scissors, a brush, and a piece of hair, kind of like, a ponytail piece that does fit in there with our scissors.

Just on the other side of where Snow White’s little chest is, we do have a great reference here to many of you, Disney World attendees, will really appreciate. At the end of the night, we have Tinkerbell who flies in on a cable and the colorful fireworks fly from inside of the castle to us, outside, watching. That is what these are. We have nice little pieces that are built and they are of some different colors. You can see, we’ve got some pink. We also have purple. You can just make the fireworks very colorful there for Tinkerbell’s entrance.

We do have some nice detailing here on the rail. As we make our way down here, one of my favorite sections of the castle, I should say, as a [build 00:09:41]. I just stuck Donald there because, on the box, it shows Donald in this bed and it is a beautiful bed. This is a really cool build here on the bed. You can see the headboard. We got a little chest here with a beautiful printed piece here of what looks to be a unikitty tail. Just really nice print on this. Nice, cool little build for this bed in its entirety with some mango colored sheets that you could see a bit better like so … and just a little bit a farther view away.

As we make our way down, again here, just from an upper section, this is a reference to our Mickey Mouse with our Fantasia Magic Mickey, which I believe is the wizard hat. Then, we have our dancing brooms. We got a couple of brooms and the buckets of water. There is nice room to fit some minifigs so you could put Mickey there and put any minifig there. There’s plenty of space, whether you put him there. Put him in the back and then keep adding to it.

Then as we make our way next to that room is a little reference and a cool little build again for out spinning wheel. I’m just going to take this off because it’s easy to do. You can see that and it does just go on the jumper stud and it fits right there. Right next to it, we do have a little area here, where you could put a couple of minifigs. We have Donald on guard there but you could fit two or three minifigs in this area. They do have a little area to stand and view.

As we make our way down below, we have this cool little room which is really like. You can see, we’ve got some shelving with glass bottles and some jars. Right here, you could see some very cool pieces that you got a decent amount of that hold the shelves up and give it a great décor look. A butcher knife and a broom on a clip over our wood burning stove. We do have a little barrel here holding a carrot and some sausage and a shovel in the background. Just a lot in this little room. Some pans and pots that are just being stored throughout in this little area. Again, you can fit minifigs pretty decently in this area.

What’s going to be probably many of your favorites, this little area right in the middle of the heart of the castle, just below Mickey’s Fantasia room, is what I’m calling it. We’ve got a little mirror on the table and we’ve got, yes, the rose in our glass case. Great little build here for our curtains, for our drapes that are hanging over the window. Again, that’s just like another little build that we have that is something that you could easily do with just some curve plates and that you see a lot of times at the [inaudible 00:12:43] brick wall.

Another area that’s going to be a lot of your favorite and it looks like it’s a rooftop, and it is. However, it can be removed. Very easy, very simple. What is inside of this little area? Well, I’m going to show you. That is these two wonderful things. There’s one of them. Here is the second that is even better, in my opinion. This is a case with our glass slipper, which is a really cool build. Very basic. You can see it’s a clear cheese slope, a one-by-two, and stud. All just clear pieces that give it the glass slipper and with two windows. It’s then going to go right in here and stay there. This is my favorite. We’ve got the book with a printed castle. What happens when you open it? It does say, Once Upon A Time, again a printed tile. Then you can take both of those, the book and the glass slipper. They stay in there and then you put your rooftop piece back on. Fits and hidden.

Now, as we showed you before, want to show you what it looks like as we do this again even closer. We take off this mid-section which, now that we’ve seen everything on it, we remove. We’re going to just put it to side and this is where we have an area that is mainly archery practice. That’s fun. This is obviously a reference to Merida. We’ve got our bow and arrow. We do have a quiver here. We have three of our edible cinnamon roll, cinnamon bun pieces from the movie and our target practice here.

This is a big area too, that is available once you remove the section of the castle so you could even add on to this and make it your own. Even with the castle piece on it, there is a lot of area if you wanted to remove this and add some of your own too. Whether minifigs whatever. Do have another little observation area here and just gives you a glance, a view of the back side of some of the spires. Then, also as we make our way down here, this is the jumper studs that hold these two-by-two tile that hold the mid-section of the castle on it.

Now, moving to our main section here. Again, this is a section that many of you have probably walked through. This is a big area. Really like this little build here with a lot of plates. Little home plate looking plates and then we do have our statues and then our flames. This is a cool little effect that we have there. We do have a flying carpet on the wall. Our battle, obviously a shout out or reference to Aladdin. Beautiful flower vase next to the column there in the main area. Then this is our main area here of walkthrough. Again, this is the area that you’ve probably gone through from Fantasyland up these steps through the middle of the castle. There is a beautiful chandelier. You can see our minifigs on the other side as we enter towards main street and our circular roundabout area. Where the electrical light parade goes and really many of the parades. You sit, eat popcorn.

On the other side too, we have a clock that also is five minutes before midnight, just like our main clock on the castle. Another statue here. Next to it, we do have some shields. Those are stickers. The logo print that is on our shields that are also hanging on the wall. Here’s just a quick, closer look at our entrance with some of our lamp post. Very nice there. A better look at, not only our clock, but, yes, this printed paneling there on the tile and our printed clock right in the middle of our castle. Then, two, we do have a reference down here to our Princess and the Frog, Tiana, with both frogs and the crown in the background at the side wall area of our castle.

A lot there, as you saw, just as I’m talking to you, I’m looking at it in the background and it is so impressive of a build. It’s one of those things where when you’re at Disney you’re like, “Man, I wish LEGO would make a castle.” We’ve had few castle-like sets over the last few years. This one, obviously, takes the cake. It is massive. It really does justice to our castle at the Magic Kingdom.

Now, the play features, I think, are really good. A few of my negatives before we go to the pros. A couple of my cons are, as I mentioned in the close up, the mid-section detaches pretty easy on jumpers. It is a little wobbly if you’re going to be playing with it. I know my kids will be and they’re going to probably need to take it off. That’s what I would recommend. You would have to modify the bottom in order to make it be a little more firm and not move as much. If the castle moves or if you’re playing with it and you’re up here, it’s going to wobble off pretty easily. Then, the top cone piece that goes on, that’s very cool like that. That actually is a little bit more sturdy even though it’s thinner on that than the mid-section.

Love that we have that area where Merida’s doing the archery in the middle like a big area there for add ons. There’s so many things here that you can add on to with some other Disney Princess stuff that you already have or that you’re going to get.

All in all, this is one of those sets where if you’re a Disney fanatic, you’re going to want it for that reason alone because it’s the Disney Castle. I think, it’s just going to have a lot of hype because of that and it’s a beauty. If you’re a LEGO builder, you’re going to like either way. If you’re not into Disney a whole lot, you may say, “I’m going to spend my money somewhere else.” That makes sense, but you get some great minifigs with Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy and then the Tinkerbell that’s going to be in very high demand, I would imagine, as it’s the only way to get a Tinkerbell.

All in all, I think, well done for the build. I’ll be on that one little critic I have which is more of a play feature. I mean, if you’re just putting it on the shelf, which is what I’m going to be doing with this one … although, my kids will probably going to get their hands on it, then it’s fine. It doesn’t really matter. If you’re going to be playing with it, just take it off and then you actually have two little players. You could put it on the table each have two big areas to play with, which is probably even better anyway.

There is your Disney Castle, $349. Over 4000 pieces. It is huge. Let’s just take one last look at this magnificent set as we check out. Thanks for watching and we’ll see you guys next time here on The Brick Show.

Building Instructions – Assembly Manual

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Coming Soon