Review : K’Nex Amazin’ 8 Rollercoaster

25th October 2021 - By Sarah Burns

I am a bit fan of K’Nex and it’s something that both the boys in particular really enjoy. H has the more junior K’Nex (it’s chunkier pieces that are easier to fit together) and Daniel has moved onto the more complex and smaller K’Nex.

We were recently sent the K’Nex Amazin’ 8 Rollercoaster kit to have a tryout and it’s absolutely brilliant. D built this over the weekend and he has been having a lot of fun with it!.

What is the K’Nex Amazin’ 8 Rollercoaster?

The K’Nex Amazin’ 8 Rollercoaster is a building set that utilizes the K’Nex and track pieces to create a functioning rollercoaster. It is a brilliant STEM activity and utilizes a range of skills.

The colourful K’Nex pieces fit together to form a rollercoaster that stands at around 2.5 ft high – it’s very impressive. The kit comes with easy-to-follow instructions that are really clear as well. Daniel (9) managed to build much of this himself with just some help from Damian with the more fiddly bits and pieces.

The kit is aimed at ages 7+ and I’d say this is about right. I think at 7ish the child(ren) would probably need more assistance with the smaller fiddlier pieces and any problem solving if things aren’t going quite right. D managed much of it on his own and only needed a little support from Damian.

What we thought of it

If I’m honest, I pretty much left D to build this on his own. He opened up the box and opened the bags inside into different bowls. He then set about making the base frame and managed to do this relatively quickly. I’d definitely say you need a stable surface for this. He built it on our laminate floors and later transferred it to the tabletop. I’d definitely use something solid rather than carpet or a rug. It is pretty secure and easy to lift and move around once you have the base built so we have been able to move it from the floor and back to the table as he has been working on it.

He managed to build most of the base one evening before bed and then finished that off and added the track on the next day. I think in total it was probably 2-3 hours worth of building. It was great to see him persevere and look at where he might have gone wrong when things didn’t work quite as he had hoped they would.

D really enjoyed this and has loved watching it as it whizzes around the track; it’s a great activity as there are a lot of different skills being utilized. There’s a lot of fine motor skills usage when physically building the rollercoaster as well as logic and reasoning to calculate where everything is going.

It’s also great to look at why and how the cart manages to go all the way around the track, taking in full 360 loops – there’s a lot of learning that can be done and even compare to rollercoasters in real life.

What You Need to Know

You will need, as mentioned above, a stable surface to build this on, perhaps a table or hard flooring. Some of the pieces are small and fiddly so probably best to keep smaller children away!

You’ll need two AA batteries to power the motor as well as a small screwdriver to undo the battery pack. The motor does make a small hum and you can hear the cart as it goes along the track, but it isn’t an obtrusive sound at all.

As it’s K’Nex it works well with other K’Nex sets. You can take the set apart and rebuild it many times over and use the pieces to make your own creations! There are 448 parts in the set, so plenty to play around with!