Dxtrrr

Wait till we get to the monkeys for some more good old concrete pits 😬 I knew what to expect when researching the zoo but the animal riding part was not a happy surprise. Also learning how all animals (including families and herding species) used to be put in individual holding spaces at night makes me quite uncomfortable. They really thought that was the best and save way to do it back then. I honestly did most of the building without paths. I just painted the terrain sand and called it a day. The hit boxes around moats, water and barriers are horrible. When I did squeeze them in they would leave so many gaps I had to fill in with art pieces. I think it'll be a breeze to do in PZ2!!

Thank for the comment! I have a lot of fun building this one and seeing the progress :D Thanks! In planet zoo I used the null barriers to draw everything out but we don't have them in PC2. I needed a very thin piece and create a connect the dots situation for the path system. The sticks are thin support beams. I noticed that the paths tend to shift higher in elevation when using the drawing tool for path and creating nodes on the underlying grid. The sticks are connected to the grid but allow me to push the grid underground and prevent the drawn path lines from rising in elevation. (I'm having a hard time explaining this in English so I hope you understand what I'm saying) Don't you run into similar problems when using horizontal kerb pieces? Or are you only using them for building and not for paths? Thanks for the comment, I'm excited and scared to start on the facades so I think I'll do most of the outdoor stuff first! I agree, it is such an upgrade from what came before. I remember some people being unsure when it got announced and calling it unoriginal or a copy of the Hollywood Studios entrance and Mainstreet. I don't hear people talk about all that anymore now. Thanks for the kind comment! I'm used to only sharing finished stuff so it's a new thing for me to show my behind the scenes working methods. Part of the joy of building like this is the whole research and collecting data part. I get excited when I find the right blueprints or when it finally clicks in my brain how a building fits together in a 3D space based on 2D drawings. Glad to hear people enjoy seeing that too!

Hi all!Past few days I've really been in a creative flow so I finish quite a big chunk which I want to show today! Last post I mentioned miscalculating the position of the roundabout and moving it. Silly me forgot the entire Carthay Circle Theater block so I moved that too this time around and you can see right away when you walk around the fountain that the view of the theater is better now. In this post I create the planters and green spaces between the street, roundabout, shops and Hollywood boulevard. I also addend and placed most of the trees in the correct spots and added the lampposts and poles for the trolley wires. ~Carthay Circle Sessions~ Moving the Theater also made this view down Buena Vista Street make more sense so I'm happy I caught that mistake! ~Digging up dirt~ I filled in the whole area with paths and measured the borders for the green spaces with the purple sticks. Then I stamped out the circle in the center and freeform stamped out the other parts as you can see in the pictures below. It is a trick to switch between merged and non merged stamps to create al the shape you can delete later. Overview after stamping out the green spaces. ~Going Green~ Bring in the plants! Mickey and Walt....? The shortcut path between the shop facades and Hollywood Boulevard View from Buena Vista Street View from the Hollywood Boulevard/Carthay Circle Theater towards the shopping facades. View from The Carthay Circle looking back at the shops on Buena Vista Street. Seating in the middle of the green spaces. Looking at the green spaces from the center of the roundabout. Overview of the finished space. I'm happy with how lush and green it all turned out. That's all for today, hope you all enjoy and see you next time on Buena Vista Street! ~Dexter~

