We have 2 kids and they have gotten good use out of it this summer. One of the short neighbor kids was grabbing and hanging from the top fiberglass poles and caused 2 of the vertical supports to bend significantly - I was able to restore them to about 90% of original the first time. The second time the neighbor kid hung from the top support he cracked the T connector and bent two of the vertical supports; I was not able to bend them back - the cheap metal cracked. To fix the broken poles I cut off the bent metal part that fit inside the other pole, cut a 7/8" wood dowel into 3" sections and screwed each of those into each of the vertical supports. I then drilled a 3/8" hole in the middle of each dowel and put another 3/8" dowel into the holes and connected the two poles with that. The goal is for the 3/8" dowel to break before the metal bends when neighbor kids decide to jump and hang from the support. The dowels are easy and cheap to replace and seem to provide enough strength to keep it together.
One major design flaw
We have 2 kids and they have gotten good use out of it this summer. One of the short neighbor kids was grabbing and hanging from the top fiberglass poles and caused 2 of the vertical supports to bend significantly - I was able to restore them to about 90% of original the first time. The second time the neighbor kid hung from the top support he cracked the T connector and bent two of the vertical supports; I was not able to bend them back - the cheap metal cracked. To fix the broken poles I cut off the bent metal part that fit inside the other pole, cut a 7/8" wood dowel into 3" sections and screwed each of those into each of the vertical supports. I then drilled a 3/8" hole in the middle of each dowel and put another 3/8" dowel into the holes and connected the two poles with that. The goal is for the 3/8" dowel to break before the metal bends when neighbor kids decide to jump and hang from the support. The dowels are easy and cheap to replace and seem to provide enough strength to keep it together.