Dairy Queen Blizzard Maker

I read other reviews on this product prior to receiving it as a gift for my children. Most of them were quite negative, so I wanted to be sure my review was posted. My kids are 8 and 5 and thoroughly enjoyed it. They have made homemade ice cream in the past with their Grandfather, and for them, it reminded them of those times. Also, we had no problems with any of the instructions regarding the assembly, adding of ingredients, or making the actual ice cream. As a matter of fact, I didnt even completely fill the ice bin because I only had one and one half trays of ice cubes, and we still had no trouble with the freezing process. People need to remember that this is a gimmick, children's toy. It is not meant to provide you with an actual Blizzard from Dairy Queen. It is meant to give your children the experience of making their own ice cream, which is delicious! My only semi-negative comment would be the company's choice of add-ins. We received three flavors of a pop rock type candy, which I personally do not feel is a good choice for young children or ice cream, but again, my opinion. I would rather see them add M&M's or jimmies or something along those lines. Regarding price, yeah, it's a little pricey, but it's worth it for a special gift for your children. Oh yeah, and a bonus, they give you $10.00 in mail in refunds to use toward other related items, such as refills and a bogo Blizzard from Dairy Queen! Sweet!

My eight year old daughter opened this up from Santa this morning. After reading reviews, I had very low expectations. However, we helped her a lot, we have a fridge that crushes ice so that was no trouble, the ice cream was not salty because we did not accidentally mix the salt in with the ice cream mixture (salt goes in with the ice), and we carefully turned the crank so we did not strip the gears. It is plastic, so I don't expect it to be durable. But it worked just the way it was supposed to and it filled 2 four ounce cups. We put the mixings on top. All in all, it did what it was supposed to, and we are not disappointed for $25. My daughter was happy. Make sure you have 3/4 cup of salt per batch, an ice crusher, and a big carton of half-and-half.

I read the reviews before purchasing. I was prepared with shaved ice (from our snowcone maker), salt, and half-n-half. We are a family of 4. My 9 year old cranked for 5 minutes and my 7 year old cranked for 5 minutes. Out came perfect, delicious, yummy vanilla ice cream. We added kit kats to one and reese's peanut butter cups to another. Great fun for the whole family. You have to remember this is a toy and treat it as one. Not using crushed or shaved ice can be a real mistake. I only paid 15.00 on amazon for this so I was extremely happy with the results!!

I bought this for my 9 year old granddaughter. She had been wanting one for a couple of years. It is actually a pretty decent product. I wouldn't recommend for younger kids unless you plan on doing all the work. The first time we used it, it was a little complicated to figure out how to set up and operate but after we used first time, it is pretty easy. We didn't have half and half the first time so we used 2% milk and it worked just fine. It really does make a tasty ice cream treat, although the serving sizes are pretty small. You wouldn't want to attempt to feed a large group of hungry children with it. My granddaughter loves it.

Ok. The ice cream tastes exactly like Dairy Queen ice cream. This is basically an ice cream maker in cute packaging. It makes a small amount for sure, but is just right for my 1and 3 year old to split. The refills are expensive, but I found them on clearance for a buck a pack (which makes 3 servings) so it wasn't bad. If you didn't want to pay for refills you could easily follow an online recipe and keep using the ice cream maker. My kids love it!

We bought this for the kids for Christmas, tonight was the first night we tried it. We have a ice machine that does crushed ice so that wasn't a big deal but I can see where that could be a problem for some people. We followed the directions exactly for the water, ice and salt mix. We then put in the ice cream mix and the kids started winding. The directions say it takes 10 mins. After about 5 mins the kids were asking is it done yet. At the 10 min mark I checked it and it was still not cold enough. We cranked for about another 5 mins (15 mins total) before it was cold enough to resemble a blizzard. Another problem is the portion size, we have 3 kids. This thing only makes 2 servings at a time so we had to go through the entire process again. I don't believe this will be something the kids will be wanting to do often. I should have bought a regular ice cream maker. Oh well lesson learned.

My son begged for this toy after seeing numerous commercials, but usually I am hesitant to order products like this which require "adult supervision." I should not have given in, and should have followed my gut instinct. The box claims it is "easy and fun" but for who? I had to do every step myself, all the kids got to do was eat the gross and salty tasting ice cream. The box claims "just add ice salt and water" but this is baloney. The directions inside the box say that the first step is to crush or shave the ice, which took about a half hour to do in a blender, and the ice got all over the the kitchen. Definitely not fun and not easy, and my 7 and 10 year olds could definitely not chop ice in the blender, which required opening the top of the blender and pushing the ice blocks down repeatedly. The rest of the steps I will admit where easy, and the device is stable, not a piece of junk. But when the ice cream was finished, after all that work, there was not enough ice cream to fill even 2 tiny cups, so my kids fought over who got more...until they tasted it...said it was disgusting and told me to send it back to wherever it came from. I highly DO NOT recommend.

I bought this for my 8-year old daughter at Christmas, as a part of her list. She liked it but got tired of turning the crank after a while. It could have been a little easier to turn. I finished it for her and we enjoyed the treats. On the other hand, we only used it once and the novelty was gone.