Disney Princess Fashion Boutique

Copyright: KBkids.com

Many 5-12 year old girls just can't get enough of the classic Disney Princesses. Even with its technical problems, many girls will love this program. Just be aware that there are a few things testers were not too happy with.

Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White host Princess Boutique. From the main bedroom your daughter will make a 3D princess that looks just like her. She can even import her own face from your scanner with a little help. Once her special princess is selected, she can choose to enter one of the three princess worlds.

In each world you she will find three activity areas:

Enchanted World: Visit Snow White's Forest, Sleeping Beauty's Lake or Cinderella's Garden. These are very small worlds (only two screens worth) and contain several hidden items. When your daughter finds them, she will gain added story stickers and added dress design items. Visit the worlds several times to find additional items.

Star of the Story: Select backgrounds, write text, add sound, and design your own princess story. Although the idea here is really nice, there are some problems. Even with the added items found in the Enchanted World, there were not enough stickers to be truly creative. The drawing feature was particularly clumsy! You are transported from your background picture to a blank piece of paper. Here you can draw and paint (to a limited degree) and then send the drawing back to your background. It just superimposes your drawing on top of the background as a new layer. There is no way to really control or predict the outcome. Smaller children may find the controls in this whole area a bit confusing. Your stories can be e-mailed to friends.

Princess Dressing Room: Dress your personal princess in a myriad of gowns. Select each part of the gown, as well as the color, texture and pattern. These can be printed or e-mailed to friends.

At minimum system requirements load times are absolutely interminable on this one. Save Princess Boutique for computer above the 300 MHz range in testers opinion. Princess fans will enjoy the "princess theme," but this program really does lack finishing touches that could have made it much better.

Bottom Line: A good choice for diehard Princess fans, but be aware of several drawbacks to this program.

Ratings: (based on KBkids.com's 4 star rating system)

Overall: 2 1/2

BrainGain: 1 1/2

FunFactor: 2 1/2

EasePlease: 2 1/2

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