I bought the Dragon Bismarck and Arizona, and like them both. They're high on my list of kits I actually intend to build.
Like many other people, I was puzzled initially by the soft plastic parts. It took me a little while, but I think I've figured out why Dragon did them that way. Each of the parts in question has raised and/or or embossed detail molded on surfaces that are at ninety degrees to each other. (Example: the massive "fighting tops" of the Arizona - the big fire control stations at the tops of the masts. They have embossed "windows" on all sides.) That sort of thing can't be cast in a rigid mold, due to the problem of undercutting - and styrene can't be cast in a flexible mold due to the heat and the pressure of the injection-molding process. Flexible plastic does allow undercutting. (The plastic flexes a little as it's being removed from the mold.) The alternative would be to mold the component as several smaller pieces - or avoid the undercutting problem by leaving off the detail.
I'll reserve judgment on this idea till I find out how paint sticks to the flexible stuff. None of the reviews I've seen mentions any problem in that regard. If the flexibility isn't detectable when the model's finished, maybe the concept is a good one.
Another odd thing about those kits is the use of clear plastic. I really like the idea of clear airplanes; you can paint everything but the canopy. Same goes for boats that have windows in their little superstructures. But in those kits all the boats - including the open ones with no windows - are transparent, as are the floats and propellors of the aircraft. The total area of clear plastic that doesn't end up getting painted will amount to about one square centimeter. But apparently somebody decided that all the airplane and boat components needed to go on the same sprue, so if any of those pieces were to be transparent they all had to be.
What I don't understand is why the turrets of the Arizona are cast in white metal. The turned brass gun barrels are great (they're perfectly round, as styrene castings rarely are), but I don't see why identical turrets couldn't have been cast in styrene. I can't see any detail on them that required undercutting; they seem to have been cast in rigid molds, like the styrene parts. On the basis of the rest of the kit, though, I suspect there's a rational explanation. (If they were going to cast parts in metal, though, why not use it instead of the flexible plastic? White metal can take undercuts if it's cast in flexible molds. Maybe they didn't want to get into the flexible mold business.)
At the root of all this seems to be the assumption that the purchaser of these kits is not a middle-school kid but an experienced modeler who paints everything. On the one hand that's a refreshing development. On the other, it does make things harder for the less-experienced modeler.
Bottom line: they both look like excellent kits and should produce beautiful models.
Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.