Parks Dixie Landin', Baton Rouge

Bullethead

Bullethead
EPISODE 1: Are You Kidding Me?!?!?!?!?!?


Bullethead stumbled into his office for the first time in 6 months or so, he couldn't remember. He'd been on a bender ever since his private jet had rotated off the runway back in Nicotina at the end of the Quarantine Island project, as his mercenaries were barely keeping the Dictator's Guards regiment off the runway. If any SAMs were going to chase him over the horizon, he'd wanted to be drunk when they hit. After that, it was all a blur. Acuña, Tijuana, Olongaopo, Pattaya Beach, he'd lost track. And several other important things. Somebody would pay for this! Oh yeah, that would be himself, boss of Bullethead Sweatshop Industries. And the Dictator of Nicotina, to get his park working again after the airstrikes. Calling those in was Bullethead's last clear thought in who know's how long? He snickered at this happy memory.


He looked at his desk. It was buried under half a ton of paper and covered in cobwebs. "Mi mas rausim haus bilong spaida," he thought, then wondered where he'd picked that up that turn of phrase. Papua-New Guinea was as good a guess as any. Oh well, best to roll with it as this was his first coherent thought in seemingly forever. But "rausim haus bilong spaida" made Bullethead spend several minutes trying to do just that to his mind, clearing the cobwebs. Eventually, he remembered he had subordinates who were supposed to keep his desk clear. What were their names? How to summon them? Bullethead's eye fell on an empty bourbon bottle in a corner, then to the heavily scarred and dented area of the wall right above. Oh yeah, that was how. He picked up the bottle and banged it on the damaged part of the wall as hard as his hangover allowed.


Immediately, there was a scuffle of shuffling feet outside the office and then the strange, oblong, and greenish visage of Jaysef looked in cautiously around the door with an expression of glum cheerfullness or cheerful glumness, Bullethead wasn't sure which.


"Husat?" demanded Bullethead, brandishing the empty bourbon bottle.


"Sir, it is I, Jaysef, at your service, Sir! Good to see you back from your vacation, Sir. You're looking.... like you had a very good time, Sir!"


"Yu toktok wanem? Yu klinim ofis bilong mi nau, o mi paitim yu long het bilong yu long dispela botol!", said Bullethead as he brandished the bottle threatenling, all the while wondering what the Hell he was saying.


Jaysef sighed but still said "Yes, Sir! At once, Sir! Let me get some help, though, Sir." With that, he withdrew. A moment later, Bullethead heard the scuffling of many feet and numerous indistinct but imperative whispers outside his office. After a minute, Jaysef's strange head reappeared around the corner of Bullethead's office door. "Still feeling chipper, Sir?", he said.


"Yu rausim haus bilong spaida nau!" demanded Bullethead, waving the bottle wildly and pointing at his desk.


"As you wish, Sir," replied Jaysef cheefully, and then he withdrew again. An instant later, Bullethead's office door was smashed open by a gang of BSI security goons in full riot gear. They stormed in, tackled Bullethead, and inserted several IVs of proprietary substances into his veins. In due time, Bullethead's struggles ceased and, after a brief intermission, he returned to his normal, but not usual, self.


*********************


"So olgeta dispela, em i wanem samting?----er, I mean, what's all this, then?" asked Bullethead as he sipped his 3rd cup of coffee after his recovery. "Why can't you all take a vacation at the same time I do?"


"Well, Sir," replied Jaysef, "there was some difficulty between the Swiss and Bahamian banks involved so the Dictator's last payment for Quarantine Island was hung up for a while. It's cleared now but in the meantime, we had to scrounge for cashflow. In your absence, I took the liberty of accepting a new job. This pile of paper is just informational stuff. Nothing needs your signature."


"So, we're going to some paradisical tourist destination this time, right?"


"I'm afraid not, Sir. We're not exactly a high-profile firm. So I'm afraid we're once again bound for 'a pestilential tropical Hellhole with a despotic government and no economy to speak of', as you said at the beginning of the Quarantine Island project."


"ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?!?"


"I'm afraid not, Sir. However, on the plus side, that's just the setting we're trying to reproduce. We'll actually be working in some remote and nameless place in a country that doesn't have an extradition treaty with the US. Our client has... um... retired.... there but wants to recreate a portion of the land of his birth, the part that gave him the most joy. Of course, the actual setting isn't much different, except it's a bit less despotic, a bit less tropical, and has a bit more of an economy. We'll be ignoring all that for construction purposes, though."


"Mi ken---I mean, I can hardly wait. So what are we doing, specifically?"


"Well, Sir, we're going to recreate a place called Dixie Landin' and, if things work out, its tragically conjoined twin, Blue Bayou. These 2 parks in 1 are located on the outskirts of Baton Rouge, LA in real life but we'll be bringing this 'little slice of heaven' to another land that previously had no hope of enjoying such things."


"Oh bloody Hell," said Bullethead. "Where did I stash my booze in here? Oh yeah. OK, let's have a drink while you tell me about this project."


*************************


"well, Sir," Jaysef began as he rummaged around for the appropriate pictures, "to make an accurate model of the real place, the 1st requirement was to make sure it faced the same direction as the original, so the shadows would fall in the right directions at the right times. To this end, after clearing the site, we built a sundial to determine the direction true north, adjusted for Daylight Savings Time, as this park is only open in the summer.





"Having done this," Jaysef continued, "we laid out the general perimeter of the park oriented to the direction of true north. The real thing in sandwiched between I-10, Highland Rd, and Perkins Rd."




"This is just a placeholder showing where the peeps will arrive. The arch is a peep-spawner, in case you've never seen one. It's there to pretend to welcome the peeps as they get off the bus."




Jaysef showed another photo. "Thus, however, is not a placeholder. It's replica of of the actual park admissions building that greets the customers as they make their way across the parking lot or arrive by tour bus."




"From the admissions building, the customers will access the park via a narrow, rusty bridge across Highland Rd. The same narrow bridge is used by customers going home. There is unlikely to be much of a traffic jam on this bridge. It's surrounded by chain link fencing to deter suicidal customers from jumping into the traffic on Highland Rd, a 6-lane state highway."






"After crossing Highland Rd., the customers will see the park office building. Here you can buy a season pass, as opposed to a priority pass. But 1 price of admission covers both the Dixie Landin' amusement (not theme) park and the conjoined Blue Bayou water park. Again, this is not a placeholder."






"And here's an overview of the start of this project," Jaysef concluded. "The red lines are the APPROXIMATE boundaries we're working in. We've also got some of the initial rides in place, although the 'Screaminator' is about twice as high as the original. There are also 2 of the 4 coasters in the park, one each for adults and kids. On the Perkins Rd. side there will be a kid-oriented area with a number of tiny rides under a pole barn, plus a Model T driving track."




Bullethead took another drink and twirled his moustaches idly. At last he spoke. "Orait---er, I mean 'OK'... We're committed I guess, so it has to be. I must have lost a bet to @JPalmighT or something while I was drunk. But I understand he has a bunch of kiddie rides we can steal---er, I mean 'use'. And I take it the coasters are off-the-shelf things, right? OK, this will have to do until we get some real business. Carry on."


Lukim yu long narapela taim---Er, I mean, 'See you next time".
 

Bullethead

Bullethead
EPISODE 2: The Fun Fair

It took both hands for Bullethead to shove the mountain of crawfish shells in front of him off the edge of the table, where they fell into a strategically placed trash can. The sodden newspapers under the remains of the crawfish quickly followed. Nest the handfuls of paper towels used to dry the underlying table surface, which would now and forever always smell of Zatarain's, Tony's, cayenne, garlic, onion, lemon, mushroom, mudbug, and spilled beer. If there was an "essence of fun", it would be that smell. Bullethead doubted it would sell, though. Those who enjoyed eating crawfish already had tables constantly emitting that aroma, so wouldn't need it, while those who didn't enjoy eating crawfish would be repulsed. Oh well, can't please everybody.

