Fox
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Everything posted by Fox
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Rats and Opossum are not to be trusted in theme parks without supervision. They are generally unpleasant guests if left to their own devices. Seeing all that again brings back memories. -
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One of the expansions of Highland Lakes that took space from the parking lots was adding the B&M Invert known as Fire Fighter. It only took a small part of the lot on the outside of the train tracks. Engine Co. No. 2 is not the original station for the ride, this was another upgrade that came later. The coaster celebrates the importance of firefighters and paramedics in California. Exiting through the gift shop I have been to lazy to finish...
I will hold all applause until you say it is time. I need encouragement. This is a very charming addition, it carry's on the Disney pre-IP whore era feel. I am working very hard to hide my opinion of Disney parks today, I hope it is working. You handled the fairy tale theming very well, it is something I have never tried, and would probably not be very good at :)
This would have been the original entrance of the park, it is also supposed to have been a former pavilion from the time when the park operated as a fairgrounds. It houses rest rooms and some food stands these days This building served as ticket boothes for many years, it was moved out front of the entrance building when the park changed over to one entrance price for unlimited rides. When the park entrance was moved to about where the current entrance is this was moved back almost to where it would have been back when the park was small and each ride required tickets and it was repurposed for more food vending. Some of the historic structures that still exist today still serve purposes very similar to when they were build such as the carousel house. Another pavilion now houses a Himalaya ride The cafe has been in this same spot for many years. It has been added on to a couple of times. The original entrance to what was a show pavilion for livestock shows has served several purpose, for a time there was a coaster here that used this as part of the station after a fire destroyed most of the original show pavilion. The coaster was called Dragon's Lair and was an Arrow looping coaster. after it was decommissioned the pavilion was seating arena was restored to almost the same footprint as the original, a more modern entrance was added along with other upgrades to allow for more flexible uses. We now host a circus most of the year. This is the new entrance. Another historic building that still stands houses a sit down restaurant. The Whip is yet another historic remnant of the old park. Some time ago I mentioned there was a Engine Company Number 2 in the park. Here it is... it is a rather substantial upgrade to the station this coaster had when it was originally built and we will get to this one, maybe in the next update. It is part of that process of this park trying to transition from pure amusement park to more of a theme park.
Disney, if they kept it at all, would have to slap IP all over the land today, may be put a Marvel ride in the barn. Personally, I like that Farmer McDonald grows yellow stuff. It is probably what they put on his hamburgers at the other family business. Nice update!
How to repurpose an 1849 mining town, when you decided to build a full park off that theme and the small area in one of your other California parks now looks kind of lame and redundant. I never got around to this in RCT3 but I did have the idea for the Warehouse District that far back. When I started the park in PC1 it was part of the plan day one to go ahead and build the area out as if it were a re-theme of the old section. Air Express is a launched coaster, similar to Superman The Escape that until recently was at Magic Mountain, in the RCT3 park it was themed as a dual ride with one side being Outlaw, the other side being Sharif, we sort of just ditched the dualling idea because, the ride goes up, the ride goes down, not exactly a great dual anyway. Whoever thought it was, has been sacked. Chicago Pie Company, so named because deep dish is served here and everyone knows deep dish is not Pizza, its a casserole but Chicago Casserole Company is just not a great name, people would think they served leftovers that feather canned tuna if you called it that. The joint was on the other side of town square in the RCT3 park in an area that also has been completely rethemed as something else, it seemed like a good fit for this area so, there it is. We borrowed from Pizzeria Uno in Chicago for part of the exterior. Wait till you see this at Christmas...
I think you have captured vintage Disney pretty well. Looking good!
Took me a while to get back to this, I discovered at some point the Planet Coaster PC settings changed to saving screenshots as PNG and I was exceeding my limits here. I had to fix all that. In RCT3 this park started out as my first sandbox, you can see here, it was long before I know what I was doing. The park went through a ton of changes and eventually I removed just about everything and created a scenario that started with an old fairground. I used to play with the ecconomics in the game back then and I kept working on and off on this scenario until it became an fairly flushed out park, then many more updates and changes... I don't think I still have any screen shots of the park in what was its final form before I stopped playing RCT3 but, I was getting there by this point. Much of what I did in PC1 started out trying to be a closer, "better" version of the park in its final RCT3 form but I scrapped those plans because I felt way to locked into rebuilding something. Instead it is a re-imagining as the park may have been with growth and a lot of changes. The park originally was supposed to be more of an amusement park that would compete with Cedar Point or Magic Mountain, some of that still can be seen in the park but some things, are transitioning to more of a theme park. That is the state of the park now, in transition. I build this park to look like it started small in one area and grew, overly planned intentional sight lines are often not a thing as a result, this is very realistic, any time you have been in a park that grew over time, and sometimes the vision and intention of the park changed over time you notice this. The idea of the weenie is not as important, although Highland Lakes does have a few, there are a lot of things that could be, but just aren't do to history and changing visions over many years. Trying to build something new as if it had a history, and not necessarily building it in the historical order created some challenges, almost killed the project a couple of times, but I managed to figure it out. That entrance being at an angle is due to realizing the first entrance I had done in PC1 was, not very good, and would also not be adequate for the size of this park. My solution was what prompted the first part of the parking structure, I had to steal parking lot to fix the entrance. I stole a lot more later on. At some point, town square's instead of Main Street became sort of a thing with me. I chose not to go from the square into a main street in the Disney fashion but end at the square and transition into another area of the park. Highland Lakes was not the first one I did this in but it was the second and moving the entrance and adding the town square was part of a big expansion. I imagine this would not have been dramatically changed over the years with one exception we will get to later. If you look t the ole RCT3 screen you can see how big the train station was in that version, way over built. This i part of the re-imagining. I split it into two buildings, both smaller in scale, and the covered platform connects them. Thought I would get some shots with the fog turned off... loaded up a version of the park without the Halloween overlay. Engine Company Number 1 has a first aid station hidden inside. There is an Engine Company 2, back in the park someplace, it has another purpose. There was no glass in the game when first built this so all the windows were billboards as place holders. Once we had glass, i had to redo some things. Looking back at the RCT3 park, I realized I hated the ice cream parlor I had done, so that was a significant reimagining as well. I had the overlay opaque windows on the first floor in PC originally, once iDro's beams were a thing, I rebuild all of them as close to what they had bee, but with glass so I now you can see into the interior. Part of why it took so long to build as much as I have now is going back and redoing things when there is a better way, either new items or I figure out way to get something more like I would imagine should be there. That area back there is the Warehouse District. In the original RCT3 park there was a wester area there called Carbon Creek, I later expanded that idea as a whole park based on the 1849 gold rush. I never removed the western area in RCT3 but I had intended to. This was my solution in PC. The area was "re themed" as a warehouse district. When i started it I realized it would bene fit from being connected to the town square more directly so I removed a building to make an entrance for this area. There are some things over there I will get to eventually, some used to be in other parts of the park which would also have been re-themed, they were moved to this area because they would fit better there and could be improved. I see it as a fairly logical re-theme and once i came up with the idea it seemed that the park would move a few things if this were the direction they went. That then opened up another entirely new area that never existed as a cohesive them in RCT3.
