Haunted Highlands returns.

Some are familiar with this project, its been on going for years now and I have been out of it for a bit to work on some PC2 stuff but jumped in again to transform the park for Halloween again. There is a whole history to this park that, maybe I will get into later.

Edited yesterday at 12:20 AM1 day by Fox

Welcome to ParkCrafters.

I just got back from my first ever visit to the Knott's Scary Farm event and this certainly captures that Halloween overlay feel. It just needs the scare actors waiting for you inside the fog. 👻

Welcome to ParkCrafters! So happy to see one of the first Halloween/Spooky themed projects pop up for the Halloween season this year on the site! Looks stunning!

Love the fog effects, that really adds to the whole spooky vibe. Glad you brought this back here!

Welcome! I like!

Edited yesterday at 12:25 AM1 day by Fox

man you must have had to add so many fog effects for this park

The fog looks especially creepy drifting over the brick/cobblestone paths (your previous post). The creepiest 'scare actor'? The janitor brandishing his push broom! [shudder]

Thanks everyone! It's been fun going back into the park, I had been missing it. I have way too much work into it and may never finish it since I can't seem to stop finding things to improve every time I go in. I think there is a metric ton of fog emitters, and the janitors are especially creepy this time of year.

Let me tell you about my park, or start to any way.

Highland Lakes has a history that goes back to the gold rush days in California but the most relevant portions of the history where when the property briefly served as a fair grounds. The pavilion, which we call the Field House most of the time now, and the Fright House during Haunted Highlands, dates back to this era. Today however the only portion of the structure that dates back that far is the castle like original entrance. The current venue seating arena has been restored to it's original footprint and hosts a circus most of the year, during the Highland Music Festival it serves as one of the stages and most recently James Hype headlined.

Since those early days, let's just say things changed a little bit

The park is the largest park in the Fox Amusements chain, other than California Spectrum which, is multiple attractions so, as a single park it is the largest and likely always wil be. The park was fairly substantial when Fox Amusements acquired it but it has been expanded many times since that time. There are 15 major roller coaster, numerous other rides, theaters, pavilions and other entertainment. If we get into more of the history we will cover why there are 15 major coasters. The park expansions were the reason for the massive parking structure, this replaced parking lot space that was re-used for more attractions. (On a fun note this is the first time I ever bothered to include any parking infrastructure in any park I have built in Roller Coaster Tycoon or PC games.)

This is the entrance plaza, This is the 3rd entrance the park has had, and the second in this general location. The original entrance still stands, the original buildings are still in the park although one was moved to a different location. The old entrance area is now used for a stage area during the Highland Music Festival. The entrance was moved to this side of the park not long after Fox Amusements purchased the property, it was part of what was then a strategy to expand the park as an amusement park and it allowed for greater crowd flow. The current entrance was added a few years ago because the previous one was no longer adequate for the parks size and amount of visitors. you can see, it will be fairly difficult to get this area too congested.

I mean, look at all this space! This was mostly all parking lot before.

Maybe the most unique train station you will find in any park that has a train. Pardon all the fog, these photos were taken at Halloween time and we transform the town square into The Magician's Square every year. (For those who know this park was my first RCT3 park, it started out very small and became huge, and this is a re-imagining of it in PC1.This station, is a massive improvement over what I had in the RCT3 park. Much smaller in scale for one, and a far better design, but in some ways it pays homage to the RCT3 version. I spent a lot of time on this, and reworked it a few times as we had more content and better scenery items in the game that could get me closer to what I wanted. )

I am running into technical difficulties uploading any more images so, maybe this is a good time to stop for now. Let me know if you want more history... I don't want to be dull.

Edited yesterday at 12:26 AM1 day by Fox

I really like how the coasters are lit up in the nighttime pics. I also like the warm glow in the last screenshot.

I'd love to hear more about the history. And maybe a screenshot or two of the original RCT3 park if you have any. You've done a great job lighting the park. I look forward to seeing more.

nice colorful coasters in the night shots

Great that you transorm your park into a Halloween event. I love a vivid park throughout the year and the spooky time is one of the best. The park gives me vibes like Kennywood at the october season!

On 10/18/2025 at 2:11 AM, shyguy said:

I'd love to hear more about the history. And maybe a screenshot or two of the original RCT3 park if you have any. You've done a great job lighting the park. I look forward to seeing more.

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.

It's always fun to see a RCT3 park re-imagined in Planet Coaster. I definitely relate to what you say about things taking so long because of discovering new techniques and re-doing areas over (and over). I'm already finding myself doing this with Wonder World, as I learn new techniques, find new workshop items, or get new scenery with the DLCs. I expect I'll be doing this a lot.