Next order of business was for Bullethead, Jaysef, Orbles, and Gergas to wash their hands. They were so covered in pepper-saturated crawfish juice that if they absent-mindedly rubbed an eye or, God forbid, took a leak, it would result in hospitalization. With this hygienic chore done, they all returned to the now-aromatic picnic table behind Bullethead's brand-new on-site office trailer, spread the applicable documents out, and got into their staff meeting. Bullethead poured them all 3 fingers of room-temperature bourbon with 2 shakes of Angostura bitters to grease the wheels.

"OK, gentlemen, what's the progress report?"

Jaysef placed the first photo on the table. The fumes exuding from the table's pores caused the print to blister slightly. "Yes, Sir. We've been concentrating on the 'Fun Fair' area of the park, which we have to get situated prior to advancing further in the NE sector. The 'Fun Fair' is a collection of kiddie rides and midway attractions under a large pole barn. This is actually the roots of the park as a whole. Opening in 1961, it was originally called 'Fun Fair Park' and was located about 10 miles closer to the center of Baton Rouge. It was mostly a kiddie thing and was frequently advertised on the 'Buckskin Bill' kiddie morning TV show of the 60s and 70s, in between 'Popeye' cartoons. As times and demographics changed, the park moved to its current location on the outskirts of town and changed its name to 'Dixie Landin'', taking most of the 'Fun Fair Park' rides with it, although the Kickflip and Wild Mouse didn't make the trip. These days, however, the main interest is in the conjoined water park, 'Blue Bayou', so the place is generally known as 'Blue Bayou / Dixie Landin'."

"That's all very nice, Jaysef. In fact, I vaguely recall going to 'Fun Fair Park' a time or 2 as a child. But what's that got to do with our current project?"

"Not much, to be honest," Jaysef continued. "I was just recording that for posterity. Anyway, we've been working on the pole barn and associated kiddie attractions. Orbles and Gergas have been slaving away inventing most of this stuff because you don't have any clear, recent memories of what's under the pole barn and Google Earth has discontinued the Panormio feature so it's very hard to find any photos of this area. Anyway, here's the overview."



"As you can see, we haven't put the roof on the pole barn yet because it's likely we'll be doing major surgery on the slab before all's said and done. Also, this allows better views for present purposes. There are 3 kiddie rides, a snackbar, and some midway games under the rather impressive truss structure, which unfortunately required some chainsaw work on the superstructures of some of the attractions.



"Coming in the main entrance at the south end," Jaysef went on, "the first attraction on the left is a kiddie boat ride we stole from JPalmighT.

"Ah, yes", said Bullethead. "That's about the only ride I remember from 'Fun Fair Park', besides the Scrambler."



"Exactly, Sir, which is why we pretty much had to make it up out of whole cloth from here on. Across from the boat ride is the 'Ducky-Go-Round', which Orbles designed and then had to visit our Employee Assistance Program's shrinks. Doing such cutesy things is not at all his style."




Jaysef took a sip of his drink and went on. Orbles, meanwhile, chugged his entire glass and grabbed the bourbon bottle for a refill.

"The centerpiece of the 'Fun Fair'," Jaysef said, "is another of JPalmightT's creations, the kiddie car ride with elaborate reproduction VW Karmann Ghias. Sadly, we had to decapitate the superstructure of this beautiful ride but, given the low ceiling anyway, I'm sure nobody will notice. And what's left is probably cooler than the real ride in this location in the actual park anyway. Best we can tell, that's another min-carousel, although looking like a grand carousel. Given that we already have a grand carousel right at the entrance, we decided the sportscars were a necessary change of pace."



