Should we buy a Climbing Frame for our Toddler

[Wills]

Hi, My dd has the fortunate position of currently being the only grandchild on both sides of the family however this has meant that only 2 years 10 months she already has most of ELC's range of toys and we have zero space left in the house. Her birthday is in March and rather than buy loads more toys my dh and I thought we'd start to buy her a climbing frame. The sort that you can extend and add slides/swings/ropes etc. ELC do a metal range that you can buy in bits a gradually build up which would be good because I can give this to the grandparents, aunts, uncles etc.

However what do people think of such items. I'm concerned that she will think it great for the first month or two and then never look at it again (like what happened last year when we bought her a bouncy castle). But there again she adores the park's climbing frame and I'm hoping she would get a lot of use out of this as well.

The next question is has anyone else bought ELC's climbing frame kits - what did you think. Is anywhere else that has a similar approach i.e. you can buy parts and gradually build up to the whole?

I have seen the ELC ones and they look realy good !! If we had the space in the garden, I think I would go for a wooden construction. Before christmas I was looking at some websites of outdoor toys(can't remember them off hand but I found them through google),there are some fantastic constructions available, ie.elevated houses with steps up and slide down.They look alot more attractive as well.
If it were me buying one,I think I'd have a realy good browse around before deciding on one.

Have a look at www.tptoys.com .We've got one of their "dome"climbing frames and a slide. But for toddlers look at the Explorer, you can start it low off the ground and move it up as they grow and add loads of things. We've got various friends with either ELC or TP frames and IMHO the Tp's stand the test of time better. If you check out your nearest dealer you may be able to let your dd go and try it out, our dealer had ALL of them in his v. large garden, my dds had a ball! HTH.

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We have an ELC climbing frame. B***r to put up ? nearly brought us to the point of divorce getting all the struts to line up in the right places!!! (Though, perhaps me & dh don't make the most practical of teams). Ds loved it from about 3, though now he's 4, I can see it getting a bit limited, even though it can be put up in a more challenging "mode", (which I can't see me & dh attempting).
If I was in the same situation again, I'd be strongly tempted by the TP toys explorer one, as Batey suggested. It seems so versatile & you can add and add to it, apparantly, til the child's about 10, which sounds good value to me!

We've got the TP explorer (that's the hexagonal one I think?) which started small and then we added the height to it. We have a ladder which will turn into monkey bars (when we get around to putting the extensions on) and a slide.

In the summer we add the aquaslide to the bottom of the slide and the cchildren have a ball.

We want a trampoline this year but can't decide which to buy (I started a thread on that beofre Xmas and we still haven't made our minds up!)

ELC are no longer stocking their own brand but now stock TP ones!

We've got a Treetops (www.treetopsdirect.co.uk) climbing frame, slide and swing and its brilliant. They are expensive but they look lovely and my 3 year old loves it - one tip, buy the plastic slide rather than the timber slide, its much better. We originally bought the swing and added the climbing frame/slide this Christmas.