Fell in love with the building process. I was impressed by the detail and engineering of the build. This is actually my first UCS set and after completion, I ordered the UCS star destroyer and UCS A-wing. Only negative is that it was missing two pieces (not significant pieces) that I was easily able to order through Lego with quick processing and shipping. Overall, I rate this highly. Yes, the price is insane for a lego set, but this is considered the best UCS of all and is one of the best investment long term.

As soon as I saw the first images of his set I knew I had to buy it. As both a massive LEGO fan and a massive Star Wars fan, it seemed obvious that this was the ultimate set available to me. With the reputation it's predecessor had (and still has) among not just the LEGO community but the wider world in general, this set was sure to be very highly anticipated. Add to that the legacy of the Millennium Falcon as a cultural icon, and the fact that the new rendition retakes the crown of the largest commercially available LEGO set ever.

This set was initially supposed to made available to V.I.P. customers early, sometime around September (if I recall rightly), but was only in fact made available over a month later much closer to Christmas. This became a fairly long-running joke in my family, with people regularly commenting on how long it had been delayed and speculating as to when it might be made available. Well, eventually it was, and boy was it worth the wait.

Box/Packaging:

The first thing you will notice upon buying this set is the sheer size of the box. And unlike most LEGO sets, this one really does come in a box. Most LEGO sets come in a box with one side much shorter than the other two, as I'm sure every LEGO fan will be familiar with; with the Falcon, this is not the case and it is much closer to a cube elongated along one axis. It's big, it's impressive, and it's incredibly difficult to find enough space to store it in. Inside the box there are four white boxes with the instructions set into a further piece of white cardboard so as to ensure they are not at all damaged.

Minifigures:

With a massive set like this the minifigures are never going to be the main focus, but nonetheless they are somewhat disappointing. We get both main crews of the Falcon, the Original Trilogy crew and the Episode VII crew. I do understand with a large UCS set that the ship should take centre stage, but for £649.99 I would expect something more, perhaps an exclusive minifig like Nien Nunb or a new Lando Calrissian, or just Luke and Old Ben Kenobi. If TLG had really wanted to go wild, all the major heroes we have seen aboard the Falcon in all their various forms would certainly not have gone down badly with fans. Anyhow, the minifigs we do get are superb, with the new C3PO once again back in action, and the new Han Solo hair mold looking much better than its predecessors. The Leia minifigure is also a wonderful addition, as are the porgs, which have never appeared in minifigs scale before or since.

The Build:

The build is, naturally, quite lengthy. I can't remember quite how long it took me, but it was build over several weeks with about an hour each day. It can get quite repetitive if you don't break it up, so I would definitely recommend taking your time over this one, rather than finishing it as quickly as possible.

The Completed Model:

The completed Falcon is nothing less than spectacular. It is absolutely enormous, much bigger than basically any other LEGO set I've seen. If you intend to display it, you are going to need to put serious consideration into where you are going to put it, because it is highly doubtful you will have a big enough space readily available. The model itself is highly detailed, far beyond the normal level of detail on a LEGO model. The greebling is so amazing in fact that from a distance it is hard to tell this model is LEGO at all, as the characteristic studs blend in with the other detailing. The cockpit is well constructed, with enough space to fit four minifigures inside if you position them just right. The passage leading upto the cockpit, while not hollow on the inside, does provide a nice smooth contrast to the greebling on the rest of exterior. The gunner's station is also included, basic though it is, with a curved window piece working nicely. The two interior sections are very well detailed, with most of the important features from the films. The lack of a full interior might be disappointing to some, but it means the exterior can be as well detailed and finely polished as it is, and the model dipoles the collapse under its own weight.

Final Thoughts:

There can be no doubt that this is one of the best LEGO sets ever made. It has everything, size, quality, high piece count, and superb minifigs. It is hard to imagine TLG ever going much further beyond this set in terms of size and price, as both of these features are reaching the limits of their practicalities with this model. That said I would definitely recommend it to any die hard LEGO Star Wars fans out there that have the budget - LEGO may never get better than this.

