Margaritaville Bali Frozen Concoction Maker DM3500 Review |KitchenGearPro

Bali Frozen Con­coc­tion Mak­er is the advanced ver­sion of the Mar­gar­i­taville machine for prepar­ing restau­rant-qual­i­ty frozen drinks. The Bali comes with 4 pre-set pro­gram drinks, the capac­i­ty to make up to 6–7 drinks in one cycle, and a self-dis­pens­ing tool for serv­ing drinks straight into your glass.

Read our review to find out all the pros and cons of this fan­cy gad­get, which can help you decide if this machine is worth buy­ing for you.

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Functionality

The Bali Frozen Con­coc­tion Mak­er comes with 4 pre-set pro­grams to make Mar­gar­i­tas, Daiquiris, and Smooth­ies. How­ev­er, the capa­bil­i­ties of the machine are more than just 4 drinks; apart from the pre­set pro­gram cycles, it has man­u­al ice shav­ing and blend­ing mode, which allow sub­stan­tial­ly expand the vari­ety of drinks you can pre­pare with this machine.

• Makes per­fect Mar­gar­i­tas, Coladas, Daiquiris, and frozen Smooth­ies with pre-set pro­grams that are designed to deliv­er per­fect results for every drink;
• Daiquiris pre-set is the most func­tion­al one; it allows to add of frozen fruit into the blend­ing jar, the Smooth­ies pro­gram allows to add of fresh fruits into the blend­ing jug, and the Cola­da and Mar­gari­ta pre-set use only liq­uid ingre­di­ents in the blend­ing process; the man­u­al Shave and Blend the only func­tion allows the user to achieve thin­ner or thick­er con­sis­ten­cy of any drink; so the options are end­less you have to be creative;
• Oth­er types of Alco­holic slush­es or cock­tails, includ­ing Mud­slides, Moji­tos are also eas­i­ly made with the machine; for exam­ple, test­ing the Mar­gari­ta pre-set for Moji­tos and Cola­da pro­gram for Mud­slides could deliv­er excel­lent drinks; you just need to be cre­ative and exper­i­ment with a lit­tle with them;
• Non-alco­holic frozen drinks, includ­ing mock­tails, iced tea or cof­fee drinks, and lemon­ades, to cre­ate a vari­ety of mock­tails you can use pre-set options and Shave and Blend only options fol­low­ing alco­holic cock­tails recipes but just leav­ing the alco­hol part out; the Smooth­ies option is per­fect for mak­ing the iced tea and coffee;
• To make Snow cones, you bet­ter use the man­u­al Shav­ing only func­tion; the machine is per­fect for his pur­pose since it makes very light and fluffy shaved ice which makes your snow cones deli­cious; for snow cones, you have to dis­pense shaved ice with­out the pitch­er in place and use some oth­er con­ve­nient ves­sel such as a bowl; the blend­ing jug is not easy to remove from the base unit and designed to dis­pense the liq­uid drink with self-dis­penser direct­ly into your glass;
• You can even make car­bon­at­ed frozen drinks like Icee and Slurpee with the Bali machine; how­ev­er, you should add a low pro­por­tion of the car­bon­at­ed liq­uid in the final drink since it could make the over­flow the liq­uid from the blend­ing jar.

It will take some tri­al and error while you exper­i­ment with the prop­er pro­por­tions for the per­fect result, but the options are end­less. It can be used for any con­coc­tions you can imag­ine, from clas­sics to a fruity and spicy vari­ety of frozen treats.

The machine design and how it works?

Mar­gar­i­taville Bali Frozen Con­coc­tion Mak­er com­pris­es three key func­tion­al parts:

1. Base Unit with con­trol pan­el and dual-motor sys­tem for the shav­ing and blend­ing functions;
2. Ice Shav­ing part with ice reser­voir and ice shav­ing blade sys­tem, and
3. Blend­ing part with the blend­ing jar and ded­i­cat­ed blade assembly.

