TrimoParks

Gosh, I missed a lot of updates!

First of all, congratulations on Gondlheim. What an amazing place! Of course, the inspiration from Phantasialand is obvious, but you made your own amazing thing out of it. The details are incredible.

I especially loved the Trevakr station interior, and the 4th picture in the Ymirs Wrath segment.

And yep, the new main street has the right vibe for the park, well done!

Your work is top notch.

And I totally understand your feelings regarding Planet Coaster 2. I'm just trying to build my first park with it, and everything is so much more complicated than with Planco 1. I keep questioning whether I should commit to PC2 with all its shortcomings, or move back to PC1.

Will be happy to see more soon, but first, from musician to musician: Good luck with your studio :)

On 8/2/2025 at 12:10 AM, Wabigbear said:

What a cool idea those prayer wheels are! That's very inventive. I love the interior of the restaurant, I love how it was a very real Tibetan feel to it with the heavy columns and the use of the plain wood accents to differentiate it from a more typical 'Chinese' look...that's really well done I think.

Glad to see you back!

Thanks Wagi :) I’m so glad you’re highlighting the wheels. Originally I’ve had this idea for an RCT3 park that I had on my mind about ten years ago, but which never turned into „reality“. But some ideas for that park made it to Explorica, the spiritual successor so to say.

On 8/2/2025 at 3:47 AM, shyguy said:

Great park. I love the different themes of each land. And being a big fan of interiors, you nailed the interior of the Everest Inn. Looking forward to more pics.

Thank you shyguy, this means a lot to me :) The Everest Inn is actually my own favourite thing in the whole park.

On 8/2/2025 at 4:24 AM, JB said:

It was well worth the wait! As always, beautiful structures and beautiful screenshots. I love the ceilings of these Tibetan buildings; the ornately carved thick timbers. The warm red and yellow lighting really adds to the mood.

Thanks JB, I’m glad to hear you liked it :)

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Re: Explorica
Post #10 - 04-06-2008

We’ve now covered all areas of the park, but still we haven’t seen everything yet!

Time for a nighttime walk through Discoverytown.

The crowd was gathering near Balloon Plaza, but a few people were still in Everest Inn, so we had to wait for them.

In the meantime, I’ve approached that building to the left, which houses „The Plaza“, the most expensive restaurant in the park. This is also when I found out that they made a mistake on the park map, which says that „11“ is „Captain’s Happy Place“, but Captain’s Happy Place is actually the more affordable self service restaurant in the orange building.

So, I took a look through the window, inside The Plaza:

Not a capacity monster, but certainly a class on its own.

A few moments later, the group was complete again, so we walked back in the direction of the park entrance.

These hanseatic / scandinavian inspired buildings are home to Captain Clutter’s Tavern and the Harbor Bakery.

Behind the railroad bridge, we’ve moved over to the other side of the canal, looking over to the side we came from:

That side of the canal is a really weird mix of all kinds of styles, but personally I like the white Explorica Store building to the right.

But where do we go?

Somehow we ended up on the railroad bridge again (see my 3rd post in this thread), which is part of the „Scenic Walkway“.

You don’t only get a look over Discoverytown, but after a short walk, you can also get a view on Shangri-La:

Eventually, we’ve ended up in front of the „Expo“ structure, which is basically the gate towards the Explorica Theater.

It was already quite late, but apparently the media event wasn’t over yet...

What next? I’ll tell you some other time. :)

I didn't get the pack yet, but I've seen videos.

While it isn't the turning point for me, it's certainly a rather good sign. Lots of useful objects there.

But seriously... rides. This game badly needs a lot more common flat and gentle rides, vintage steel coasters, powered coaster, water rides and non-ride attractions. I wish the variety and "fidelity to the original" (hope this term works, I'm no native English speaker) that they apply to the coasters section would also be applied to the flat rides portfolio. Instead we get countless awkward rides that are seen in hardly any real life park.

At least, the hope isn't all dead yet, and the very welcome Flying Theatre is hopefully a proof.

Wow, this is really well done... I haven't yet seen Planet Coaster 2 looking this good!

The layout of the park, and every corner of it, is so well thought-through, with all the perfectly arranged visual axes. The new land already looks wonderful, can't wait to see more of it.

Great project.

Btw, I wish Planet Coaster 2 had a reshade feature built into it. You really made it appear more realistic.

17 minutes ago, shyguy said:

Caves are pitch black in the game. You have to set Global Illumination to "on" in the Settings. Otherwise, the game has the same crappy lighting as PC1.

Oh thank you!