Hi all!Let's walk some more for part 2 of the tour :D We will start where we left off last time on the little plaza behind the stables of our first open field habitat. Today we will visit the predator building and terraces which houses Tigers, Lions and exhibits for smaller Felidae. We also get to take a peak inside the indoor holding area for them. After that we will circle the building and pass the starting place for Camel and Elephant riding. This big open space behind the predator building has always been reserved for the zoos Aquarium but due to many reasons it never got build on this space. We will end the tour with some time traveling and see how this part of the zoo looks today. ~Rotterdam Zoo - Diergaarde Blijdorp Tour 02~ Our starting point of today. The predator building is build symmetrical with 2 mirrored terraces to showcase the animals and is build along the central axis of the zoo. As you can see I never really finished the left side which is supposed to house the Tigers at point 3. The right side is the one for Lions at point 4 and I did finish and landscaped most of that side. The unfinished Tiger side. The Lion side. The big chimney in the middle is connected to the boiler room at the center of the building. It was build to warm the indoor holding but also to help heat a future Aquarium building which was planned to connect to the back of this building. The chimney is decorated with glazed ceramic tiles and a statue of Orpheus from Greek classic myths. Funfact: The bowl on top of the pillar was fitted with piping for gas. This allowed them to have flames inside the bowl. Walking around the terraces brings you to the side of the building. Both ends of the building have a smaller exhibit to showcase smaller Felidae species. I sadly couldn't find much information about what animals where held in these exhibits. The public was allowed to view the indoor holding so let's take a peak inside! On the Lions side of the building they had 1 indoor space for the the smaller exhibit on the side, 6 regular indoor holding spaces for the lions and 1 separate area for baby animals. On the Tigers side it looked mostly the same and was organized in a similar but with with 1 less indoor holding space. The sandy part on the left (point 5) is where they used to have 2 sets of wooden stairs setup. These where used to climb on the back of a camel or Elephant that would then make a small route around the zoo. The grass field (including the sandy part) where all reserved for an Aquarium building that sadly never got build. It would have followed the curved shape of the predator house and pathways. ~TIME TRAVEL SECTION~Over the years this part of the zoo had some smaller exhibits to fill in the open space but never a large scale exhibit. In 2018 a new exhibit opened in this space. The old predator building closed and the Lions and Tigers had already found a new place in the zoo. The old predator building outdoor space was merger by removing the central fence to create 1 giant exhibit space on the terrace side. The same was done on the backside and a new outdoor exhibit was created here. Gelada Baboons (Bleeding-Heart Monkey) would be the new residents for this part of the zoo! This also gave the zoo a good moment to fully renovate the building and indoor spaces. Newly renovated predator building. The smaller exhibits on the sides remain empty but have a more educational function to show how animal where housed. The newly renovated indoor space. Part of the old indoor holding is opened up so you can enter. The others are connected to create a lager indoor space for the animals. Only the old Lions side of the building is open for public viewing. The Tigers side is closed off and has more indoor holding. The old terrace part of the building is the new outdoor part for the male bachelor group of the zoo. The backside now houses the outdoor part for the family group. The zoos has been successful in breeding the Geladas so it is always fun to see the babies. I planned to have more exhibits in this post but it got quite long already so I'll save them for next time! Hope oy all enjoyed :D We finished most of the southern part of the zoo so we will move up into the western part time and visit the Yaks, Camels and Reindeer. ~Dexter~

Haha always the Mallads!! The water edges look really nice.

I've been digging in my old files and found some RCT3 screenshot from waaay back that I wanted to share! I'm not sure if they are dated right but the files say 2008/2009. These are from and old Disney style park that I named Dutch Disney Dreams. It's quite fun to see how similar my building style is after all these years. Major shout out to the custom scenery people form back in the day like Shyguy for the Mainstreet sets and Eezee for the Castle set!! This was my first take. After this point in time I went back and refurbished all the buildings one by one as shown below. The railway station at the entrance of the park. This was a restrooms facility and parade gate. A cafe with outdoor seating. 7 City Hall. This was one of the small side streets that mostly functioned as outdoor seating for the restaurants. Some stores. The cinema hosted a custom flatride movie theater/show. The tram station. The bookstore. Parts of the castle courtyard and darkride. I believe this was supposed to be a Little Mermaid ride. And the castle! ~Dexter~

Those are reasonable goals. Have fun and patience, the controls can be wild but are very powerful when you get in the right flow!

