Just finally got my kit today!
Actually, two kits. My local hobby store offers "train dollars" for every purchase over $40 at a percentage of what was spent, and you can spend them on anything in the store. I had $23 train dollars saved, and Johnny's Toys sells the kit for $39.95. Times two, plus sales tax, minus the train dollars, and it came out to $62 and change.
Considering the suggested price is $59.95, I'm not unhappy.
And yes, we've all read the reviews, but you just won't truly understand until you're holding the parts in your hands: this thing is HUGE!! I'm talking fracking humongous!
Just holding a sidepiece of the secondary hull next to the AMT 18" model is plain scary. Yikes.
If anyone is curious, I'll try to put up some photos of the kit parts (in alt.binaries.models.scale) next to my AMT 1/650 and Starcraft
1/1400 Enterprise for effect. I laid all the parts out and those -with the box beside it- covered the bottom half of a queen-size bed...Now, where the frack do I put it... Heh.