Out of my collection of over 200 sets, this set certainly tops the list. Because it is one of the greatest sets in all time, I am going to write a review on it.

Box/Instructions:

The box is the biggest LEGO has ever produced, at 6,063 cubic inches (99,360 cubic centimeters). The box by itself is an amazing thing to see and hold, and shows many details of the set around the box. Sadly, though, as I was carrying mine into my house, I tripped and this left a gaping hole right where the LEGO logo is. But, with a little perfectly clear tape and a steady hand, there is only a slight dent and no more huge hole. Now on to the instructions. It is one of the huge spiral bound books, and has 496 pages. When you open the box, make sure the side that is opened faces the ceiling, or this monstrosity of a book will flop out onto the table.

Parts:

In total, I believe there were 66 bags of pieces divided into 17 numbered bags which were divided into 4 different boxes, all of which were specially detailed. Many of the 7,541 pieces were standard pieces you'd find in other sets, except there were a lot of them. For example, you get 243x of the 1x2 Dark Tan Plates in this set. Also, there are some exclusive pieces such as the cockpit windshield, the radar dish, and the game board in the interior. There are stickers, but not too many considering the size of the set, and only one is applied on the outside of the set, the rest are on the interior.

Minifigures:

I love minifigures and all, but I'm not dedicated to them more than I am the set itself. Rarely I find myself buying sets for the minifigures only. But, if it is minifigures you want, this is not the set for you. Many of the figures are not exclusive. The ones that are are the Episode VI Han and Leia, which are good figures with great new prints on the faces. The porgs are also exclusive, but with a few spare parts and the porg heads from 75200 Ahch-To Island Training, you can make them pretty easily. The same principle also applies to the mynock. It is cool since this is the only official LEGO mynock, but you could probably buy the parts for it easily. Overall, the minifigure selection for this set was good, but it did not reach its full potential.

The Build:

It took me 16 hours and 20 minutes over the span of four days to build this set. I would have spread the build out longer, but I got this set on December 20, and I wanted to finish this before I built my sets I got for Christmas. I grinded this set on Christmas day to finish it, and I worked all day on it and built the last 7 out of 17 bags. The build was not boring at all, and there was always something different you were doing. There were countless building techniques I would never have thought of, and this led to a sturdy frame and tight placement of the outer panels (minus the ones that were designed to be removeable).

The Completed Model:

This model is huge. There is no other way to describe it. Yeah, it says it is 22 inches wide, 33 inches long, etc., but even knowing the dimensions of it does not do it justice. The set is so huge, I could not even put it with the rest of my LEGO sets, I moved it to the basement to put it onto the only table that could fit the model. Speaking of carrying it, if you do it wrong, it will end in disaster. There is even a page in the instructions telling you how to hold it, from the bottom with two hands, on in front of and behind the lower turret. If you hold it by the mandibles, it will break, so do not do that. This does not mean that the mandibles were put on weakly (as a matter of fact, they are secured tightly), it just means the sheer weight of the model would bend the mandibles to their breaking point.

Overall Opinion:

I am so glad that I bought this set, and I recommend it to anyone who has ~$850 just laying around. For Americans, the set is not just $800, its closer to $850 because of tax, and even though the set cost so much money, it is reasonably priced. At 10.6 cents per piece (~11.4 cents per piece after tax, may change depending on your state taxes) the set is around average for any Star Wars set. It is a lot to save (it took me three months to get this money) and even harder to spend all of it at once, but I do have to say it was well worth it. I strongly debated buying it when I did, but after having it for 6 months, I am glad I did. The value of the set comes with time, and not all at once, so if anyone is considering buying this, I say go for it, just have a little patience and this amazing set will not seem like a waste of money.