Haha thanks! I'll consult you if I get stuck in some place then :P I was kinda surprised at how few pictures or building plans I could find of the final Carthay Circle Theater building. I do remember the concept for the restaurant being a later addition and I can see in the concept art and model that the theater show for the building stayed around quite some time during the development phase. I guess that explains the lack of details on it. I appreciate the hard work that went into the tile mural and the colorfulness of the old entrance but I agree that it did not work as an entrance land for the park. I've accepted we never got, or are going to get, a Hollywoodland 3.0. I'm very curios to see how the Avatar stuff is going to fit and if it all will be contained into the old backlot area or if it will spill over into the Hollywood Boulevard part of the park. We also ready lost the cool thematic and timeline stretch from Buena Vistastreet into Hollywoodland and ending at Tower of Terror and I'd hate to lose the the boulevard too. YES! like I mentioned above the trolley linked multiple parts of the park so nicely together. The loss of kinetic energy is also really sad for the park. I think having a trolley barn fit in in the area where they currently have the outdoor queue for the Hyperion and retrofit that queue together with a Hyperion refresh would work. Tower isn't part of Hollywood anymore so the barn could be a thematic opportunity to cap of the land and transition into the tower and campus area. Thanks for the kind comment! I'm jealous of those plans :P

Lovely concept! The floating blocks breaking away from the arch is such a cool detail.

Hi all!Next to my Paradise Pier inspired park I also have started a fun side project. This one will be more of a 1 on 1 recreation then my Paradise Pier build. Just like with Paradise Pier 2.0 redo I also followed the transformation of the old postcard entrance and Sunshine Plaza into Buena Vista Street at Disney California Adventure back in 2012. I really adore the clean Art Deco and warm inviting Mission Revival architecture they've chosen for this area. We don't have many pieces yet in the game that fit those themes but the Sorcery and Small Town themes do come close with some pieces. ~Laying the groundwork~When I do recreations I like to start with a map or blueprints of the thing I'm working on. I trace them in Illustrator and add or remove details I want to recreate. Having a base map will in Illustrator also helps me when I add another layer with a grid that is perfectly scaled 1m by 1m. I can then build this grid in the game and use it as a base for where everything needs to go. Next to this map I also search for as many concept art, blueprints, models and elevation studies that I can find of the project for references. This image has been the base for the map I've made. Fun thing about this map is that you can see the old Sunshine Plaza and postcard entrance in the red lines and the 'new' Buena Vista Street in the black lines. When I've traced, cleaned up and added what I wanted you get this map. The benefit of working in Illustrator is working in vectors. This means I can zoom in very far without lines getting blurry. Then the grid is added. I try to line this one out with the longest straight lines in the original plans to make building on the grid in game as easy as possible. Using blueprints and pictures of elevation studies I also managed to stick together the facades. I can use the map and grid for scale so it all works together. ~2D to 3D~The next steps is building the grid in game and lining everything out. The flat top down map en flat elevation studies for the facades will be added together to create the 3D space in the game :D This was the state of the park after the first few building sessions. I focused on the little plaza at the entrance and the east side of the street. In the next few session I added the west side of the facades. This was the 'easy' part of the build. Next I had to fight the pathing system to get the Carthay Circle roundabout and curved roads leading to it. The grid is sunken below for the pictures but I still used it to measure out the distances. I also had to do some Tagi3d magic (shout out to his video on circular paths) to make clean circles that didn't deform when adding more path textures. I didn't do my calculations right the first time and had to move the entire roundabout to the west halfway trough the build. I'm so happy the paths in PC2 function like scenery and you can just select it all and move it to the correct position!! (also very grateful I was working aligned to the world grid the whole time) Next came the fountain At first I made the basic shape and foundation and after that (and loaaaads of marble pieces because we don't have ceramic tiles yet in the game) I could go on to detailing and finishing up the fountain area. I added the copper top on the fountain, more fencing around the planter and the ornamental accents around the fountain that hide speakers. I also finally got my hands on a clean picture of the elevation studies for the Carthay Circle Theater itself so I build the outlines for that one too! And that brings us to today and the current state of the build! I really like how the little fountain area turned out. I've never been to DCA myself but walking around the fountain in game gives me the feeling I'm really there. And with that I've finished the first little piece of the park. Hope you all enjoy and see you next time on Buena Vista Street! ~Dexter~

Looking good! I really like the vibes. The beach with the crashing waves looks very pretty.

