Rating: Summary: Fantastic Starting Software Review: My son started playing this at 16 months. You can hit any key on the keyboard to make something happen or progress to point-and-click. Thanks to the Mickey and Minnie games my son learned his letters and shapes by 20 months. He also amazed us by learning how to point-and-click at 18 months. He's now 29 months and still enjoys playing some of these games but has progressed to Putt-Putt Saves The Zoo.I have to say that this is one of the best purchases we made for him and it's helped him stay ahead of his playmates when it comes to counting, the alphabet, and his computer skills. Within the coming months we'll probably give the Disney preschool software pack a try.
Rating: Summary: disappointing Review: We bought this mostly because our 15 month old has Jumpstart Toddler and we (parents) are sick of the same music over and over again (though she loves Jumpstart Toddler!)
Unfortunately, this (Disney) is a major disappointment. Issues we have/had include:
1) CD required in drive to play game. Who in their right mind thinks it's a good idea to require the CD for toddlers??? My daughter had the CD popped out 4 times just the first time trying this program. (and crashed the system 3 of those times) I mucked with the registry and .ini files but was unable to get it to load without requiring the CD.
2) toddler needs good mouse skills. Most everything is mouse driven, and while some keyboard strokes did something, navigating required the mouse.
3) large delays loading games, breaks in voices. Since everything comes from the CD, there are large breaks in the game while loading animations, including breaks in voice over in the middle of sentences. Very choppy. (PII-300, plenty fast for other games - and old enough that I don't mind the toddler playing with it)
4) no immediate reaction to keystrokes/clicks some times. When the animation sequences are going on, no keystrokes or mouse clicks will do anything. My daughter rapidly lost interest because she'd hit keys and nothing would happen.
5) while my daughter is young for this game, she was unable to run the program on her own, requiring me to click and navigate. She bored of this very quickly.
On the positive side, she did enjoy a couple of the animated sequences - watching. But I want something for her to participate with, not watch.
In all, very disappointing.
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