Disney's Mickey Preschool

Mosey into the garage. One bay houses a body shop where you can piece together and paint custom hot rods; the other, a tune-up place where a swipe of the cursor creates actual tunes on musical wrenches, tires, and hubcaps. Follow Minnie into the diner, and Daisy Duck dishes up dozens of workbook-style exercises on place mats. Wander into the back yard, and Huey, Dewy, and Louie hand you a hose and tell you which letters, numbers, shapes, or colors to squirt. Help pump gas and learn color mixing, numbers, and how to follow instructions. Get it wrong and a chipper customer intones, "That wasn't quite right, but it'll do," as their car backfires and leaves in a cloud of smoke.

Our favorite activity was the Opposites Car: climb into a car, and "mouse" with the turn signals, windshield wipers, and other fun switches preschoolers aren't allowed to touch on Mommy and Daddy's car. It's a clever way to teach opposites, and it's great fun to honk the horn and make Uncle Donald drop his laundry. (Ages 2 to 4) --Anne Erickson

Amazon.com Product Description
Preschoolers will explore a supportive learning environment in a roadside pit stop off the highway near Mickey's home. While interacting with Mickey and his friends, kids discover over 20 learning skills. The software is based on the Active Learning Method, which encourages kids to explore, discover, and create while they learn. The product enhances memory, listening, and observation skills as well as inspires creativity and imagination.

Product Description
Preschoolers will explore a supportive learning environment in a roadside pit-stop off the highway near Mickey's home.

As a result this CD will not hold a child's attention for a long period of time, however I would still recommend it highly based on the quality of its design.

...


Confusing, boring, minimally educational   October 11, 2001
Dennis G. Pratt (Westwood, MA USA)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful

My 2.5 daughter loves her Reader Rabbit Toddler and accepts her Jumpstart Toddler. She is comfortable playing both RR and JS 1-2 hours. So I bought this thinking it would be a good next step. I was disappointed. She does not enjoy it and will spend no more than 15 minutes with it.

-- Stupid cartoon uninterruptible. Slows everything down without giving anything new. RR has a cartoon that was interesting the first few times, but we regularly interrupt it now.

-- Characters not involved in interaction. There is a car whose horn you can press (whoo, whoo). That is a high point!

-- Too much emphasis on artwork, little on interaction.

-- Concluding credits uninterruptible. Just try interrupting this computer hog to quickly get something off your computer for a phone call.

Very disappointing.

I think the section where you water-spray the letter, number, color, shape will be beneficial, however, the goal of the exercise is not clear for younger children, and quickly becomes boring. I can think of hundreds of ways to make it more interesting. Where were these guys?

The musical and spray-paint sections are a good start, but they give up so quickly.

And god forbid that you don't cntrl-P to turn off the printer. If you leave your child with the printer on, you won't have any paper and your child happily prints the large button to print out worksheets, again and again. It's rare to want to print, why is this such a large button.

And one of the worst features is that the exit is fairly large and central. So you go into an area, put up with the uninterruptible cartoon, the child starts to play, and boom!, she accidentally hits the exit. (RR for example has a delay that helps the child decide not to exit.)


Quality fun   July 27, 2001
P. Elkin (Frisco, TX USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

Disney comes in for a hard time whenever the curse of globalization or the death of culture comes up. My take on it is: Disney is enormously successful because they produce good stuff!

This CD is a great example. The graphics are top notch, the sound is great, the variety of games is engaging, and there's some real learning going on too.

My three year old daughter loves this CD. She's learned her letters, numbers, colors, and shapes during the time since we started Mickey Mouse Preschool. That's not all the CD's doing, but there's no question the CD has contributed.

Some of this CD is fun for Dad too. I like to "help" in Goofy's Build-A-Hot-Rod. The music in the Gorilla's Garage is swingin'. It's even fun to pump gas with the cow-guy!

As long as Disney keeps producing fun stuff like this, we'll keep buying it!


Very disappointing   July 18, 2001
winter d prosapio (canyon lake, TX USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

This game starts out great but then is the flattest game/learning program I've ever scene. My 3 year old wants to see the characters, but after a brief introduction they are gone never to return and in their place is basically work sheets.

Where is the imagination? Where is the creative use of the potential of the computer?

One section, Goofy's car assembly, is the only mildly redeeming feature. But that's just not enough.

Leave it on the shelf.