It's greyed out in my settings, because my graphics card doesn't support raytracing. Good to know, I completely missed that. My mistake..

My biggest issues with PC2 remain the lack of (mostly flat / gentle / common) rides, and the way everything looks, as if it doesn't exist. Coaster supports look like plastic straws, if you know what I mean. It would be nice to get an option for more realistic looking graphics, like we had in PC1.

And still, it would be nice to get darkness in caves.

This pack looks nice, but it's nothing that will bring me back to the game. Give me a powered coaster, rowing boats and a Huss Condor (and so many others), and I'm giving it another chance.

Welcome to ParkCrafters!

Wow, what a cool project! The details are incredible.

I love how you included some Europa-Park and Phantasialand inspired elements into this project. Personally, I haven't been to Phantasialand since before Klugheim opened, but with Gondlheim, you really nailed Klugheim's vibe that I only know from photos and videos.

Another favourite of mine is the Poseidon style water coaster passage between the Greek facades. In some images, I really felt like I'm actually in Europa-Park (especially that view on your water coaster with the Eurosat dome in the background), but you really made your own thing out of it, and it's so good.

Can't wait to see more!

21 hours ago, Danny420 said:

let me know which area you want me to showcase a deep dive first :)

Of course I am torn between Gondlheim and Apollonia, but my vote is on Gondlheim :)

I'd love to see DLCs based on decades, with classic rides from the 1960s, 70s, 80s and so on. A 1990s DLC could then also include dinosaur animatronics, because of the dino hype after Jurassic Park.

50 minutes ago, Woldo said:

As long as the dinosaurs clearly look and move like animatronics, they could add them to the game without affecting the JWE market.

And I agree, any animatronics should look and move like real animatronics, not like real dinosaurs.

Wow, great project, Wagi!

Loving the idea of turning this old park concept into "reality".

Storyville is fantastic. I'd never have the patience to build a main street style area of this scale, great job. And here's another fan of the Whacky Shack.

I also noticed the international languages subforums still have Planet Coaster 2 sections. For example, the Planet Coaster 2 thread in the German subforum is still open.

It is weird.

It’s been a while!

On 12/2/2024 at 3:19 AM, JB said:

Okay, so, you know I'm gonna say these screenshots are beautiful, right? Golden Hour photos are the best! That time of day when the sun is dropping below the horizon, but it's still light enough to see the details of things, and the lights are all coming on for the evening. That applies here, and in real-life parks. Love the Shangri-la architecture; a mix of Asian, Indian, and Middle Eastern.

Thank you, JB! And yep, golden hour is so beautifully done in Planet Coaster 1, wonderful vibes.

On 12/2/2024 at 3:29 PM, Wabigbear said:

Definite bullseye on the Tibetan vibes!  I love that Lotus structure...very inventive and fits the theme perfectly.  You're another of my kind of players - loads of details and not afraid to use color.  JB already beat me to commenting about the screens...all I can say is 'ditto!'.

Thanks, Wagi! The first ideas for The Lotus were quite different to the „real“ thing, the final version somehow evolved while playing around, and I’m very happy that it did! Probably my favourite structure in the whole park. :)

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Re: Explorica
Post #9 - 28-05-2008

Around sunset, our guided tour ahead of tomorrow’s soft opening came to one of its highlights: The Exclusive Ride Time on Karma - followed by our dinner in Everest Inn.

We from the press were among the first people ever to ride this gem of a coaster.

Right behind the entrance gate, the queue path takes us to the heights of the Himalaya:

Eventually, we reached the very atmospheric station of the coaster.

The interiors are inspired by monasteries of the region.

Unfortunately, it’s forbidden to film on the coaster, but the park provided us with three shots taken on Karma.

The launch…

Himalaya realness..

…and oh, another launch!

There’s the enclosed second launch section with the spinning prayer wheels - this is a truly surprising and memorable part of the ride.

Karma is such a fun launched coaster, runs super smooth and the views from it are spectacular.

Back to my own photos now!

Leaving the station building:

Some of us couldn’t get enough of Karma.

Meanwhile, I decided to walk around the empty Shangri-La area a bit, and enjoyed the calm atmosphere here.

Approaching the Everest Inn, the location for our group dinner.

Everest Inn is a two-story restaurant and a sight on its own.

Shortly before six o clock, all the event attendants gathered in this truly magic corner of Explorica and waited to be let into the restaurant for the much anticipated dinner.

The most curious ones (like me) were getting a sneak peek through the windows…

…and finally, the doors were opened to this most beautiful restaurant of Explorica.

