Review - Fisher-Price Rainforest Open-Top Cradle Swing

 Fisher-Price 

 Rainforest Open-Top Cradle Swing 

I bought this swing from Argos for my daughter before she was born after reading how good it was. It definitely didn't disappoint. I'll be honest, it is rather large and it isn't easily folded away as I was lead to believe. Don't get me wrong, the legs do fold, however it does seem laughable and slightly pointless as it doesn't make it any smaller. It does however stop me from tripping over the legs when clearing up the breakfast mess, so not the worst design. 

The swing itself has lots of different features it plays music, swings and the toys on the arm rotate and the leaves move up and down. The swing has six speed settings which you can turn up and down using the dial. 

The arm also move up and down which makes it easier to lift the baby out. I discovered this after a few near misses between Charlotte's head and the monkey :) note to self lift arm before removing child. 

One great thing about the seat is you can turn it left and right, making it easy to get your baby out the seat or turn them towards something. With the frame being so large, it's not ideal to move it therefore the ability to turn the seat makes it brilliant and more functional. I can easily turn her to me for feeding and then turn her after towards the TV while I clean up. 

Another great aspect is the harness in the seat, you can remove the shoulder straps and just have the waist straps. It's really well designed and easy to change this back at any time. You can also remove the tray from the seat. This is not so easy when you have already clipped it in, but it is possible. I personally chose to remove the tray as my daughter kept kicking it and didn't like it on the seat. 

Having the safety harness has made this product more usable for us as we not only use it for soothing our baby but also to feed and entertain her. Many a time she has happily fallen to sleep whilst having a leisurely swing, working out perfect for me to get stuff done, especially in the colic days. 

I do find it extremely disappointing that it doesn't have the ability to use a plug in adaptor and solely relies on batteries. As you can imagine it eats through them and can be quite costly especially when it takes 4 D sized batteries. Having both options to use a plug in adaptor or batteries would massively improve this product. Even better if Fisherprice could also look to include a power pack which could be charged from the adapter as an additional purchase, it would be well worth every penny. 

The other part which isn't so great is the seat itself, its designed to have a reclining option but only has two settings which really do not make that much difference. The settings are so close together, it's really hard to see any discernible difference. You can adjust this from a green button on the side of the chair, you have to press the button and pull or push the back of the chair to click it into the angle you want. I feel it would be much better if it reclined further back for when baby falls asleep or sits further up when she wants to play. More settings on the recliner would drastically improve the product.

Negatives to one side, it is a great product. We have especially found it useful for feeding our daughter as she is a very dainty baby and seems lost in any highchair, whereas this allows her to sit comfortably and safely to enjoy her food. 

Even with the downsides, I would still say this is a must buy. As usual Fisherprice do not disappoint with the number of features on this product. They have really thought about how you would use it by including the ability to turn the chair and the aspects of entertainment. More attached toys would be nice but you can understand why this might not be possible when you see the design. Maybe if Fisherprice release a new model they could look to include toys which dangle over the side of the chair so baby can reach for them and pull them up but we will have to wait and see for that.