IMO any self clean is a bad thing, having said that the capital has few electronic componants which self clean can damage, we dont use it that often but when we do it certainly works very well. As for the rolling racks they are not fully extending but work well. the rotisserie is fantastic, the first thing I did when the range arrived was to cook two chickens and one beef joint to see how it performed. you can see the resluts in the PDF's attached in this link below. Is it worth an extra $1000 I would say maybe for the self clean if you use it, yes for the racks and a huge yes for the rotisserie. (the pdf files are just below the picture of the 30" range) Here is a link that might be useful: capital Rotisserie

The discussion reminds me again how personal these choices are. I remember a wonderful phrase from a book (by Booth Tarkington, I think) which went something like this: a mild unpleasantness for one young man may seem the sheer brink of hell to another. That's applicable here as you can see from the posts above. For some of us, a self-cleaning oven is on the list of stove "must-haves." A stove won't even be considered without it. For others, like me, it was on my list of "wanna-haves" rather than "must-haves." (IOW, I miss having a self-cleaning oven but think I can live without it). Others, such as Nunya, are completely indifferent to self-cleaning; seemingly, he wouldn't use it if he had it. I say all of this because opinions here at GW can sometimes sound like dogma -- because I think X, you should, too, and your contrary thoughts are mere subjective preferences. It has to be said that subjective preferences are important. They are none-the-less valuable for being subjective. Your own preference absolutely must be part of the process of choosing a stove. Just because I find manual oven cleaning is "not too bad" does not mean you should find it that way, too. So, hopefully, the range of opinions is taken as helping you sort out our preferences rather than as telling you what to so. There is only way to get better informed than this exchange of opinions and that is by actually cleaning an oven in a stove you are considering. But, even if you live someplace where dealer showrooms have operating stoves you can test out, do you think they'll be demonstrating that aspect anytime soon? ;>) When I bought my NXR, I really had no idea how easy or how onerous "myself-cleaning" would be. That's one of the reasons I bought it from Costco. If "myself-cleaning" turned out to a royal PITA, I could simply return the stove for a full refund and get the self-cleaning induction range that I otherwise would have purchased. So, when you go shopping, it may be helpful to be up-front with the vendors about your uncertainty on this issue and to have a back-up candidate.

I too have a self-cleaning oven feature that I've never used (on this current oven, that is), because I've got a parrot andf they really can be killed by things that don't affect other pets (like non-stick cookware coatings) - there's a very good reason canaries were used as mine safety checks prior to environmental samplers, birds are highly susceptible to gases that mammals don't detect. What I do is a hot soapy water dampened towel to soak off baked on gunk and then a green scrubby, or the Method bathroom scrub (well rinsed off before cooking in the oven again.) That said, I think the cat would be okay - I never had a problem using self-cleaning before getting the parrot, and I've always had cats and dogs. My 20 year old siamese has been through several oven cleaning cycles in her life, and she always just vacated the room until the smell dispersed.

I have the freestanding gas one (didn't know they had a slidein!), and I've used the self clean with no problem. I will recap the instructions for you in case the link below doesn't work: Turn off the oven light before cleaning. Remove everything from the oven (racks, pans etc) Clean oven frame, door frame around gasket since the autoclean won't clean that area. Do not clean the gasket itself. Wipe up excess spillovers from the oven bottom. Only one oven can be cleaned at a time, and both doors will lock while the cleaning cycle is active. To set self-clean: Close oven door Press appropriate Clean pad. CLEAN flashes. SET AND UPPER or LOWER flashes. Press the Autoset pad. Med (3 hrs, medium soil level) is displayed. Press Autoset to select level of cleaning. Oven will start cleaning in four seconds. CLEAN will appear on display, LOCK will flash on the display until door locks, then LOCK will be lit. Counter will start counting down. To delay a self-clean, press DELAY once for upper oven, twice for lower oven. DEELAY FLASHES, 00:00 and UPPER or LOWER flashes. Enter amoiunt of time you want to delay the cycle, then press the appropriate CLEAN pad. SET flashes in the display. Follow instructions as above. Oven door will unlock about an hour after the cycle finishes. Open the oven and wipe up any ash remaining and replace any racks. Here's a link to the online manual you might find useful. HTH! Here is a link that might be useful: Maytag Gemini manual