"This brings us to the NE corner of the 'Fun Fair'. The official park map labels this as 'Snack Bar' but the map doesn't have the knife-and-fork icon there for a functioning shop these days. Removing the icons while leaving the building labels seems to be a recurring theme on the official park map, which we'll certainly be returning to in the future. Still, we recreated the storefront from vintage pics of the original 'Fun Fair Park'. We're pretty sure it didn't change much during the move."



Jaysef took another sip of his drink, paused, then took another. "This brings us to my main contribution to this update: the defunct kiddie track ride. After subjecting you to hypnosis to bring up repressed memories, all I was certain of is that the track was more elaborate between the carousel and the 'Fun Fair' barn, but I couldn't reproduce it with certainty in the space available, so simplified it. Also, I was unsure of the shape of the cars so I took the liberty of making them as chickens, as that's what the available parts wanted me to do. I think they were more reptilian but your memories were too vague and there are no living witnesses to when this ride was operating, so it is what it is. However, I faithfully reproduced from your memory of the toppled car in the median."



Jaysef finished his drink and handed his glass to Orbles for a refill. "In any case, Sir, I had to make the assumption that the station for this long-dead ride was in the NW corner of the 'Fun Fair' barn, which then raised the question of what to do with the rest of this space. Having absolutely zero source info to go on despite many searches, I decided some sort of midway game would be the best answer, as the park seems to be holding out hope of re-opening this ride someday, leaving no space for another ride. Thus, I managed to steal one of RubleTrillions' creations, although again we had to decapitate it. But this worked well with putting a restroom in the remaining space."



Bullethead contemplated his drink while sloshing it around. Finally, he said, "OK, that'll work. If I ever go back to this place, I'll be sure to explore the 'Fun Fair area and take pictures so we can do it right. But fortunately, our client is equally in the dark about what's under the kiddie barn so I won't do that unless he insists.. carry on."

"Yes, Sir," said Jaysef. "Now, Sir, to close out the review of the 'Fun Fair' area, we have a couple of night views, first from the main entrance from the south, then from the secondary entrance to the north off an outgrowth of the path around the carousel. These are just to give a general idea. The roof's still not on, and we'll assess the need for additional lighting hanging from the trusses once the roof's in place."





"Finally, Sir," Jaysef summed up, out behind the 'Fun Fair' barn is another kiddie ride, 'Delta Crop Dusters'. Gergas worked hard on this. Still to come in this area is the antique cars track ride, the station for which will be directly behind the 'Fun Fair' barn. Depending on how its track lays out, we'll reposition the kiddie biplanes as needed. We currently have 3 paths coming out of the 'Fun Fair' barn to test the options. We'll pick the best one and delete the others once we're more certain of the locations of other things."



Bullethead finished his drink and grabbed the last remains of the bottle from Orbles while there was still enough in it to provide a decent refill. After taking a sip, he said, "Well, gents, that's better than I'd hoped for in this area. And once this is done, we can get on with stuff I remember better. Although I must say, I don't like hypnosis. It gets too far out in Freudian things. So next time, let's try ayahuasca and shamanism. We still have some of that juice left over from Quarantine Island, right?"

Tune in next time for most of the same.
 
Last edited:

Bullethead

Bullethead
Fisherman said:
This is awesome!
Click to expand...

Thanks, but there's not a single operational ride yet, and of course there's the complete absence of theming. I'll be putting in some fences, benches, bins, and street lights, then the trees and bushes, but there's not going to much of any of those. It's a pretty bare-bones thing :)
 

Bullethead

Bullethead
EPISODE 3: Closing the Triangle


Bullethead looked around the actual conference table in the actual conference room inside his on-site bungalow. His senior boffins looked back at him with their usual expressions of bored excitement, or maybe it was excited boredom, Bullethead was never sure. The clock ticked. Nobody touched their drinks. At last, Bullethead made an executive decision.