Thanks for the kind comment and welcome! The Arcade update realy had given me a spark and drive to work on this park again and continue beyond just the games. I really don't get the Pixar makeover. I can see the push for IP but don't understand why they just didn't add to the pier instead of redoing what had already been redone. A new ride in the Coaster helix would be welcomed much more but once again got scrapped. It feels like lost money and a blow to the thematic and overal theming of the land. Vintage and Pixar at the pier was already working with Midway Mania and the Bullseye midway game and they even managed to make those worse with in my opinion an uglier color scheme.

The Savannah turned out great! The indoor holding looks very realistic.

This was a fun read! I'll be following this topic :D

Thanks for the comment, happy to hear people enjoy it! I use loads of old pictures, blueprint and my own pictures of the current day zoo when building on this park. I wanted share a bit of the progress with you all that way. Thanks for the comment! I also love zoo history :D I'm quite fascinated by zoo from around the 1900 till 1940 period. I find the architecture from that time really pretty and love how zoos slowly moved to more natural and larger habitats yet still have a more classic and science based way of ordering zoo. Animal welfare was rough but that makes if fun to build in game so no real animals are harmed. The map is a original blueprint of the zoo meant to show the general layout and locations of buildings. The map itself is just a black and white blueprint. I traced it in Adobe Illustrator and added the colors myself to make it more readable. I've done the same for the Antwerp Zoo and the old Rotterdam City Zoo.

Thanks, the lighting for this game still amazes me. You can do a lot of beautiful things with mods but I don't use them, nor do I edit the raw screenshots. I do kinda miss an in game way to take vertical orientated pictures. You can trim them after taking a screenshot but I like to see the framing when taking the pictures. Maybe I'll try to over my screen paper to create a vertical cutout so see the composition. The parachute drop was fun to build. I still haven't gone on one yet but they have build a model like this in one a few years ago in the Netherlands so I hope I get to ride one soon! Thanks for the comment! I'm happy with how it turned out :D

Looking good! Are those glowing orbs from the parade pack?

Hi all!Let's start the tour of the park :D We will start at the southern portion of the zoo today. We will visit the main entrance, souvenir shop & refreshment stand and our first 2 exhibits. The first exhibit is a more traditional bear pit that was dubbed a 'Bears Theater' in this zoo. The second is a the first of many open field exhibits in the zoo. This one was build for Llamas, Indian Antelopes (Blackbuck) and Nilgai. There a a lot of unfinished places in this part of my recreation but I wanted to show all of what I've made so far. ~Rotterdam Zoo - Diergaarde Blijdorp Tour 01~ We start of at point A for the entrance to the zoo. This is a very early picture because you basically have 0 greenery and trees. The smaller gates on the left are the ticket booths and the larger ones on the right are used as exit and more ceremonial purposes. I never got around to finishing the ticket booths. Planet Zoo was lacking a lot of small and thin pieces that I needed for this part. I can't wait to take a shot at them in Planet Zoo 2 when we get proper scaling tools. Closer look at the large ornamental gates. The animal sculptures on top where finished with a layer of gold leaf paint. I hope Planet Zoo 2 comes with marble pieces like Planet Coaster 2 does because it is one of the textures I really missed in doing recreations like this and in making my own classic city zoos. The current entree as seen on google maps. I love how green the zoo has grown over the years but it also blocks the main view of the central building complex. The observation tower is also missing as a huge focal point of the zoo. "De Winkel van Sinkel" (The Van Sinkel Shop) at point B is a kiosk you first find when walking into the zoo and also the last one you see when leaving the zoo. This kiosk sold refreshments and souvenirs. The fancy building in the back that is attached to the main entrance is the administrative building. The building also had room for the zoo director to live in on top 2 floors. This is also a part that I didn't get to do in Planet Zoo. Once again the thickness of the walls in the game made doing this one in true scale almost impossible. A fun fact for this location is that at one point the store was transformed into a habitat to house African Penguins. I vividly remember this habitat because it was one of the first (and last) things you'd see when visiting the zoo. Today this habitat is gone and 'De Winkel Van Sinkel' has been restored to it's former glory and function. At point 1 we find the bears theater. On the map it is labeled for Brown Bear. I've seen some other pictures where they have also housed Polar Bears and more bear species from other habitats in the zoo. During one of the backstage tours I got to visit the indoor cages behind the doors in the wall on the picture. They were shockingly small and I'm so happy we don't house bears like this anymore in zoos. I never got around to starting this part either. This part is doable in the game but I just never got to it. In the real zoo this part is unused right now. They did refurbished the building but filled in the terrace and moat with greenery and no animals. Another look that show the large moat between the terrace and the public. The zoo was very 'modern' for its time by going for Hagenbeck style habitats that have no visible walls or cages but uses dry moats or moats with water like this one. This gave the visitors of the zoo a mostly unobstructed view of the animals. I sadly don't have any clean close up pictures of the the second habitat for Llamas, Indian Antelopes (Blackbuck) and Nilgai at point B of our tour. So you have to look at these pictures to see the habitat from afar. In current day this habitat houses Finnish Forest Reindeer (Wild Forest Reindeer). I deleted quite some trees to match this shot better with the historical pictures. When building this zoo I wanted to stay close to the opening years but also give room to the lush greenery the zoo is known for today. Even though the zoo avoids traditional walls or fences that block the visitors views into the habitats they do have several of these gate like structures that are designated feeding points. These point give the visitors a closeup look at how the animal feed. This specific habitat works mostly with low fences and a dry moat. I went all out with the greenery because it looks pretty. In the real zoo this is also a forest habitat but with a more realistic forest floor that mostly consist of dirt and mulch. Picture of the recently fully refurbished stables. One of the many recognizable architecture of the zoo are the many stables that are all build in the same style. The are all black wooden stables with red shingle roofs and white accents. These buildings are protected by law because of their historic value. Very few of these stables where demolished before the protected laws where put in place so you can still view many of them today. The interior is made up of 6 smaller stables and 2 storage rooms. It was a long post but I hope you all enjoyed this part of the tour :D See you all next time when we visit the predator terrace for Lions and Tigers. ~Dexter~