The machine oper­a­tion process is also divid­ed into two or rather three stages if we include here the self-dis­pense process:

1. The first stage com­pris­es the ice shav­ing process in the ice reser­voir and send­ing the processed snow prod­uct via a spe­cial chute to the blend­ing jar. The ded­i­cat­ed ice shav­ing blades allow pro­cess­ing the fine qual­i­ty snow with­out the ice chunks to make true restau­rant-qual­i­ty frozen drinks.
2. The sec­ond stage includes pro­cess­ing the drink ingre­di­ents in the blend­ing jar and mixing/combining them with the snow to cre­ate a fin­ished concoction.
3. The final stage includes the self-dis­pens­ing of the final drinks into the glass. When you dis­pense the drink, the blend­ed mix will swirl for remix­ing in the remix chan­nel of the jars, then go direct­ly into your glass. The self-dis­pens­ing process makes this Mar­garetville mod­el is true a self-serve par­ty machine.

It should be men­tioned; that the machine is not equipped with any cool­ing or insu­la­tion sys­tem, so the mix­ture may melt if it stays for long in the hot weath­er. How­ev­er, it is equipped with an ice-melt­ing con­tain­er at the rear of the base unit, where the melt­ing ice emp­ties right from the ice reser­voir. That guar­an­tees the slush­es will not get watery and remain the ide­al tex­ture for longer. Yet, you can always add some more crushed ice into your drink using the man­u­al shave-only mode before dis­pens­ing the new por­tion of the drink.

Base Unit

Although the base unit is made of plas­tic, it has a pre­mi­um look with brushed metal­lic parts and pol­ished stain­less steel trim­ming. The base unit is very big, stur­dy, and remains sta­ble dur­ing the entire drink-mak­ing process. The base hous­es a dual 650 watts motor; one motor dri­ves the ice shav­ing process; anoth­er motor admin­is­ters the drinks blend­ing and mix­ing tasks.

The base unit also includes the con­trol pan­el, ice chute, ice melt­ing reser­voir, and cord chamber.

Con­trol Pan­el. It is locat­ed ver­ti­cal­ly on the right side of the machine and includes two Dial Knobs Start/Stop but­ton, Blend /Shaves Switch, and Pow­er Light:

• Drink Selec­tor Dial Knob selects from 4 dif­fer­ent pre-set pro­grams — Ritas (process liq­uid ingre­di­ents only), Daiquiris (designed for liq­uid ingre­di­ents and frozen fruit), Coladas (also mix­es liq­uid ingre­di­ents only), Smooth­ies (process liq­uid ingre­di­ents and fresh fruits);
• The Drink Lev­el Dial Knob is used to choose pro­cess­ing Half (30 oz.) or Full (60 oz.) con­tain­er of ingredients;
• The Start/stop but­ton is used to start the auto­mat­ic Shave’n Blend cycle; Green but­ton light indi­cates the machine is ready to start, the red light means it is not ready for oper­a­tion, and you have to set up the machine properly;
• Blend/Shave switch is used to man­u­al­ly oper­ate the ice shav­ing only or blend­ing the only process;
• The pow­er light blinks when the unit is plugged in to indi­cate power.

Ice Chute. The ice chute directs processed snow from Ice Reser­voir into the blender jar. The ice chute is an inte­gral part of the base unit and is not remov­able, but it slides to the side to extract and put in the blender con­tain­er; when the chute is in the cen­ter posi­tion, it is ready for operation.

Ice Melt Reser­voir. It is a clever machine fea­ture; the ice melt­ing reser­voir is locat­ed at the rear of the base unit; it cap­tures the water from the melt­ing ice in the ice reser­voir ice and pre­vents going into the blend­ing con­tain­er, so your drinks nev­er get watery and always have a per­fect consistency.

Pow­er Cord. The machine also has a cord stor­age slot that hides the cord tidy at the back of the unit. The machine oper­ates via a 110—120 volts elec­tri­cal sup­ply pow­er cord. How­ev­er, you can oper­ate the Mar­garetville Bali machine via a cig­a­rette lighter adapter for tailgating.

Ice Shaving System

The ice shav­ing sys­tem is a ded­i­cat­ed Mar­gar­i­taville Bali func­tion­al part with its ded­i­cat­ed motor and blade sys­tem. It is designed to shave the ice cubes into fine qual­i­ty snow, mixed with the oth­er ingre­di­ents of frozen drinks.

The ice shav­ing func­tion­al part includes:

• The extra-large Ice Reser­voir that holds about 60 ounces of ice for 6–7 ounces drinks, and the Ice Reser­voir Lid:
• Ice Shav­ing Paddle;
• Ice Deflec­tor Blade Assem­bly con­sists of (1) Ice Hop­per, (2) Ice Deflec­tor, (3) Shav­ing Blade, and (4) Shav­ing Blade Ring.

