Rating: 
Summary: PC Users Beware
Review: Causes Windows to crash repeatedly on both my Win98 and Win2000 machines (no problem with Reader Rabbit on both). Mac-centric development evident. Disney offer 90 Day Money Back Guarantee but offers no information whatsoever on how to carry it out.
Rating:
Summary: PC Users Beware
Review: Causes Windows to crash repeatedly on both my Win98 and Win2000 machines (no problem with Reader Rabbit on both). Mac-centric development evident. Disney offer 90 Day Money Back Guarantee but offers no information whatsoever on how to carry it out.
Rating: 
Summary: Quality fun
Review: Disney comes in for a hard time whenever the curse of globalization or the death of culture comes up. My take on it is: Disney is enormously successful because they produce good stuff!This CD is a great example. The graphics are top notch, the sound is great, the variety of games is engaging, and there's some real learning going on too. My three year old daughter loves this CD. She's learned her letters, numbers, colors, and shapes during the time since we started Mickey Mouse Preschool. That's not all the CD's doing, but there's no question the CD has contributed. Some of this CD is fun for Dad too. I like to "help" in Goofy's Build-A-Hot-Rod. The music in the Gorilla's Garage is swingin'. It's even fun to pump gas with the cow-guy! As long as Disney keeps producing fun stuff like this, we'll keep buying it!
Rating: 
Summary: Confusing, boring, minimally educational
Review: My 2.5 daughter loves her Reader Rabbit Toddler and accepts her Jumpstart Toddler. She is comfortable playing both RR and JS 1-2 hours. So I bought this thinking it would be a good next step. I was disappointed. She does not enjoy it and will spend no more than 15 minutes with it. -- Stupid cartoon uninterruptible. Slows everything down without giving anything new. RR has a cartoon that was interesting the first few times, but we regularly interrupt it now. -- Characters not involved in interaction. There is a car whose horn you can press (whoo, whoo). That is a high point! -- Too much emphasis on artwork, little on interaction. -- Concluding credits uninterruptible. Just try interrupting this computer hog to quickly get something off your computer for a phone call. Very disappointing. I think the section where you water-spray the letter, number, color, shape will be beneficial, however, the goal of the exercise is not clear for younger children, and quickly becomes boring. I can think of hundreds of ways to make it more interesting. Where were these guys? The musical and spray-paint sections are a good start, but they give up so quickly. And god forbid that you don't cntrl-P to turn off the printer. If you leave your child with the printer on, you won't have any paper and your child happily prints the large button to print out worksheets, again and again. It's rare to want to print, why is this such a large button. And one of the worst features is that the exit is fairly large and central. So you go into an area, put up with the uninterruptible cartoon, the child starts to play, and boom!, she accidentally hits the exit. (RR for example has a delay that helps the child decide not to exit.)
Rating:
Summary: Confusing, boring, minimally educational
Review: My 2.5 daughter loves her Reader Rabbit Toddler and accepts her Jumpstart Toddler. She is comfortable playing both RR and JS 1-2 hours. So I bought this thinking it would be a good next step. I was disappointed. She does not enjoy it and will spend no more than 15 minutes with it. -- Stupid cartoon uninterruptible. Slows everything down without giving anything new. RR has a cartoon that was interesting the first few times, but we regularly interrupt it now. -- Characters not involved in interaction. There is a car whose horn you can press (whoo, whoo). That is a high point! -- Too much emphasis on artwork, little on interaction. -- Concluding credits uninterruptible. Just try interrupting this computer hog to quickly get something off your computer for a phone call. Very disappointing. I think the section where you water-spray the letter, number, color, shape will be beneficial, however, the goal of the exercise is not clear for younger children, and quickly becomes boring. I can think of hundreds of ways to make it more interesting. Where were these guys? The musical and spray-paint sections are a good start, but they give up so quickly. And god forbid that you don't cntrl-P to turn off the printer. If you leave your child with the printer on, you won't have any paper and your child happily prints the large button to print out worksheets, again and again. It's rare to want to print, why is this such a large button. And one of the worst features is that the exit is fairly large and central. So you go into an area, put up with the uninterruptible cartoon, the child starts to play, and boom!, she accidentally hits the exit. (RR for example has a delay that helps the child decide not to exit.)
Rating:
Summary: Software User
Review: My child loves this program. The game starts by having the child type in their name then click the play button. Then you see Mickey, Minnie, and Pluto driving down the road when the car makes a sound-they are out of gas. So they stop at a gas station, where goofy, daisy, donald, and his nephews happen to be. So Mickey and pluto sit and wait while Minnie goes inside the diner to visit Daisy. After that you can go into one side of the garage where goofy is making the cars. My daughter loves this one. You choose how you want it to look, you can paint it, change tires. Then you can also print it out. The other garage is a musical making garage with tires, cans, wrenches, etc. Outside is a car that you can sit in and touch all the buttons, etc. You can also help fill up cars with yellow, orange, red, green, purple, blue gas up to 20 gallons. The driver tells you what they want(6 gallons of red gas) and you press the buttons and it counts to six. My daughter loves this one too. Then you can use a hose to squirt down cans and laundry with huey, duey, and luey. They teach numbers, colors, and shapes. The nice thing about this program is that you can enter and exit each one pretty fast. This is a lot better than the Winnie the Pooh Preschool program. Much easier for the child to understand in my oppinion and holds their attention better. As for the program not being able to work with certain computers and hardware, that is wrong. My husband does this stuff for a living and we have not had one problem with it. We have a brand new computer and a one year old one and both disney programs loaded fast and easy with no problems. It must be user error. I highly recommend this to anyone, even an adult, it is that much fun.
Rating: 
Summary: excellent graphics, good games for 2-3 year olds
Review: My daughter loves this CD, particularly the spray painting booth and gas station games. The whole thing is well designed with excellent graphics and entertaining games, however most of the games can be played in a few minutes. As a result this CD will not hold a child's attention for a long period of time, however I would still recommend it highly based on the quality of its design. ...
Rating:
Summary: Very disappointing
Review: This game starts out great but then is the flattest game/learning program I've ever scene. My 3 year old wants to see the characters, but after a brief introduction they are gone never to return and in their place is basically work sheets. Where is the imagination? Where is the creative use of the potential of the computer? One section, Goofy's car assembly, is the only mildly redeeming feature. But that's just not enough. Leave it on the shelf.
Rating:
Summary: Very disappointing
Review: This game starts out great but then is the flattest game/learning program I've ever scene. My 3 year old wants to see the characters, but after a brief introduction they are gone never to return and in their place is basically work sheets. Where is the imagination? Where is the creative use of the potential of the computer? One section, Goofy's car assembly, is the only mildly redeeming feature. But that's just not enough. Leave it on the shelf.
Rating:
Summary: Software User
Review: This one won't create an Einstien in your family but it is fun to play-if you can get it to work! It would only load on my 5 year old (and painfully slow) computer. Apparently it is only compatible with the old DirectX version that Disney uses. Some of the games have plain old silly fun like designing and painting a car in Goofy's garage and playing with the controls up front like the wipers, etc. There is a matching/squirt gun game with Huey, Dewey and Louie. Daisy's Diner offers some nice games with pattern recognition. There's another game for listening skills and numbers. If your kids are big Minnie or Mickey fans, they may be a little disappointed because you don't see much of them. Overall, the game has nice variety and great graphics. I suspect Jaclynn will bore with this one fairly early on, though because there are no levels of play to adjust and it is not very challenging.
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