Fort Magic Building Kit: Best Way to Spend a Rainy Spring Day

I will admit I have a high tolerance for cool; it just takes a lot to impress me these days.  But when I heard about Fort Magic, I couldn’t help but be impressed.  The kit promises “Hours & Hours of Imaginative Play with Giant Life-Size Forts” and that’s just the kind of thing that I adore.  Luckily, it arrived quickly, because I just couldn’t wait to try it out with my kiddos.

Fort building was a big part of my childhood and my siblings and I spent hours building fort worlds for us to play with.  While we didn’t have a playroom or even our own bedrooms, what we did have was creativity to spare and a desire to make our own kid-friendly spaces.  As much fun as we had building our forts together, I do remember that the hardest part of building was finding the supplies we needed to make the fort we were dreaming up.  Pillows, miscellaneous furniture, cushions, bed frames and more needed to be acquired so that when you laid a blanket on top it became a whole new world that was just our size.

Fort Magic has solved this problem by coming up with a fort building kit that contains everything you need to create your own fort as big as your imagination.  The 348 piece kit contains all different shapes and sizes of rods, connectors and accessories that allow you to build a fort – anywhere, anytime.

I should be clear here that we are not talking a typical box fort with straight sides and a blanket for a roof, we are talking fort masterpieces that includes pirate ships, castles, mansions, rockets, and just about anything else you can dream up.  By allowing you to build a fort with simply a frame and a blanket, it greatly expands the possibilities for your design.  With this kind of design possibilities in one kit, I really love that Fort Magic has fort ideas, tips, and tricks to get you started thinking outside the box as otherwise it might be overwhelming figuring out how to make more advanced shaped forts.  

Instead of trying out our own design first, we thought we’d check out a few of the forts shown in the included booklet so we could get an idea of how they best connect, what kinds of shapes we can make by combining different shaped pieces, and get an idea of scale so we can keep that all in mind while designing our own creations.  This turned out to be a good idea, because I don’t think we would have come up with half of the fort ideas we did without a little guidance, but once we had the start, we were off and running {or, rather, creating and building}.

Immediately, we were impressed with the construction of the Fort Magic kit.  Even with all of my excitement about the Fort Magic set, I was halfway expecting it to be flimsier and harder to build with.  Instead, what I opened was beautifully labeled bags of fort building supplies {yay!} that were incredibly heavy-duty and easy to use right out of the box.  With long, medium, short and teeny straight rods, various sizes of arcs as well as a selection of connectors and fabric clips, you have virtually everything in the Fort Magic kit you need to encourage creative play.

Saying that the Fort Magic Kit has encouraged imaginative play at our house over the past few weeks would be a vast understatement as our days have been filled with the process of creating, building, and eventually, playing with our forts.  I’ve  always said that it really doesn’t get better than a toy that is as fun to set up as it is to play with, and with Fort Magic that is definitely the case.  Seeing hubby and the kiddos come up with a plan, put it into action, and then work cooperatively to make it happen is just about the coolest thing  I can imagine.

Because, seriously, just last week we had a 10-man pirate ship in our living room and then a minutes later we were blasting off to the great unknown in a fabulous rocketship for two.  Hours later we were hiking around the base of our own volcano and then riding in our convertible to our cottage by the lake, all before nap time.  Does your little one want their own fairy cavern?  Simply add some silk fabric and you’ve got a home to impress.  Thought about exploring a cave or building a teepee?  Just add a blanket and a little imagination and you have hours of fun. 

What's really cool is that Fort Magic is that they include fabric clips to connect your blankets, sheets and fabric to the frame and really make your creation come alive.  We didn't have any apropriate materials for covering our frame so we used this huge King sized fuzzy blanket to cover our frame, and while it technically worked, the clips were too small to cover it.  Luckily, hubby got creative and used the old crib teething rail {see right} over the top of a straight rod and it held the blanket quite nicely.  While I do plan on making some specific Fort Magic covers at some point {craft project, anyone?}, this at least works for now to create fun and secluded play spaces to read books, make shadow puppets, and roast pretend marshmallows.

In addition to hours of immense fun, I also love that the Fort Magic kit doesn’t take up excess space when packaged, which is not the case for pillows, cushions, and more.  For how big of creations you can build, it’s really quite amazing that everything fits nicely into a box the size of a large toolbox {or in their custom bags for storage}, a huge plus for anyone that will use their kit in multiple places or bring it out a few times a month.  Another bonus of the compact design is that all the space in the fort is usable because you aren’t dealing with extra thick walls or worrying that the whole thing could topple if you get too close to the edge.

Compact storage, fun set-up, unlimited building possibilities, and great use of space makes this kit the perfect solution for those like us that don’t have a playroom.  The Fort Magic Kit is perfect for transforming our living room into a kid haven for a few hours and then pack away at the end of the night.  It may not be quite as cool as having a structure set up for play year-round, but it does get the whole family in on the fun of building, enjoying, and eventually destroying our creations. 

As a parent, I’m always searching for toys that inspire creativity, require teamwork, and are educational, and the Fort Magic Kit nails all three perfectly.  Ideal for groups of kids who need a creative outlet or for when you’ve got one kid who needs their own space to read, imagine, or  just be a kid, Fort Magic truly does live up to its name.   

Check out Fort Magic on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook so you can see all the amazing forts their very happy customers are creating!

A big thank you to Fort Magic for sending their kit to be reviewed.  All opinions are 100% ours and no form on monetary compensation was received in exchange for this Rave Review.