My husband and I got this three years ago or so and have used it only once because it was so much more labor intensive than we imagined. You really have to keep it moving, and it gets quite heavy.
And, after all the work, there was so little ice cream, it seemed. We did have to stop several times during the process and scrape out the ice cream from the sides so that the rest of the ingredients could get to the sides and freeze faster---before our arms wore out from shaking it. I'm a big Bean fan, but I do not recommend this.
I live in England now - my 12 year old neice visited last summer and we tried this ice cream ball out at a seaside campsite in devon. We jusr follwed the simple instructions and kicked the ball up to the communal dishwashing area, washed up, then kicked it back down. The ice cream was absolutely heavenly, and all three of us ate til we were nearly ill and then had to take ice cream to our neighbours tent because it was too good to waste and there was a LOT of it! Our neighbouring tent gave us sausages the following night - a great way to make friends AND THE BEST ICE CREAM YOU WILL EVER EAT!
The ice cream ball does get heavy and the ice cream is hard to scrape off the sides of the container once it gets too cold. That said, it is a fun activity every so often. It is especially nice to be able to be creative with the flavors created.
pros: -the ice cream was delicious! -it was fun to play games,roll,shake and pass around the ball -the time goes by fast -you can do it anywhere -theres so many recipes that they give you that you can make! -its worth the time and hard work
cons: -takes longer than they tell you(they say fifteen min. but you have to do that twice so thats 30 plus the time in between) -it gets really messy the first time you mix up the liquid part and icecream on the sides(because its really hard to get the icecream off the sides so the liquid slashed up sometimes) -they dont tell you that you need rock salt(which is really hard to find)-but i just used sea salt) -it can get a little sticky