Unfortunately, I missed the first UCS Falcon set and as soon as they announced this set - I knew I would not let it pass me by. I also unfortunately missed the first release of the set - so I didn't order it until 12/22 and got it on 12/27 but it was so well worth the wait! The packaging is very well done, the boxes even have great artwork! The almost 500-page manual has some great LEGO history about Star Wars and the Falcon set at the beginning, but it does make an already large manual (about 450 pages) a little bigger; it might have been nice to separate this off as a separate book, either way, I recommend downloading the manual from LEGO and using a tablet when building this set so you don’t have to worry about messing up the manual. (PS, thank you LEGO for making all your set manuals available this way!)

This set comes in the newer "grouped stage" format with 17 stages in 66 bags (Order 66?? nice coincidence ;) lol) which makes it much easier to build compared to old UCS sets (like the 10030 Star Destroyer). Of course, this is a very difficult build but I found the instructions very easy to follow – even when trying to connect sections together, the close-ups did a good job showing where to connect things. I only had one issue with the manual not labeling a series of steps correctly - I think it was at the beginning of stage 6 where it shows making two parts – and normally that means get 2x the number of pieces in the prep section in the upper-left, but in this case, it was already done (causing me to only briefly freak-out that I had missing parts lol). There were a couple of times that trying to connect completed sections together was difficult – for instance, after completing the main structure, it’s much heavier than it looks so you have to be careful picking up the frame to put the “play” sections in – but the main skeleton and most of the outer shell seems stable. I do with that the removable panels/rear engine section went together a little better – until it was complete it seemed very precarious at times.

The only other thing I could wish for from this set was pieces with no stickers (well, except the main placard) – I would gladly have paid a little more to not have any stickers on the off chance that they will start to fold one day. Besides these – overall, I feel – small issues, this set is an amazing set to behold once done and a great build to get there for the expert builder! Great work on a set that’s worthy of “the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy”!

It's the largest and most expensive LEGO set ever produced. Perhaps that is why I feel compelled to write this review. Its a way to squeeze just a little more out of an experience which set me back over $800. Hopefully this helps someone else decide whether or not it is worth it. For me, it definitely was.

The Purchase

I live in the Pacific Time Zone of the United States, so I didn't think I would have to stay up too late to get a chance at placing an order online. Around 9:30 PM I started visiting the Shop@Home page and refreshing it, meanwhile visiting the forums to see what was going on. Eventually word got out that the Falcon wouldn't be available until the early morning on the East Coast, so I went to bed and set an alarm for a time of day I hadn't been awake for in years. When my alarm woke me up I rushed to my computer and clicked in a frenzy until finally the set became available. I blew through the checkout process as fast as their servers would let me, and managed to get on the backorder list.

For posterity I'll note that the Falcon became available to LEGO VIP members on September 14th, 2017. It sold out almost immediately, and we eventually learned that so many were sold right at launch that LEGO had to delay the availability of the set to the general public. As of this writing, LEGO still has not caught up with that initial demand, and the set remains unavailable for purchase. Nevertheless, LEGO managed to ship my order on September 28th, and I received it on October 3rd. I apologize if those details are a bit boring, but while I was waiting on the backorder list I wished I had some reference to go by on when my order would finally be fulfilled.

Prepping for Launch

With the release of several other new Star Wars LEGO sets, I had plenty of other builds to focus on. The 7541 piece Millennium Falcon sat near my building desk for a few weeks before I got the courage to begin, but there remained the issue of space. My desk measures roughly 4 feet by 2 feet and houses a mid-size set of hardware storage drawers on top of it where I keep spare pieces. The instruction booklet for the Falcon would take up more than three-quarters of this space just by itself. So step one was to clear off this desk and find some more auxiliary tabletop space to work with. I re-purposed two old TV tray tables which, when placed side-by-side were enough to house the instruction booklet. Then I crossed my fingers that my desk was large enough to house both the build and the pieces from each bag as they came out. Things got pretty cramped pretty quickly, but it managed.

The Build

I started my build on October 18th, and didn't finish until this morning, November 9th. All told, I think I spent around 18 or 19 hours on it, spread out over those many days when I had a chance to work through one of the 17 sets of numbered bags. Each one of the sets of bags took about an hour to complete, with some of the later ones taking longer as much of the work was placing the small pieces that detail the exterior of the ship.