"This place sucks. Too civilized. Let's move the meeting to the picnic table out back." And there was great rejoicing. There was no kettle of boiled mudbugs today but the table continued to exude the aroma of the previous feast, which brought back happy memories. Plus, there was a large cooler full of beer immediately adjacent, which seemed a more appropriate beverage when discussing the recreation of Dixie Landin'.

Once they were all situated and had toasted the project's success, Bullethead asked the customary question: "What's the briefing for the client this time?"

Jaysef slid out his first photo. "Well, Sir, we've finally closed off the triangle of the main amusement park area. This is a major milestone because the positions of everything in this area were rather fluid until now, pending final fit-checks and running the paths. But now we've got it, so can finally start gardening in this area whenever we want, at least once we figure out what to do about the perimeter train."



"We're rather proud," Jaysef continued, "that we've been able to say so closely within the red borders we set up to start with. They were just rough estimates and guidelines, not firm edges, but we wanted to be as close to them as possible and we've done it. We'll leave them in place a bit longer to help lay out the rest of the place, but now they've mostly served their purpose."

"Very impressive," said Bullethead, raising his beer in salute. "Our client will be very pleased. He's an ex-governor of the state, you know, so has dangerous friends we'd rather not meet. But anyway, I see the Fun Fair now has a roof."

"Yes, Sir," Jaysef nodded. "We deemed the interior as complete as it was going to get after we added some signage, especially those giving credit where credit is due. Also, we needed the roof on to decided where to put the interior lighting. BTW. a 'pirogue' (pronounced PEE-row) is a traditional Cajun type of boat. We chose the name to fit with the general Louisiana naming convention of the park, plus it already had a pirate flag out of the box."



Gergas now took up the narrative. "Sir, I modified the kiddie biplane ride, called 'Delta Crop Dusters', by increasing the outer radius of the platform by about 1m. This is in keeping with the original, and the platform is not centered on the planes. The customers walk on the outer edge and the plane wheels run on the inner edge during loading. Anyway, it's all tied into the path system now, even though it's non-functional."



"Behind that, Sir," Orbles spoke up, "is the antique car ride known as 'Gasoline Alley'. I rather enjoyed making the station and think it a very accurate reproduction. But, as you mentioned, this ride seems either to be closed or to function only intermittently. Which is something of a shame because it's really the only themed area of the park. All Victorian, both the station and the track scenery and lighting."





"There are actually small, black-iron fountains in the infield on both ends of the track," Orbles continued. "However, we couldn't get anything similar from our suppliers so made rather non-Victorian fountains. I might be able to kludge something closer to the originals later so for now, consider these as placeholders. Also, the streetlights around the track are the same model as the originals, but we couldn't get the blue-green paint for them, so we left them gunmetal."





"And then," Orbles said with some relish, "I got to do something much more up my alley. The 'Kleinpeter Store'."



"Ah yes," mused Bullethead. "I recall being greatly disappointed on my recent visit to find that this had been shut down for years."

"That's why I enjoyed building this so much Sir," said Orbles. "This is brand new but looks ancient, which is my speciality. As you know, Kleinpeter's is a Baton Rouge-area dairy company still very much in business. No doubt this store sold shakes and ice cream, which the customers would have really wanted in the Hellish tropical summers at the real park. But for some reason, Kleinpeter's pulled out of this operation. This happened recently enough for the building to be made ADA-compliant with a wheelchair ramp, but so long ago that the squares of paint covering up the letters of 'Kleinpeter' on the tin roof have mostly eroded away, and you can almost still read the word if you look hard enough."



"I also note that the original building probably dates from the park's move to this location in the 1980s, as the (now heavily rusted) propane tank is right up against the wall, whereas recent codes require such large tanks to be 15 feet away. I wonder if the real tank still has any gas in it? I naturally filled up this tank about 1/2 full, and as it continues to rust away, this will make life interesting for our client someday."



