Petra looks cool!
But the Parthenon should be tan, no?

Thought the Petra looked familiar

Can someone confirm this VIP reward was available at midnight European time? It sold out?

@gradatim said:
"Can someone confirm this VIP reward was available at midnight European time? It sold out?"
It wasn’t available at midnight in the Netherlands. Still waiting here…

I phoned the customer service... I was told EMEA needs to wait until tomorrow (2nd Feb)...

Ok sets. Not sure I’d use up my points for them though

40585 was a welcome surprise. Looks nice, and seems good value. Just cashed in some points on the UK store for one.

UK, they are showing in rewards now as at 8:20

Same in the Netherlands

Got my codes. Just waiting for a good GWP or double points offer to place an order or two providing the sets on my wishlist aren't out of stock.

Just reserved both. Day-shift must have arrived at 08:00!
Plenty of good stuff to order, but will wait until the 10th when hopefully the pizza truck will show up (and be as good as the Vintage Taxi last year).

Ah nuts, I blew all my VIP points back at the start of the year getting the Blacktron Cruiser. Oh well. Maybe I'll try and bricklink that tiny parthenon.

I much prefer these as GWPs rather than rewards, partly as you can then easily obtain more than one.

I was excited about the wonders set when I saw the rumours, but I think I must have seen a fan created picture, as this looks more rounded than I remember. Rather glad I haven't enough VIP points for it yet, as I'm no longer sure about getting it, too many round pieces. Maybe this is a hint that bigger sets of Petra and Pantheon are coming.

@Ridgeheart said:
""You are named after the DOG?!"
"I have a lot of fond memories of that dog!""

“Say no more, say no more! Wink, wink, nudge nudge!”

Wait…wrong movie…

Even Lego confirm the birthday diorama is overpriced. The RRP for the set on their own website lists it as £10.99, but 2100 points equates to £13.13. The World of Wonders, on the other hand, is listed as £17.99 with the 2700 points worth £16.88, so not too unreasonable.

I recently spent 200 € for obtaining the GWP Blacktron Spaceship and I did not use my previous VIP points.

Now I see I did the right option: the Parthenon is a MUST!! Great building!! It was time to be recognized...the origin of the European culture!!

@alfred_the_buttler:
Nope. Of the traditional Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the only one that remains would be utterly boring at that scale. There’s only so much you can do with a giant pyramid, which is why 21058 has such a complex interior design. Of the other six, one (the Hanging Gardens of Babylon) may not have even existed, and we have no idea what it looked like if it did. Besides, it’s not like there were only seven sites worth viewing back then. This format will allow them to turn it into a series, if they want.

I hope World Of Wonders remains available until the order I just placed gives me enough points to redeem for its code. Probably it won't, given my terrible record getting sets as VIP rewards instead of as GWPs or pay-real-money. That's what I get for cashing in almost all my points for a rebate. I should have known better!

Wonders converted :-)

it looks like the small section of the great wall in his set could connect to the end of the great wall of 21041 very easily

@LegoBoi69 said:
"Ive managed to get three wonders having enough points and some items to order from three of my vip accounts... So got 3x wonders and a load of lego flowers on their way. :)"

So basically you are bragging to be preventing other people from getting the wonders set? Nice.

@Altair1970 said:
" @LegoBoi69 said:
"Ive managed to get three wonders having enough points and some items to order from three of my vip accounts... So got 3x wonders and a load of lego flowers on their way. :)"

So basically you are bragging to be preventing other people from getting the wonders set? Nice."

That's what it looks like. These practises are used by scalpers, and there are plenty in the UK unfortunately.

@Ridgeheart:
I wonder, three times, how such a game managed to be successful.

@PurpleDave said:
" @alfred_the_buttler:
Nope. Of the traditional Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the only one that remains would be utterly boring at that scale. There’s only so much you can do with a giant pyramid, which is why 21058 has such a complex interior design. Of the other six, one (the Hanging Gardens of Babylon) may not have even existed, and we have no idea what it looked like if it did. Besides, it’s not like there were only seven sites worth viewing back then. This format will allow them to turn it into a series, if they want."

When bored google BBC - Secrets Of The Ancients - 5 Of 5 - Hanging Gardens Of Babylon.
It doesn't answer the question if the gardens existed but did see if it was possible.

Just a question: I don’t have anything in my wanted list, but still want to enjoy this Lego set. Does it make sense to order something for free shipping and then just return it to the shop, leaving the Wonders delivered for free?