The shav­ing blades are made from high-qual­i­ty stain­less steel and are very sharp by design.

Blending System

The blend­ing unit is a func­tion­al part of the machine with a ded­i­cat­ed motor that mix­es and dis­pens­es the user’s final frozen drinks. The unit includes the blender Jar with the Lid, the blend­ing Blade with the Seal­ing Ring, the drink Self-Dis­penser, and Auto Remix Blades Assembly.

Con­tain­er. The jar/chamber has a 60 oz. capac­i­ty, which is enough to make up to 6–7 drinks per pitch­er. It is made from a very heavy, dou­ble-walled (to hold a frozen drink for an extend­ed time) and shat­ter­proof 1/4 inch thick plas­tic-type mate­r­i­al. The blend­ing jar has the mea­sur­ing in ounces and ml and does not have the spoon and pour­ing spout.

The blender jar is not designed to hold the hot liq­uids or tol­er­ate sud­den food tem­per­a­ture changes (the jar may crack). 

The blender comes with a plas­tic lid with a large con­ve­nient open­ing cov­ered by the ice chute in assem­bled con­di­tion. If you turn the chute, you can add ingre­di­ents through this open­ing with­out remov­ing the jar from the base. The lid closed with the pair of latches.

Blades. The Mar­gar­i­taville Bali blend­ing con­tain­er is equipped with a remov­able high-qual­i­ty blade assem­bly. The con­tain­er blade assem­bly con­sists of sharp stain­less steel blades and a seal­ing ring con­nect­ing the blade assem­bly with the blend­ing jar. In addi­tion, the blade assem­bly has a plas­tic dri­ve-to-blade con­nec­tion system.

Remixer/Dispenser. The jar has the main ves­sel and the small­er one (remix chan­nel) for remix­ing the drinks before they are dis­pensed to the glass. The remov­able dis­penser lever with a spout is con­nect­ed direct­ly to the remix chan­nel and is respon­si­ble for the drink’s self-dispensing.

The remix chan­nel comes with the remix auger blades, which reblends the drinks each time before it is self-dis­pensed to the user glass.

How­ev­er, it should be men­tioned the self-dis­penser will not dis­charge the drinks when it left about 4–5 oz. of liq­uids in the blend­ing jar, so any drinks left­overs you should remove manually.

Using/Operating

Although the machine looks huge and pro­fes­sion­al, it is very intu­itive to use. To make your first drink, you load up the ice reser­voir with ice cubes, then fill the blend­ing jar with appro­pri­ate ingre­di­ents for your drink; you do not need to extract the jar from the base for this pur­pose, just slide the ice chute to the side, and the open­ing in the lid will allow to do it. If you set up your machine prop­er­ly, the green but­ton will light up to indi­cate the machine is ready to run (oth­er­wise, it will go red to show you to see if you set it up properly).

Now, select the drink type — Ritas, Daiquiris, Coladas, and Smooth­ies- and the desired drink amount — half jar 30 oz. for 2–3 drinks or full jar 60 oz. for up to 6 drinks- with cor­re­spond­ing dial knobs, push the Start/Stop but­ton, and your drinks are ready in about one minute. When you press the start but­ton, it will shave the ice to make fluffy snow, which will go to the blend­ing jug. The machine will auto­mat­i­cal­ly start blend­ing with dif­fer­ent speeds, stop, and kick pulse mode in between depend­ing on the pre-set option to deliv­er you the restau­rant-qual­i­ty drinks. The machine will stop auto­mat­i­cal­ly at the end of the cycle, giv­ing a short beep to let you know it is finished.

Now, if you like, you can adjust the thick­ness of your drinks to your desired con­sis­ten­cy by man­u­al use of the Shave or Blend options. Just push the Shave tog­gle up to add some more snow into the drink, or push the Blend tog­gle down to blend the drink for longer and make it thin­ner. The Shave and Blend man­u­al func­tions will oper­ate while hold­ing the tog­gle and stop once you release it.

To serve the drink, just press the glass against dis­pos­ing of the lever; the drink will remix quick­ly and trav­el direct­ly to your glass.