"Orbles," said Bullethead, "this right here is why I pay you. Great work. Such a great encapsulation of this whole park, with the corpses of better days lying out in public view without even a sheet over them. Only this one has more pathos than the toppled 'chicken ride' or whatever it was. Not everybody would want to ride a 'chicken' or whatever, but everybody wants Kleinpeter ice cream on a Louisiana summer day. OK, what's next?"

Jaysef groped in the cooler for another beer and then said, "Well, Sir, continuing clockwise around the triangle, next door to the defunct Kleinpeter store is a no-frills restroom with galvanized corrugated iron siding and a raised-rib steel roof painted a light blue. Sadly, we have neither building material on-hand, and roof parts we do have don't fit together that well, but we faked the look as much as we could."



"There's going to be a snackbar across the path from this restroom, wedged in between the Scrambler/Scizzer and the bumper cars." Jaysef paused to pour about half his beer straight down his throat. "However, Sir, this park does food differently than most we're familiar with so we're still thinking about how to implement it. In this region of the amusement park, as in most of the water park, there's 1 central kiosk that exchanges currency for food tickets. Then there are food and drink kiosks of various flavors scattered about. These don't take cash, only the tickets. And they don't cook anything--all the cooking happens in the kitchens of the only functional food areas, one in each half of the park. So the food kiosks are either refrigerators or heat lamps, nothing more. But due to various laws and baksheesh traditions hereabouts, we can't do that in this not-Louisiana place, so we're still considering our other options.

"In the meantime, Sir, continuing clockwise around the triangle and now going across the bottom, we have 'Cajon Collision', a bumper car ride totally skinned over to hide the festive roof and all of the off-the-shelf version. As I recall, you said this ride was also defunct on your recent visit."



"Yup," replied Bullethead. "Another great disappointment. Still, it's not as dilapidated as the Kleinpeter store which, if you peer through the windows, looks inside as if it was ransacked either by robbers or by police with a search warrant. The bumper cars look like they could be turned back on at any time. Rather like you have reproduced it here."

"Thank you, Sir! I do my best. Anyway," Jaysef continued, "there's not much to say at present about the other rides along the bottom of the triangle. Going back up the other side, Orbles spent a fair amount of time 'weathering' the SC2000 'Xtreme', which looked way too shiny compared to the faded prototype. Besides, I hear this ride has recently gone defunct anyway."



"Lastly, Sir," Jaysef said, "Gergas got the 'Sidewinder' up and running. In the real park, this ride has the outwards-facing continuous wheel of the standard 'Sundail' ride, but is the size and shape of the standard 'Iron Claw' as shown here. Due to space constaints, we went with the 'Iron Claw' instead of the 'Sundial', despite the recent tragedy with this type of ride."



"Ah yes, I remember 'Sidewinder'," said Bullethead. "The contoured seats and restraints were obviously not built for those with Neanderthal barrel chests such as mine. The operator could barely get the restraint locked on me and and I found it quite hard to breathe after he did, what with my shoulders pried forward by the seat dividers and the restraint closing in from the front. Still, a rather fun ride."

"Anyway, very good, gentlemen," Bullethead wrapped up. "I'm sure our client will be pleased. In the meantime, do what you can to finish up this area that's not dependent on the 1/2-scale perimeter train. Besides the snackbar, we've still got 2 coasters to build stations and supports for, plus more or less complete skins for the remaining flats in this area, some of which are going to be a real pain. Let's do that, and maybe some gardening, before we move on."

Tune in next time for more of the slow spiral into damnation.
 

corkscrewloop

corkscrewloop
So happy to see, that you are building a new park! The lamps you've built from the spooky pack look amazing and its so great that you've included your genius SC2000! That chicken ride is so iconic!
A lot of greets, Corkscrewloop![happy]
 

Bullethead

Bullethead
wowman said:
nice update Bullet
Click to expand...

corkscrewloop said:
So happy to see, that you are building a new park! The lamps you've built from the spooky pack look amazing and its so great that you've included your genius SC2000! That chicken ride is so iconic!
A lot of greets, Corkscrewloop![happy]
Click to expand...