The weather was so good that we could sit in the outside areas of the upper floor, enjoying our dinner with wonderful views upon Shangri-La.

Karma did some more test runs before tomorrow’s big day.

Almost an hour later, the park showed its nighttime magic.

It was time to head back to the central hub of Explorica.

That’s all of Explorica’s themed areas covered, but Discoverytown by night was a special treat. But that’s something for another time!

So nice to see some new and some familiar names here, so: Welcome and welcome back to ParkCrafters. 🥳

The frustrating state of PC2 and the whole genre actually inspires me to push myself into creation, and to contribute more to the forum again. As much as life allows it. Though, with the roller coaster that 2025 has been here in real life, who knows what's behind the next curve 🤪

Welcome to ParkCrafters!

Looking great. The monochrome interior pics are kinda magic!

I think part of our dissatisfaction is that many of us badly want that ultimate realistic theme park sandbox builder and simulation... and Frontier - while in theory able to make it possible - apparently not wanting Planet Coaster 2 to be that.

The comic style that was there from the start is even more obvious in PC2, with a more flat look and less visual realism, so "realism" doesn't seem to be their aspiration in other aspects of the game, either. Way too much work was put into details of entertainers, which can be translated as "it's us who are doing the art, and not giving you all the elementary 'theme park tools' for you being the artist."

Some aspects of the game were excessively taken care of, while other basic essential aspects were ignored.

It's so sad really, we've been waiting for so many years now for something that meets RCT3's standard (including user content) regarding ride variety. I even find RCT3 to be more atmospheric than any Planet Coaster game. Of course, the grid and the lack of an undo button were some of the biggest downsides of RCT3, but Planet Coaster 1 and 2 had their own reasons why they didn't surpass RCT3's popularity in our community.

I just wish we'd finally get a game with the perfect mix of realism, features and usability, without losing the fun of a snappy game, which was last found in RCT1 and 2.

It's perfectly possible, which makes it even more painful that it isn't striven for (by Frontier), and us not listened to. And the closure of the official forum is the ultimate unmistakable punch. So sad.

The genre deserves better.

I haven't been active here for the past months (mix of stress and demotivation with the state of the genre), but wow, this is really bad news, so I thought I'd add my lines here.

I checked out Discord a few times and didn't really feel the wish to use it. I much prefer the structure and the usability of forums, so the closing of the official forum (as my main news source) is really a bad surprise for me, and I wasn't happy with PC2's development anyway. It's a bitter taste.

Glad to have ParkCrafters, and I hope we can get something positive out of the situation.

Wow, the details in the Emerald City are simply gorgeous. The facades, all the little things, wonderful! One really feels the atmosphere. Great job!

On 11/23/2024 at 9:40 PM, Wabigbear said:

WHOA!   LOVE IT!  Great job (and great screens...).  That Voodoo show buildings is fantastic!

On 11/23/2024 at 9:50 PM, JB said:

I love the Voodoo building facade with all the muted earth-tone colors and African motifs! And once again, we are treated to more of your beautiful, striking screenshots! The interior theming of the Voodoo building looks fantastic!

Thanks Wagi and JB! And that's so good to hear. Originally I wanted it to be a dome, but once I had the track of Voodoo finished (a few years ago), I struggled to achieve what I had on my mind, and my work on the whole park project came to a critical break due to my frustration and lack of inspiration at the time. Eventually I had the idea for the final shape, and it kinda rescued the whole park. Glad you guys like it :)

On 11/26/2024 at 3:46 PM, wolfpaw said:

Here I am trying to learn and build in PlanCo2 and you're over here making PlanCo1 look even better than what I'm doing 😅 These are amazing screenshots!!

Aw thanks wolfpaw :) Appreciating it.

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Re: Explorica
Post #8 - 21-05-2008

Late in the afternoon, it was time to explore the last area of Explorica: Shangri-La.

The Asian area has a focus on the cultures around the Himalaya.

Besides the main attraction of the area, Karma, the launched coaster, there’s also the condor „Typhoon“.

The most iconic building in the whole park must be the Lotus, which hosts a magic show. And the Everest Inn is an excellent place for Himalaya cuisine.

On one side of the Lotus, there are food stalls, and on the other side of the street, we have the entrance to Karma.

 

At the end of Shangri-La’s main path, just where the curve leads the visitor in the direction of Africa Adventure, there’s another station of the Explorica Railroad: The Himalaya station.

Now we turned around again, observing the launch from the Karma station:

There’s still a small piece of land that we haven’t covered yet… home to Twisting Teacups…

...and the unspectacular station of Bengali Nights, a boat dark ride.