You can exper­i­ment with pre-set pro­grams and man­u­al Save/Blend-only modes to make your recipes; this machine has end­less options. For exam­ple, to make snow cones, you bet­ter dis­pense the shaved ice into some oth­er ves­sel than your blend­ing jar, as it will not be straight­for­ward to extract it from there. If you make your recipe drinks, the Daiquiris and smooth­ies pre-set are the most ver­sa­tile options because the Daiquiris allow adding frozen fruits while the smooth­ies allow adding fresh fruits in the blend­ing jug. The Ritas and Coladas options are designed only for liq­uid processing.

Assembling/Dissembling and Cleaning

Assembling/Disassembling: It is a huge gad­get with mul­ti­ple parts, but it is not com­pli­cat­ed to dis­as­sem­ble and set up. First, dis­as­sem­ble the func­tion­al shav­ing components:

• To remove the Ice reser­voir, you have to emp­ty it first; you can do it two ways, first, leave it for some time for ice to melt and be drawn to the ice melt­ing tank, or sec­ond, shave it using the man­u­al Shave tog­gle and for­ward it via the ice chute to the blend­ing jar.
• Now remove the ice reser­voir lid first and then the ice reser­voir itself by sim­ply twist­ing them to unlock and then remov­ing them one after another;
• Then remove the shav­ing pad­dle by twist­ing it until it los­es the white knob in the cen­ter of the pad­dle and detach­es it;
• And final­ly, remove the shav­ing blade assem­bly, light­ly press­ing the two ice hop­per release tabs and lift­ing out the entire assembly.

Now dis­as­sem­ble the blend­ing func­tion­al parts:

• Slide the shav­ing chute to the side and extract the jug;
• Flip the jug lid latch­es down on both sides to remove the lid;
• Remove the drink dis­penser by push­ing two ledges upwards on the side of the dis­penser; it will pop out with some tension;
• Remove the blend­ing blade assem­bly, unscrew the col­lar by turn­ing counterclockwise;
• Extract the remix chan­nel auger blades from the remix chan­nel; the blade stays attached to the col­lar; you have to remove it as an entire unit.

Remem­ber that ice shav­ing and blend­ing jar blades are very sharp, and you must han­dle them carefully.

Clean­ing: When you dis­as­sem­ble all parts, you can clean them man­u­al­ly or in the dishwasher.

The pitch­er and remix chan­nel can be washed in a self-clean­ing way before you dis­as­sem­ble the machine. Just fill the jug with approx. 30 oz. of water and a few drops of wash­ing liq­uid, run it for 10–20 sec­onds, emp­ty the water through the drink dis­penser, fill it with three half pitch­ers of clean water and run it again.

Alter­na­tive­ly, you can wash it on the top rack of the dish­wash­er; all remov­able parts of the machine are dish­wash­er safe.

Special Features

Col­ors: This mod­el is avail­able only in the brushed metal­lic base, pol­ished stain­less steel, and white trimmings.

Cer­ti­fied Refur­bished: No Cer­ti­fied Recon­di­tioned ver­sions are sold for this machine.

Use in coun­tries out­side of the USA/Canada: It is designed only for use with a 110–120 volt­age sys­tem; no 220–240 V ver­sions are avail­able for this machine. Although you can oper­ate it via the volt­age trans­former man­u­fac­tur­er reminds us that it may com­pro­mise the machine’s functionality.

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Set Includes

• The base unit includes the con­trol pan­el, on/off switch, ice chute, and cord stor­age door;
• Ice Reser­voir and Ice Reser­voir Lid;
• Shav­ing Paddle;
• Ice Deflec­tor Blade Assem­bly (includes ice Hop­per, ice deflec­tor, ice shav­ing blade assem­bly ring, and blade);
• Blend­ing jar with mix chan­nel and jar lid;
• Blend­ing Blade with Seal­ing Ring;
• Drink Dis­penser With Spout and Lever;
• Auger Drink Blade and Auger Blade Seal­ing Ring;
• Melt Reser­voir.

Warranty and Customer Service

The Mar­gar­i­taville Bali has a 1‑year lim­it­ed non-trans­fer­able war­ran­ty. The cus­tomer ser­vice is well-man­nered and help­ful and will replace or repair the unit or parts free of charge with­in one year of pur­chase. How­ev­er, the machine is of good qual­i­ty in gen­er­al and eas­i­ly lasts over 3–4 years.

