Diggin JumpSmart Trampoline

The director of our son's preschool suggested the Diggin JumpStart trampoline as a Christmas gift for our 3 year-old son when we talked to her about a certain activity he's started to enjoy. He holds the back of our couch and jumps up and down on the cushion with great zeal and vigor, a huge grin plastered from ear-to-ear, while laughing and laughing. While most parents wouldn't like jumping on the furniture, we had additional concerns. The other side of the couch is a railing that looks down on the stairwell and downstairs. With such a prodigious loft, my wife is terrified he'll bounce himself clear down to the nether bowels of our home. The preschool director couldn't remember the name of the item, but said it was on Amazon. I gave her my cell phone and she got on Amazon and found it in an instant. I put it in my shopping cart and purchased it that evening. Christmas morning he saw it with great excitement. It took a bit of labor to get it assembled, especially the contraption that sits below the trampoline and counts his jumps. Once it was set up, we turned it on and had him try it. OMG! I have never seen him so invigorated and excited over any toy. He jumped himself to exhaustion. He'd eventually drop to his knees, heaving and huffing and puffing with his hair matted in sweat. A few minutes later, he stood back up and continued jumping and jumping and jumping. The adults were standing at the entry of the room laughing. It was so cute to watch him and his seemingly endless quantity of energy and excitement. This lasted close to 45 minutes before he was too tired to continue. The engineering of this unit is well thought out. The arm span and height is ideal for kids of a wide-enough age range so it can be used for a number of years. Our son, as I said, is 3 years old and about 30 lbs. He can comfortably hold the green part of the handle in front of the red ball ends. This part is high enough that he can grow another foot or so and it will still be comfortable. His weight is not even an issue for this trampoline. He can pack on quite a bit of weight and size before he'll grow out of it. The electronics are also well integrated. He has a number of different buttons to press to change the songs, sounds, and counting, which keeps him interested, and it changes things up depending on what he wants to hear during his play time. Our only complaint is the audio quality, which is common for practically any child toy. The woman's digitized voice that counts and talks to him, we have to strain to understand her at times. But it does what it's intended to do, and the music plays fine. His interest isn't quite as intense as on Christmas, but he still uses it with more moderation than when he first received it. It's excellent exercise and has completely solved the problem of him bouncing on the furniture. We heartily recommend the Diggin JumpStart trampoline. It's safe, well built, and in our opinion, reasonably priced. It provides great value to the dollar! Best of all, it's a healthy addition to any child's physical activities.

I bought this product with trepidation, having read the awful stories of impossible assembly, but I'm pretty good with spatial assessments and gave it a try. Not so bad at all. Assembled the toy with my grown son, me actively helping (60 year old woman) in 1 hour 25 min, and it looks and works great! Here's how: Out of the box, laid out the parts. Following the music box directions to put in the batteries, first thing the screw you have to take out, broke in such a fashion it could not be re-used. You and I both have assorted screws left over from previous projects, so rummaging through the loose extra screws box in the basement was a success - several options, all worked (only needed one). Assembled the handles with the music box between (music box works great, although the songs are pretty obnoxious). First disaster: assembling the legs to the handle assembly - the screw holes did not line up, we considered getting the drill and re-drilling the holes. Got up, took a deep breath. Realized we had the side legs reversed. Put them in on the other side and presto ** everything fit. Hallelujah. The back legs were not easy in terms of physical strength to pull and push and line up so the screws would go through. We managed the job by fitting one bolt on one side, and left it loose. Then by one person (my son) holding together the top of the other side with, and my pushing on the bottom of the legs, we got the bottom bolt in on that end. that bolt took probably 10 minutes to get through, maybe even more. With 20-20 hindsight, we could also have put a couple of pieces of wood around the metal poles and used C-clamps to squash them into shape, rather than fighting with them by hand, but it worked. Once we had the one bolt on the top of one side and another on the bottom of the other side, the last two bolts went in if not easily, then at least do-ably. By the way, we used a hammer to tap in the bolts, right from the beginning, and a socket set to tighten the nuts: decent tools are essential. The final bits went on without a hitch. 1 hour 25 min from cutting open the box to clean-up completion. Not too bad.

my daughter loves it but wow! it was no easy task to put together