Ninjago

NINJAGO City Docks

The waterfront extension that turns Ninjago City into a proper sprawling metropolis.

4.5/5

Set 70657 · 2018

Pieces3,555

Minifigs13

Year2018

Set number70657

Check price on Amazon

Affiliate link. We may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

The verdict

If you already own (or plan to own) Ninjago City, this one is close to essential, because the two clip together perfectly into one huge cityscape.

Even on its own it's a gorgeous, detail-stuffed build with 13 minifigs and more little scenes than you can count. It's not cheap and it's a big time commitment, but almost nobody who builds it walks away disappointed. Grab it if you love display sets with personality.

Best for: Fans who already own Ninjago City 70620 and want the matching other half

The full review

Ninjago City Docks is the waterfront expansion nobody quite expected but everybody wanted. When the original Ninjago City (70620) launched in 2017, sharp-eyed builders spotted unused Technic pin holes down one side and figured a companion set had to be coming. This LEGO® set is that companion, and it delivers on the promise completely. You get a multi-level slice of the old world: a harbor with brick-built water and a boathouse, a grocery store, a sculptor's workshop, an arcade, Grand Sensei Dareth's Mojo Dojo, and Mystake's Tea Shop stacked up into one gorgeous, lived-in tower.

The magic of this set is how it plays with the one you probably already have. Line the two up and every walkway from the Docks meets a walkway on 70620, the floor levels match, and the combined build stretches over 60cm wide into a genuinely jaw-dropping city. The Japanese-inspired architecture, the weathered mismatched rooflines, the tiny room-by-room details, all of it earns the near-universal praise it gets. Brickset reviewers highly recommend it even to people who don't care about Ninjago at all, purely as an architecture and display piece.

Now the honest part. At $229.99 original RRP this was never a casual pickup, and since it retired around the end of 2019 the aftermarket has gone wild, with sealed copies tracked well north of $700. Even used, you're paying a premium. It's also a long build, so if you want quick gratification this isn't it. And a few ninja fans grumble that the minifig roster leans into background and movie characters (the Run brothers, Chad, Betsy) rather than loading up on the core team. Kai, Nya and Jay sit this one out.

So who should grab it? If you own Ninjago City, or want the full connected metropolis, this is close to a must-buy and worth hunting down. If you love detailed display sets with genuine personality and a hundred little Easter eggs, you'll adore it standalone too. The people who should skip it are budget builders and anyone after a fast, simple project. For everyone else, this is one of the most charming big builds LEGO has ever put out, and the community rating of around 4.5 out of 5 backs that up.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

Building the Docks is a joy precisely because it never repeats itself. It's split into modular chunks: the harbor and boathouse, the lower old-world level with the grocery and sculptor's workshop, the upper level, and the street. What makes it sing is the roofwork, because no two buildings use the same technique. You'll pull elements out of bins you'd never normally call 'roof pieces' and angle them in clever ways, so the pacing stays fresh section to section. Play features get worked in as you go too: a functioning dock crane, a tipping food display, a rotating rotisserie, a vending machine, removable barrels stuffed with little extras, and even a hidden cave and secret compartments.

For parts hunters, the value is genuinely strong. At 3555 pieces for its $229.99 launch price you're around 6.5 cents a part, excellent for a licensed set this dense. It's loaded with printed goodness, from shop signage and billboards to two working arcade cabinets running LEGO Ninjago: Shadow of Ronin and the old Junkbot web game. The mismatched palette means loads of useful earthy tans, sand greens and browns in quantity, plus the brick-built water and detailed food-stall bits that MOC builders love to raid. It's the kind of box that quietly upgrades your parts drawer while you build.

Fun facts

01The unused Technic pin holes on 2017's Ninjago City (70620) tipped off fans that a connecting set was coming, and the Docks slots right into them so the two form one 60cm-plus cityscape.
02This set gave Mystake her very first physical minifigure, even though she'd been part of the Ninjago universe since 2012.
03One of the minifigs is named Chan Kong-Sang, which is the real birth name of martial-arts legend Jackie Chan, a nod to the actor who voiced Master Wu in the movie.
04It's packed with Easter eggs, including an arcade poster referencing Bionicle's Mask of Ultimate Power and billboards nodding to old themes like Adventurers and Ultra Agents.