The island was much easier to assemble than what other reviewers had led me to believe.  The chairs were much trickier to assemble (go figure).  I was very pleased with how well the parts fit together.  The item came in 5 boxes.  Each box was lined on each side with Styrofoam so the parts were very well protected.  One minor issue, the item took a day longer to ship than promised which led my wife to miss a day at the beach : (