The logical progression of the instruction book was excellent. Once you have built the main chassis of the ship, you work through different modules one at a time which then attach to that chassis. There were times when it was difficult to tell where exactly the module was suppose to lock in, but a close examination of the imagery in the instruction book was usually enough to clear it up. Plan on counting out the number of studs over things line up at a lot during this build.

I will express one bit of dissatisfaction in the instructions. There are a lot of times where one step has you add 1 or 2 pieces to a build, and the next step has you add 15. What's so difficult about that is when they don't bother pointing out where each little piece goes, and you end up spending a lot of time carefully scanning the image and your build to make sure you've got everything right. Below is a picture which I think captures this well. Instructions like this force you to grab the pieces needed in each step before applying them, to make sure you don't miss any, which adds a lot of time to build.

Note the build in the yellow box. Step 1 has you snap two pieces together. Step 2 adds one more. Step adds 3 pieces, all of them easy to spot. Then step 4 adds twelve small pieces, some of them easy to miss. Not a big deal, but stuff like that slows you down.

The Result

The final product of this $800 spent, and 18 hours of time, is thankfully absolutely stunning.

It is important to remember that this isn't a ship that LEGO designed, but one they tried to capture with their bricks. The Millennium Falcon is one of the most recognizable ships in all of film, and one must give credit where credit is due. This is the Millennium Falcon. It looks like it from far away and from close up. The designers at LEGO did an incredible job capturing the character of the hunk of junk we all love. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, perhaps because it is so hard to do well. LEGO did it well.

I don't spend much time looking at other collectables, but I haven't seen any replica of the Falcon at this scale available in such vivid detail. While some toys get this size, they're often made cheaply and sold at retail for children. This LEGO set is something for the collector. A premium rendition of our favorite vessel.

The finished set is heavy, and one of the last pages of instructions lets you know not to pick it up from the sides, but from the very bottom. The playability of this set comes not from moving it around like most other Star Wars sets, but from the interior. The top of the Falcon is composed mostly of loose panels that can be removed to reveal some of the iconic set pieces from the films. My one complaint about this is that the panels don't really 'lock in'. They sort of just rest in place. It was never my intention to do so, but this design would make it difficult to display the set vertically or on its side, that is if you could even safely mount it like that given its weight. Nevertheless, sets with removable panels have, in the past, still fixed the panels in place with one or two pegs. That is not the case here.

Essentially all of that boils down to what everyone already knows: this set is just meant to be displayed, and it is best displayed resting on its landing struts, just as I have it in the photo above. Put it like that and nothing can ever beat it. It is the best collectable version of the Millennium Falcon ever produced.

The Minifigures

I am, to put it mildly, a minifigure enthusiast. I love LEGO's little creation and they are the first thing I look at when new sets are announced. So I will just come right out and say it, the minifigures for this set are pretty disappointing. At the $800 price-point, I would have liked to get Luke Skywalker and Ben Kenobi. I wouldn't have minded a Lando Calrissian and Nien Nunb either. More than anything though, I would like something that felt new (Nunb doesn't really count for me).

I suppose I understand LEGO's thinking on this. This set is for display, and the minifigures they give aren't really ones you will want to add to your character bleachers. Instead, you will probably want to just keep them with the model, putting them inside the cockpit or running around outside. So in that sense, I suppose I appreciate the doubling up on minifigures I already have. I know where to put them and they look good there. But still, I'd of liked to have someone to add to my character bleachers after spending all of that money. If it were up to me, I'd have added a unique version of old Luke from the new trilogy, never to be seen in any other set. Oh well.

In the End

All told, I'm glad I have this set. It was fun to buy in a rush of excitement, it provided a lot of enjoyable build time, and it looks absolutely magnificent on display! The sticker shock of spending $800 will wear off with time, and in the end I will be left with a true treasure.