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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!

Ohh I like this! I'll join with this shot from my Aquatic mini parade :D

You're welcome! I feel you about switching between PZ and PC2. I have have done many hours in PZ so switching to PC2 was a steep learning curve for me. Can't wait to see more :D

Thanks! The scaling will be my savior in PZ2. It was such a struggle to work with very thick wall pieces in PZ1. The new pathing tool will also be ideal for a park like this, the big wide sandy patch in my pictures is supposed to be a plaza but you can't make those very easily in PZ1. Yeah I was happily surprised to see yours too! I think they are a great fit for zoos. I'm really curious to see more up close pictures of your tower. This one is was a tough one because it is made up of 2 twisting stairs (one for going up and one for going down) that twist around a central glass elevator shaft. The real Blijdorp tower sadly got torn down due to poor maintenance in the early seventies. I find it a crime because it was such an integral part of the building complex and central navigation and focus point of the zoo. I'm born after it already was gone so I sadly never got to witness it. I do have some old photos of my grandma on top of the observation deck.

Thanks! it has been fun branching out of the 1 on 1 recreations and moving into my own creations.

Finally took the time to go trough the entire topic, this is such a trill! I mostly remember your other parks so to see your take on a zoo and different theming styles has been a treat. The village market details are very well done. I like the warm wooden look of the Bakery. The observation tower is epic, can't wait till we see a closer look on all that. The atrium space of the administration building turned out so nice! I love the glazed tiles in the icea cream parlor. It is one of the textures/objects I miss in PC2 and wish we will get soon in PZ2. The Insect Court turned out lovely, it's a cool idea to do exhibit boxes like that, I haven't seen it been done before like this. The Emporium is true eye candy, great job on that one!! It's really clever and smart how you've divided up the Hippo lake into smaller habitats yet still manage to make it look like one single space. The lake ranch area is adorable, I love the donkeys! Really curious to see where this park will go next.

Hi all! Moving on to the other side of the street for more facades! From this point forward most building will be based on concept art and model pictures. The Paradise Pier redo got some budget cuts a lot of buildings did not get the level of details that the boardwalk games and Midway Mania got. ~Boardwalk Bazaar - Seaside Souvenirs - Restrooms - Ice Cream Parlor~ This strip of facades all got budget cuts and looked mostly like how they did on DCA opening day, the did add some paint and slight wooden details but it's not on the same level as the rest of the pier. The building in the middle is the one that I ended up calling Boardwalk Bazaar for my recreation. The green building on the right is the Boardwalk Bazaar. The 2 on the Left are for the Restroom and Seaside Souvenirs. This is my interpretation of the shop. I hadn't played around with the modular shops much before so it was fun to do that for this project! The next 2 facades are the red one on the left and the tattoos shop on the right. Like before these also got minimal redressing and mostly looked the same as their opening day counterpart. I looked at the model and turned these 2 into a restrooms building and Seaside Souvenirs. The blue building was the proposed redo of the red one in the picture above and the new red one is a redo of the tattoos shop. These were my PC interpretations of the building back in 2018. The new restrooms building in PC2. The new Seaside Souvenirs. I do think I'll go back to redo the interior for this one but for now it's fine. And the last one for today is the Ice Cream Parlor. This one also received very little upgrades from its opening day counterpart On the model it looked like the red building above. Another piece of concept art showed it like this. This is my final take on the Ice Cream Parlor. The final position for these shops are in the bend directly next to the row of arcade games facades. The final position of the Boardwalk Bazaar is a bit father away because I didn't want 2 souvenir shops so close together. I also still have to do the parade gate and parade barn nextdoor as you can see :P This is how the park looks right now. I had push and switch around a few facades to make the parade work. I also had to push out the boardwalk 8 more meter into the bay to make the street wide enough. I used to have a chair swing instead of the parachute drop but I think I'll save the chair swing for another part of the park. Coming up!For the next post I'll do the first 3 Rides with the Fun Wheel, Cosmic Caterpillar and Coaster! The Hotel/restaurant, theater, entrance arcade, parade and other rides are still being worked on :D ~Dexter~

Thanks! This park has always been my main project for PZ and has been worked on from the start of the game till now so that has been many years. I love historical city zoo's but this zoo is a strange in between classic and modern zoo with they layout. The habitats and fields are big, the barriers make use of moats and glass (very modern at the time) and yet most of the holding areas are still painfully small and they still had old style bear pits and loads of concrete flooring in habitats.