I ordered the Phantasmagoric Theater deck on January 1 and received it on the 4th. (Gotta love Amazon...even with free shipping!)
I’ve done a few readings with it and it has really been pretty straightforward and easy to read so far. I was surprised because it’s so quirky that I thought I might have a hard time with it.
I’ve heard that this deck
needs the LWB to understand it, as it doesn't strictly follow RWS. Supposedly it is considered a tarot which one has to learn all on its own. I haven't yet read through the entire LWB, but I think I’ll use it more intuitively. I’ve done a few readings intuitively and they have been spot on… but then when looking in the LWB afterwards, the author’s meanings didn’t make as much sense as my own. It is an interesting read, though, as the author explains his unique symbology and names and traits of the characters on the cards.
I noticed that almost every time I have dealt with this deck thus far, I have always come up with the cards reversed. I don’t read with reversals, and this was getting annoying. This has never happened to me with a deck before, but for some reason I can never keep track of the right side up. So I did a reading to ask if I’m supposed to use reversals with this deck, and it answered in the affirmative. So it turns out this deck
will be one which I will have to become accustomed to reading in a different manner ...just not in the way I had expected. (I don't like reading reversals because it annoys me greatly to see the cards upside down. I just assume every card has a positive and negative side to it, and trust the reading will reveal which meaning is accurate.)
These cards are enormous, and very hard to shuffle. I like to poker shuffle and bridge my cards, which is pretty much impossible with these. So I have to shuffle using other methods. (Yet another question I asked this deck about, and it answered so clearly!)
After receiving the sign that I had to use reversals with this deck, I spread them all out on the bed, mixing them around. I did this for awhile, and closed my eyes. I let my hand glide all over the cards, with the intention of pulling one for my son.

I asked (in my head) what he needed to know “right now”. I pulled
The Sun, reversed. I immediately thought,
He needs to beware of negativity creeping up on him. The moment that I laid my eyes on this card and that message came to me, I heard him on the other side of the room beginning to sing. He started to sing a song, being silly by replacing some of the positive words with negative words. ("Everyone loves to..." became "Everyone
hates to..." and "It's fun..." was revised into "It's
stupid...", etc.) He was laughing, thinking his revised version of the song was hilarious. (I remember doing this ALL the time as a kid, my friends and I laughing hysterically, thinking we were just so clever and hilarious. But my son is usually very sweet and Page-of-Cups-y, so this was out of character for him, which was probably why he found it so funny.) I told him about the card I just pulled for him, and he laughed at the accuracy.

I then closed my eyes again and swirled the cards around some more. I asked what my daughter needed to know. I pulled the
Justice card. Just moments before I pulled for her, she asked me if she could have something more to eat. I suggested that she go drink two glasses of water first. She asked how many glasses my son had to drink before he had more to eat. (He only had one.) So after pulling the card, I asked her if she was concerned about the amount of water being fair. She said yes.

I closed my eyes one last time, and pulled a card for my other daughter, who was sitting with her plate, waiting. She didn’t want to finish her food, and had asked her brother to eat it for her so she could eat something else. She was sitting there silently, waiting and waiting. I pulled the
Hanged Man*. I asked her if she was bored, sitting there waiting. Her eyes were on the T.V. so she barely heard my question. So there she was, waiting, but resigned to it, not fighting it... just like the Hanged Man.
Funny that they were all Major Arcana. Isn’t that just like the passionate nature of children...to believe whatever drama is going on in their lives, however big or small, is All Important.
*BTW, I almost didn’t buy this deck because of the S&M mask on the Hanged Man. But I couldn’t drag myself away from the colors and quirkiness of this deck. Turns out the scans I had seen online were way darker, and the card doesn't look as scary to me in person as it did from the scans I had seen. Still not my favorite card in the deck though.
Edited to add: I let my son read this blog post, because he was featured in it. He said, "Oh God, this is going to be so embarrassing." Then when he read it, his eyes starting filling with tears and he asked me why I had written that. I didn't understand, as it was exactly what had happened. He said, "Yeah, but I don't want everyone thinking I'm a rude boy. I was just being silly singing that song."
So I wrote the above paragraph with him on my lap (written to clear things up for the readers of my blog). I then asked him if he had anything to add. Anything more he wanted people to know. I told him he could say anything.
Him: I'm not really a mean boy. (long pause)
Me: Anything else?
Him: My favorite bug is a cockroach.
Me: Is that all?
Him: Yeah.
Me: You're okay now?
Him: Uh huh.
(He really and truly
is the most lovable, sweet, caring, thoughtful, sensitive, amazing boy in the whole entire world!)
...Before publishing this edit, I let him read the above sentence, then:
Me: Is that true?
Him: (smiling) Yes!
Me: Is it okay that I wrote that?
Him: Yeah, sure!
Deck: Phantasmagoric Theater Tarot