Bricklink Designer Program 2021 Discussion Thread

[karmajay]

It says call lego support to change payment option. I did this quickly today over the phone with them. :)

[Prometheus87]

2 hours ago, karmajay said:

It says call lego support to change payment option. I did this quickly today over the phone with them. :)

Thanks all for the advise! Called them and they took care of it. 

[Friscorays]

Venetian Houses became the second set in the second round to sell out today.

[Terrasher]

Looks like somebody on the Bricklink page of the Castle found the pdf instructions! The set number is the only differentiating element between each pdf instruction link, so changing it manually gives you access to the other sets. A little bummed about there not being an access for the minifigures to get to the lower deck of the Great Fishing Boat, but that would just be a hidden internal detail, so I'm still very much looking forward to getting my copy

Anyone know when the first batch is set to be shipped? I've been staring at the "In Process" status on S@H for days now...

[mvLego]

In case you're like me and forgot that Bricklink has a Twitter account, here's some interesting news regarding the Castle in the Forest shipping in early December (now-ish!).

https://twitter.com/BrickLink/status/1466104315874095108?s=20

 

[RichardGoring]

2 hours ago, Terrasher said:

Looks like somebody on the Bricklink page of the Castle found the pdf instructions! The set number is the only differentiating element between each pdf instruction link, so changing it manually gives you access to the other sets. A little bummed about there not being an access for the minifigures to get to the lower deck of the Great Fishing Boat, but that would just be a hidden internal detail, so I'm still very much looking forward to getting my copy

Anyone know when the first batch is set to be shipped? I've been staring at the "In Process" status on S@H for days now...

Ooh, thanks! Got them. Very helpful.

[RichardGoring]

Just had an email from LEGO confirming the sets that I ordered in round 2 have been crowdfunded and will be shipped in August 2022.

[Terrasher]

Looks like some people's orders are being charged and sent to the warehouse. Meanwhile my Fishing Boat is still in 'In Process' Jail

[MartyMcFly]

My Fishing Boat was shipped today !!!

[Prometheus87]

From what I can tell, people in Europe are starting to receive them. Has anyone in North America had them magically delivered without prior notification? 

[RichardGoring]

3 hours ago, Prometheus87 said:

From what I can tell, people in Europe are starting to receive them. Has anyone in North America had them magically delivered without prior notification? 

I think when they announced the first round of deliveries, they said it would be Europe first and then the rest of the world a month or two later.

[mvLego]

Following some threads on Reddit, it looks like it's only been folks in Europe who are receiving sets right now. One North American user mentioned calling customer service to update their payment info and being told that North American shipments would start in the next two weeks. So we may be getting close!

[RichardGoring]

1 hour ago, mvLego said:

Following some threads on Reddit, it looks like it's only been folks in Europe who are receiving sets right now. One North American user mentioned calling customer service to update their payment info and being told that North American shipments would start in the next two weeks. So we may be getting close!

That's interesting. Bricklink tweeted recently that sets outside Europe would ship in February. Maybe they're ahead of things.

[mvLego]

1 hour ago, RichardGoring said:

That's interesting. Bricklink tweeted recently that sets outside Europe would ship in February. Maybe they're ahead of things.

I just saw the Bricklink tweets about US shipping in January/February. As bummed/impatient as I am, I have a feeling that the user I mentioned and/or the rep were being overly optimistic.

[MartyMcFly]

My boat is arriving today.

Sets are already appearing on eBay UK.  The castle and the boat being listed for £400-500. 

[MartyMcFly]

Someone is trying their luck by listing the castle for £999 !!

[CamelBoy68]

My boat arrived yesterday !!!

 

 

[Friscorays]

6 hours ago, CamelBoy68 said:

My boat arrived yesterday !!!

What does the inside of the box look like? 

[Celeri]

I just got my "Pursuit of Flight" set, but not the "Sheriff's Safe" that was ordered at the same time, strange...

Edited December 22, 2021 by Celeri

[ChrisW]

Hoping someone here will do a review? Bit odd that none have popped up yet anywhere.

[CamelBoy68]

18 hours ago, Friscorays said:

What does the inside of the box look like? 

Don't know - its a Christmas gift, so I may not see it...

 

[Friscorays]

On 12/23/2021 at 5:51 AM, CamelBoy68 said:

Don't know - its a Christmas gift, so I may not see it...

 

Timing couldn't have been better.  Brickfanatics has us covered. https://www.brickfanatics.com/inside-lego-bricklink-designer-program-boxes/

[Friscorays]

German but subtitles can be translated.

 

[Maple]

On 12/17/2021 at 11:55 AM, MartyMcFly said:

My Fishing Boat was shipped today !!!

I ordered August 2 and still nothing.

I don't actually expect to get the boat until I build it. LEGO has become such a mess of a company recently. Either ship them out all at the same time or don't send me an email saying it's about to ship, then won't for 3-4 more months. Ridiculous. 

[Paperballpark]

This is a repost of what I posted on Brickset last night:

I built the Kakapo this evening.

The finished model is a beautiful thing. Possibly the most beautiful Lego model I've bought.



The build, however, is tedious and repetitive. Thankfully it only took about 3 - 4 hours. I can't help thinking that having information about the Kakapo scattered through the instructions (as is becoming the norm with 18+ sets these days) would have helped relieve some of the slog.

The build is also not helped by easily the worst instructions I've ever seen in a (semi-official) Lego set.

Firstly, the instructions themselves look like they've been put together in LDraw in about 1998. Not a good look these days.

Secondly, there's a few small spare pieces (2x black 1x2 plates) oddly left over at the end of bag 3, which it turns out are needed (along with some 1x1 'spares which turn out not to be spares') towards the end of bag 8!

There's also a small section at the end of bag 6 which needs six parts which aren't in bag 6. They're in bag 7. I actually thought I was missing two parts until I realised all the parts for that section were missing.

In addition, the building process seems like no-one actually tried using the instructions to build the set after the instructions had been put together. A lot of steps have rather odd processes for building them, and you have to really pay attention in other steps to avoid making mistakes.

A few examples:

In step 54 I initially missed off the 2x4 plate, because it looks so similar to step 53.


In steps 57 and 58 I simply don't see why you'd start with the 2x4 plate rather than with step 58's sub-build. There's a lot of bits like this, where you just know that Lego would have changed the steps around had they taken half a glance at the instructions.


In step 115, the call-out build is so badly shown that I wondered where the hell the second 1x1 plate went. Maybe it's just me, but I really don't think this would have made it into official Lego instructions.

I'm going to stop having a moan now, because the finished model is honestly a thing of utter beauty. I just wish someone at Lego had taken the time to look at the instructions...

Edited December 31, 2021 by Paperballpark