Thanks, I'm also happy with how it turned out!

I've made some more gifs of the 2 other rides but have trouble uploading them. I get an error message but the size is below the stated 32mb

Hi all! Let's have another look at the boardwalk before the second heatwave hits my country :P In this post we will look at the rides. I I'm done with theming the first 3 rides (Sun Wheel - Cosmic Caterpillar - Paratrooper) and they are locked into their final place in the park. For the other 3 (Comet Tail - Helter Skelter - The Grand Carousel) I still have work to do. I didn't want this post to become to big so I've saved the WIP rides for the next post. ~Sun Wheel - Cosmic Caterpillar - Paratrooper~ The general look and feel of the Sun Wheel is lifted from both the original Sun Wheel at Disney California Adventure and it's followup Mickey's Fun Wheel. I took most of the sun motive of the original version and the new classic architecture of the queue structure and boardwalk from the Fun Wheel version. The queue structure and boardwalk where also cut form the final version that was build in the real world. I'm still not sure if that was a budget choice or if it was cut because how close it gets to the World of Color fountain show. I did play around with using the other Ferris Wheel model with the swinging gondolas but it was so huge that it made everything else feel out of scale. I also called it Wonder Wheel at first like the model but changed it to Sun Wheel in the end because it sounded more calming and fit in with the sun motive I was going for. The Cosmic Caterpillar is my first fully original ride in the park. I had a lot of fun building this one. I like how it sticks out of the building and intro the sidewalk . The Paratrooper was fun to build and had me playing around with the new pieces from the Parade Pack. It is the second fully original ride for the park. At first I didn't like the very thick central pillar but I think it looks more balanced when I started to add the stuff on top. I also liked how the 'crown' on top reaches down along the sides of the central pillar. Decorating the parachute seats also was fun to do. ~Dexter~

Love the patterned cinder block wall!

Looking good! Curious to see how this turns out.

Go Oakie, Go! Wow, look at her go! All jokes aside, really enjoying the new waterfront. The tram looks cool and will probably fit in nicely with your main street. I like the flowering cube trees. I'm used to the green Disney ones but a pop of color works really well for them. The lit up castle shot is so pretty! The new umbrella's from the parade pack are huge upgrade for me.

Thanks for the comment!