Our exclusive ride time on Karma was scheduled for 5:30 pm, so it was time to go back…

…and there we were, excited to ride Karma for the very first time!

 

Just wonderful. The "three-dimensional" layout with all the bridges is really well done, and I love especially that night shot with the boat ride and the wave swinger above.

Great use of space, very efficient and effective!

 

Re: Explorica
Post #7 - 14-05-2008

In the warm light of the afternoon hours, our guided tour took us to Africa Adventure.

The complex path system here, as well as the large amount of trees and shrubs make this part of the park feel very natural.
One of the highlights in this area is Anansi, a giant frisbee:

However, the absolute highlight in this area is Voodoo, previously known as „Project V“.

But wait, what’s inside the building? I’ll get back to that later in this post!

In front of Voodoo, there’s the „Savanna Deli Hut“ with a picnic area, right next to the lake. In the background, you can spot the Crazy Caterpillar.

Savanna Deli Hut, Voodoo and Anansi:

On the other end of the lake, there’s probably the largest restaurant in the park: Zambezi Lodge.

And of course, right underneath Zambezi Lodge, we have Zambezi Cruise, which takes us on an adventurous journey through the jungle.

But back to Voodoo!

The moment I took this photo, we all didn’t know yet what’s actually inside the massive structure…

…and after so many speculation threads across the internet, we were all excited to learn that we could now just walk inside and see for ourselves…

…

 

Tada!

The Voodoo building houses both, an enclosed spinning coaster (Voodoo - Fear of the Jungle) and a walkthrough (Voodoo - Walk through the Jungle). What a surprise!

Took this photo from the walkthrough path:

 

For me, finding out what Voodoo is, and even seeing the coaster in testing mode, was one of the highlights on our first day in Explorica.

As the sun moved further towards the horizon, it was time to get on our way out of Africa Adventure…

…through the jungle…

…until Shangri-La appeared in front of our eyes.

And that’s where my next post will take us to. Stay tuned!

On 11/8/2024 at 11:43 PM, Wabigbear said:

Ohhh!  Love the colorful buildings! Nice detailing and it has a real 'fiesta' feeling.  The peekaboo in the tunnel is a nice touch too!

Thank you :) Something with "fiesta" would be a cool name for a ride, maybe in the future, now you inspired me :D

On 11/9/2024 at 12:50 AM, JB said:

I agree, wonderful colors... on everything!  Each and every screenshot is beautiful. I want to spend time in this park!

Thank you JB, nice to hear :)

On 11/11/2024 at 4:47 PM, wolfpaw said:

This is all so beautiful, I don't even know what to comment on first 😅

Eldorado area is probably my favorite, love all the colors - everything is so dense and detailed!

Thank you! Haha... I'm also quite happy with it :)

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Re: Explorica
Post #6 - 07-05-2008

Hey everyone!

My visit to Explorica is now already three weeks ago, but I still have a lot to share. Let's continue in the Grand Gardens.

The actual Grand Gardens area is located on a hill in the north of the park, above the central "Balloon Plaza". This hub here is truly the center of Explorica, and here we learned a lot about the decision-finding process behind the overall layout of the park.

In the beginning, the creative heads were pondering whether the park should have a central signature structure - or not. After some discussions, one idea became the most popular one in the team: The one "thing" that should be the center of the park is the visitor. To symbolize this, they wanted to enable visitors to be exactly there - in the very center of the park. No structure, no lake, no ride should be "in the way" there. To highlight the exact spot, a windrose was placed right into the middle, so that visitors could walk or stand on it.

Behind the balloon, there are several ways (stairs or sloped paths) to get on top of the hill.

Up there, we have the Grand Carousel, but also the car ride "Scenic Drive", as well as beautiful pavilions with breathtaking views.

Some impressions:

 

 

North of the hill, there's another station of Explorica Railroad - the "Garden Station", located at the northernmost edge of the park.

Right next to the station building, there's this charming "Café Flora":

Coming from Café Flora, we get to see a little lake with a limestone cave, inspired by European landscape gardening of the romanticism era:

...and to the left, the path leads us away from Grand Gardens, right into the beating heart of the African themed area.

That's it for now. Grand Gardens is the smallest area in the park, so there were naturally less photos that i had to share, but I'll post more again when we get to Africa Adventure.

Loving this area! It's so much fun to let my eyes wander around these photos and discover all kinds of things.

And the shot from above in the last picture… it's all so complex, wow! 

Thank you, Wagi and JB :)

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Re: Explorica
Post #5 - 30-04-2008

Our guided tour around Explorica continued in the Latin American themed area, Eldorado.