After the war­ran­ty peri­od, you will pay the full price for the machine ser­vice and any repairs. The good news is that the replace­ment parts are not expen­sive com­pared to the machine’s orig­i­nal price; for exam­ple, the jar is priced at $50, while blade assem­bly does not exceed $15. If you need to con­tact Cus­tomer Ser­vice for repair or replace­ment parts that are not avail­able via the usu­al retail­ers, you should con­tact Mar­gar­i­taville Cus­tomer Ser­vice direct­ly at https://www.margaritavillecargo.com/contact-us#need-help-call-us-block.

Noise

The machine is very loud; no won­der it process­es the ice which makes a lot of noise. Although it emits well over 100 deci­bels when shav­ing ice, the blend­ing tasks are much qui­eter (about 80db). But the ice shav­ing process is not long and lasts under 1 minute.

Optional Accessories and Attachments

There are extra acces­sories avail­able for this model:

• The Mar­garetville trav­el bag.
• All replace­ment part is avail­able also through the online retail­er or man­u­fac­tur­er web­site.
• The Mar­gar­i­taville Frozen Drink Recipes Mix­er Bot­tle.

Dimensions

Mar­gar­i­taville Bali, Frozen Con­coc­tion Mak­er, is a very big gad­get; it is 12.7” x 18.7” x 22” when ful­ly assem­bled. This machine is not for every­day use to sit on your counter; thus, you have to find ample space for stor­ing this machine because its com­po­nents are not neat­ly nestled.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• The Mar­gar­i­taville Bali Frozen Con­coc­tion Mak­er is the best restau­rant-qual­i­ty frozen con­coc­tion mak­er for home use on the market;
• Remix­er and dis­penser allow to dis­pense drink straight into the glass;
• It makes drinks for up to 6–7 peo­ple in one cycle but has an option to make drinks for 3 peo­ple also;
• It comes with 4 pre-set pro­grams, but its capa­bil­i­ty is much wider; it will make almost any frozen drinks and desert-like Slurpee, ice, and snow cones ;
• It makes per­fect frozen drinks quick­ly, which is very impor­tant if you host a party;
• The machine will not start unless it is assem­bled prop­er­ly, which pre­vents dam­age to this expen­sive gadget;
• The gad­get is durable and will eas­i­ly last for over 4 years.

Cons:

• It is huge, and not easy to find the stor­age space in an aver­age kitchen cup­board or cabinet;
• Not very straight­for­ward to put it togeth­er or take it apart for clean­ing, and the user man­u­al is not a great help;
• The drink does not dis­pense the left­overs in the jar (approx. half of the glass), and you have to emp­ty it manually;
• Melt­ing eas­i­ly, do not have freez­ing equipment.
• Made in Chi­na and come with only a 1‑year warranty.

Consumer Reviews

The machine is designed to make restau­rant-qual­i­ty frozen drinks and be used for host­ing par­ties for most house­holds. But some peo­ple love it so much that they leave it on the counter and use it for all pos­si­ble pur­pos­es, not only mak­ing alco­holic treats but pro­cess­ing smooth­ies, shakes, and frozen desserts for kids and others.

Price

The Mar­gar­i­taville Bali Frozen Con­coc­tion Mak­er is a pre­mi­um machine, and it is sold at a pre­mi­um price. How­ev­er, it may be avail­able at the spe­cial offer, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the hol­i­day period.

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Summary

Bali Frozen Con­coc­tion Mak­er sim­pli­fies the process of mak­ing Mar­gari­ta, Pina Coladas, Daiquiris, and oth­er frozen drinks real­ly to the auto­mat­ed lev­el and does all the work for you.  The machine shows impres­sive func­tion­al­i­ty with a per­fect result for every drink. It is a true pro­fes­sion­al restau­rant-qual­i­ty frozen drink machine for home use and an atten­tion grab­ber at par­ties that can make plen­ty of glass­es for your guests (up to 7 in one cycle). In addi­tion, it will reblend the drinks mix each time you fill up a glass, so it stays cold and frozen while in the pitch­er, and you can always add more ice or ingre­di­ents when needed.

Is the Mar­gar­i­taville Bali Mak­er worth buy­ing for the aver­age house­hold if you are not host­ing par­ties too often? Why not? It could be used for non-alco­holic drinks for the whole fam­i­ly or please two peo­ple look­ing to have a good time with alco­holic treats. Just remem­ber, it is designed to make at least 2–3 drinks at one cycle; if you go for 12- drinks often, you bet­ter con­sid­er the basic Bahama Mar­gar­i­taville model.