@Krtek:
If you sweet-talk your local LEGO Store employees, they could hook you up with a voucher for free shipping, meaning all you'd need to do is order the cheapest item on the site to trigger a package. The other option is to wait it out. You've got 60 days to use the code once you claim it. How likely is it you'll make it through the next two months without seeing a single set that you want to buy?

As for the buy-and-return trick, I know you can pull that off on sets costing $100+, but I also know that you'll only get store credit if you go this route. I'm not sure if they'll let you walk it into a store if it costs less than $100 (or, in your case, Euros).

@picopirate said:
" @Krtek said:
"Just a question: I don’t have anything in my wanted list, but still want to enjoy this Lego set. Does it make sense to order something for free shipping and then just return it to the shop, leaving the Wonders delivered for free?"

Normally I dislike that involve disingenuous purchases for personal gain. However, Lego has such dumb rules around these sorts of sets that I have no issue with it. Once Lego sees that they are making people take such actions to work around the rules, they might just eliminate the rules. Here are some things I think Lego could improve.
- Restore the points from any unused code once it expires.
- Allow customers to apply multiple codes. Many of us spent hundreds if not thousands dollars/euros/etc. to earn the points for the codes and now we have to make multiple purchases just to redeem them? Way to stick it to their best customers. This would actually save them money in the long term because one big shipment is certainly less expensive (and less impact on the environment) than multiple small shipments."

- Discount codes shouldn't have an expiry date.
- Product redemption should be allowed to be stacked into 1 order (in Australia it is $150 minimum for free postage so can get expensive for multiple items,eg: the Coin collection, 6 orders with the display case $900 minimum spent)
- Product codes should be allowed to be added to a cart on their own so you can decide to just pay postage and get the item sent if you so choose in order to avoid people trying to abuse the system with fake orders for return.

@Yergs
-warning mail before your VIP points expire.

@PurpleDave if you trade your point this set will remain in stock for 60 day till you use your code? So it won't sell out?

@watcher21:
Points should almost never expire under the current system. Under VIP Red, and the early days of VIP Blue, points expired one year after you earned them, with oldest points being spent first. Under one of the changes made after rollout of VIP Blue, points only expire after a year with no activity. So, as long as you buy a keychain every 364 days, your points will reset to a year before expiration.

As for the codes, sort of. They don’t say intentionally oversell physical reward codes, so as many codes as they hand out have stock assigned to them. However, shipment is still on a first-come-first served basis. I had a theory that there was a possibility, however slim, that you could get shut out at the end, and one Brickset member recently confirmed that had happened to them. If they receive 100,000 widgets, and award 100,000 codes, everything matches up. But what if one box of widgets has nine instead of ten? What if they lose a box of widgets? What if someone drops a widget and it gets run over by a 4-ton forklift? In each of these cases, widgets on hand no longer match up with codes awarded, and last to be redeemed seems to take the hit. If that happens, you should be able to get customer service to refund your points, at least, since it’s not your fault they can’t fulfill your order. If you sit on the code long enough that it expires, that’s on you, and you’ll need to rely on the benevolence of whoever you might get on the phone if you want to ask for your points back.

@PurpleDave ty for explaining, that gives a little time to find some sets t0 get shipping threshold.
About the VIP, my first points just expired after a year, my complaint was them never sending a warning mail a few weeks before expiration.

Did manage to place an order for just enough points to get up to the limit to get Wonders of the World, and (amazing to me, at least!) the set was still available once I had the points to buy it. Fortunately the limit for free shipping in the US is still quite reasonable, so I bought sets I had always planned to buy, just sooner than I had expected.

But if next week (or even next month) they put up another of the classic themed rides as a VIP-only set, I shall be very upset. Yes, it's a first-world problem, but still....

@watcher21:
Yeah, I get it. Worries about points vaporizing is why, under VIP Red, I used to burn them off as soon as I qualified for $5 back, unless it was on a points multiplier. Now that any activities on your account resets the countdown, I don’t worry about it anymore. That and the fact that I’ve shifted attention from money back to physical items is how I just ended up with the quaint total of 52025 points, which is over half of my recorded lifetime tally. There are enough GWP events through the year that my points balance won’t expire unless I’m dead or in a coma for over a year.