 

Coming from Taboo Lagoon, the first thing you see of this area are these colorful houses.

To the right, there’s a flower shop, and to the left, we have „Las Trompetas“, a location that combines food and music performances.

Rehearsals were going on in Las Trompetas, so we could just take photos from the outside.

At the end of the part with the colorful facade, the main path continues further into Eldorado, but you can also choose to turn left, as did we.

It all seems so friendly and peaceful here… but not quite everything is….

if you have zoomed into the right part of the picture above, you probably already know what’s special about this corner of Eldorado…. but if you didn’t, now it should become clear:

Fog, white roses, more fog, and there always seems to be midnight in that monastery - it’s „Midnight in the Monastery“ - Explorica’s most scary ride!

This one was actually open for us, but I changed a setting on my camera by mistake, so my video of the ride turned out unusable. Maybe another time.

We continued to explore Eldorado, with Gold Fever, a mine train, in testing mode.

„Los Globos“, the balloons, are ready to do their rounds at the northern edge of the park:

Next to them: Agatha’s Arcades…

…and Café Balcón:

I guess you all already spotted the pirate ship La Tormenta:

 

We briefly walked into the tunnel that connects Eldorado with Taboo Lagoon, but only to be pointed to this window in the rock that offers a wonderful view upon Discoverytown.

Eldorado has its own vibe really.

One last look back…

…before we continued our guided tour with visiting the Grand Gardens.

That’s it for now!

Some first reactions:

The potential is incredible.

However, at this point, the interface is extremely confusing to use. The need to click "confirm" on so many things is one of the worst things about the UI.

I know it's designed with console in mind, but I doubt this complex game is really easy to use there either.

 

On 11/2/2024 at 7:58 PM, JB said:

I love the warm lighting in your photos; very inviting! And great camera angles that really show the beauty of the park. Love that double-decker entrance pavilion. My favorite photo so far is the 9th image, showing the close-up of the railroad/path bridge taken from an angle above the canal. I also like the festive, warm yellow and orange colors of the umbrellas in the last photo.

Thank you, JB :)

On 11/3/2024 at 5:35 PM, Wabigbear said:

VERY nice!  Love the varied facades, they really work well.  The bridge work and banks along the water are also really well done.  Kudos!

Thanks, Wagi :)

54 minutes ago, wolfpaw said:

These are all so GORGEOUS - love the colors you are using and that hot air balloon is just the icing on the cake in these photos. Very beautiful park so far!!

Thank you! Of course, the colors are partially influenced by my editing software. It took me a while to find the right setting for editing these screenshots, and now I just found that the setting I used so far doesn't work that well for the next area which is a lot greener, so I had to finetune a bit for this one.

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Re: Explorica
Post #4 - 23-04-2008

Back to Europe! Finally time to write my next post.

After our little coffee break, the tour continued in Taboo Lagoon, the Polynesian themed area. Its two major rides welcomed us with this view, with the station of Wailuku Cruise (log flume) in the center, and the lift hill of Tumu-Nui to the right:

Before we entered the main part of the area, we turned right to check out Tahiti Beach Bar:

This is going to be such a cool place to hang out on on warm evenings.

As a big fan of log flumes, I am so looking forward to ride Wailuku Cruise!

This is the heart of Taboo-Lagoon for me: Watching the boats splash into the lagoon, with the snack stalls of Polynesia Pleasures behind me.

Between Polynesia Pleasures and Waikiki Lodge (see the big buiilding in the next photo which looks almost like the station of Wailuku Cruise), there’s this nice corner with lots of shades to enjoy your drinks or ice cream, while watching the splash of the log flume. Also in the next photo: The only bit of Kanaloa (the octopus) that I captured with my camera - maybe you can spot it near the center.

This view really. Tumu-Nui lift hill to the left, then the station of Wailuku Cruise dominating the view, then to the right (under the tower of Discoverytown) there’s the Beach Boutique and Polynesia Pleasures.

Passing by the octopus (sadly missed to take proper photos of it), we’re in this part of the area, with one of the Explorica Railroad stations to the left, and the entrance of Tumu-Nui (the B&M inverter) to the right:

Lots to do for the staff, one day before opening…

Tumu-Nui over Explorica Railroad:

Eventually, we turned to the right and entered a tunnel through the mountain, to give us this view from the other side upon the Wailuku Cruise station, with cute huts over the water:

Back through the tunnel…

…and more impressions of Tumu-Nui…

…

…before we leave Taboo Lagoon and enter Eldorado.

More soon. :)