@sklamb:
I keep asking them anytime I have a reason to call customer service, and they keep not knowing any info about the other two. Or usually that the dragon and pirate rides even exist. The last person I talked to did mention one SMH bit of info, which is that the e-mail blast they send out to let you know about all the upcoming new product we’ve been talking about when it was leaked, when it was revealed, and when it was reviewed, actually mention stuff like the Dragon Ride and Pirate Ride waaaaaaay down at the bottom. You actually have to pretend you’re going to see actual news if you read those to find out that sometimes you actually will.

@picopirate:
Free shipping, and GWP triggers, are based on the pre-tax, pre-rebate value of your cart. If a $20 set is on sale half-off, only the $10 you’re going to spend counts. If you use rebate vouchers to pay, that doesn’t lower the value of your cart and trigger shipping charges. And they aren’t likely to factor GWP into the free shipping threshold for the same reason they don’t factor it in against earning GWPs. It’s free stuff.

It costs them money to ship product. It costs them money to manufacture and give out GWPs. The thresholds set for these things are based on you spending enough that they can give something back without killing their profit margin. There’s no, “We’re giving you so much free stuff you deserve even more free stuff.”

On a non VIP system question, I wonder why this set decided to use stickers for the Great Wall and Taj Mahal builds when the same piece is available printed in the full size sets?
Don't see how it would be any more cost effective to do stickers than it would've to get the printed parts into the bags.

@Yergs:
They’re already printing the sticker sheet, which doesn’t take any more time to print four stickers vs two. Printed tiles take time on machines that are typically running at max capacity, so the cost of printing extra tiles for two of these vs the cost of making the sticker sheets larger to accommodate two more stickers is probably not worth it. Plus, then you’d have people calling in to complain that two of the tiles were printed, while the other two were stickers.

@Yooha said:
"Petra looks cool!
But the Parthenon should be tan, no?"

Parthenon is made of white marble, so white is the colour.

@PurpleDave said:
" @watcher21:
Points should almost never expire under the current system. Under VIP Red, and the early days of VIP Blue, points expired one year after you earned them, with oldest points being spent first. Under one of the changes made after rollout of VIP Blue, points only expire after a year with no activity. So, as long as you buy a keychain every 364 days, your points will reset to a year before expiration.

Can confirm they don't expire after a year. I had a Lego store employee tell me this exact thing. As long as there is some activity (buying, redeeming) you should be OK. Just once you redeem they DO expire (not sure on the specifics there) so don't do that! I've been hoarding points for a few year at this point. :)"

@MandaPanda742:
When you spend points to get a code, you have 60 days to redeem the code or it expires. Your remaining point balance is not affected by this.

@PurpleDave said:
" @MandaPanda742:
When you spend points to get a code, you have 60 days to redeem the code or it expires. Your remaining point balance is not affected by this."

Ah, good to know. ty.

@watcher21 said:
"
@PurpleDave if you trade your point this set will remain in stock for 60 day till you use your code? So it won't sell out?
"

Not necessarily. "Winter Wonderland" got sold out and I got squat. Waste of points - if at least they returned points, I don't feel it's my fault they ran out of stock on something. Of course, support person directed me to a loophole of "terms apply" nonsense, always readily available.

Mind you, I'm not lucky with "gift with purchase" either, didn't get Blacktron as I only managed to buy something 2 days before it was supposed to end and it wasn't in stock anymore either. Why that stock situation wasn't known at the time of purchase, I don't know - with technologies these days I'd say there's no excuse to not know stock of anything at any given second. I'd just wait a few more days and get "some other random" GWP, if I knew.

But to add, saying "while stocks last" is ok from legal standpoint but it won't make an unlucky customer happy to find that after he finally saved up he's leaving empty handed with just a sorry. Those like me who get unlucky with GWP, it'd be much more pro-customer from Lego if we were given "consolation prize" in a way of say few VIP points (ergo, smallish discount) instead or even better, a voucher for future GWP.

Frankly, I have no clue whatsoever why anyone is praising Lego customer support. But perhaps it's just my luck and others were more successful in similar situations.

@nejakdivne:
Hey, we didn’t even get a chance to obtain 40514 in North America. As for technology vs reality, a human has to be involved at several points along the way, plus humans wrote the code the inventory system operates on. Someone could steal them (especially small sets like polybags), they could get damaged, they could get lost, they could be miscounted when inventory checks are performed, they may get overpicked, or there could be a glitch in the system that screws up the inventory from the computer side.