Thank you both! Yeah, I built the SC2000 and Galaxi specifically for this park. This park is a recreation (you can look it up on RCDB or Google Maps) and, due to its small area, I had to have life-size rides for these. The main reason I haven't built this park before was that, until we got friction control, it was impossible to build either of these coasters life-size.

==========================

[size=18pt]EPISODE 4: Ragin' Cajun[/size]


Bullethead and his senior boffins once again gathered at the aromatic picnic table behind his bungalow drinking beer and discussing events. The boffins wore their usual expressions of morbid liveliness, or maybe it was lively morbidity, Bullethead was never sure which. They were all liberally slathered in insect repellent due to the ongoing plague of Southern Buffalo Gnats (a type of biting black fly), which were worse this year than usual, according to the locals. Several construction accidents had occurred due to equipment operators being distracted by scads of gnats getting into their eyes, ears, and nostrils, but so far the workforce casualties were still at acceptable levels. Still, time had been lost and Bullethead was not pleased. Thankfully, however, the peppery fumes emanating from the picnic table reinforced the not-completely-effective insect repellent so things were tolerable during the meeting. Besides, the gnats helped them all get into the proper mindset to build this park.

Bullethead gestured with his beer to the top photo in the pile before him. "I see you've finally got the boomerang up and running. Tell me about it."



Jaysef shrugged. "Well, Sir, as you can see, it's a fairly close approximation of the original. The main difference is that it's set back from the perimeter path due to issues with routing the exit paths. This had ramifications for the configuration of the whole park, and it took all our combined efforts and much toil to get all the rides and paths to work and still be in more or less the correct formation. So it might not be a perfect reproduction, but it's as good as we're going to get.

"Still, we think the view from the lift hill is a fairly close match for some of the source material."



Gergas then spoke up. "Another issue we had, Sir, was the station roof. The parts we were able to obtain, while matching the exterior side fairly well, made a mess out of the interior, so we had to improvise a drop ceiling to hide all that. However, it seems to work OK."



"Yeah, I see what you mean," said Bullethead. "The ceiling's flatter than the original, and the fake rafters and lights are different. Still, not bad. Close enough for BSI work, anyway."

"Thank, you, Sir!" Gergas replied.

"Another major aspect of this ride, Sir," Orbles interjected, "is the custom supports we had to make for the loop and cobra roll. The ride itself is the standard off-the-shelf boomerang from Frontier. However, most of the support parts that were to have come with the ride were in a container that got washed overboard crossing the Atlantic, so we again had to improvise with local materials. But now this end of the ride has shiny new supports that very closely match those of the original."



"Especially note the free-standing catwalk assembly we had to kludge up," Orbles continued. "This does not seem to have been part of the real ride when originally built, but was apparently added later, as shown by the overlapping concrete footers. We were actually able to reproduce that look from the real thing. However, the available ladder parts and the modified spacing between rides didn't let us run the ladders exactly as per the original."



Bullethead sipped his beer. "And I see the queue doesn't run exactly the same way, either. Still, given what you had to work with, I don't think you could have done it much better. Good job."

"There's not much more to add, Sir," Jaysef went on. "Really, the most materials expended here was in fencing. There's about 2 miles of fence when considering that encircling the whole ride and then the queue. Most of it is unfinished wooden pickets, but that's what the real thing has. Otherwise, we just had to rig up the lift machinery. The little concrete shed under the lift hills required us to fabricate all its doors and windows, but it really wasn't much of a job."



"The main thing we hate about all this, Sir," Jaysef went on, "is the ride's main sign. Here's the horrible we currently have holding the place, but it's very likely we can do better."



"As you can see, Sir, this sign is based on the real thing, hanging from the cobra roll supports. At the real park, these legs are right up against the perimeter path and the queue goes between the legs and under the sign. Unfortunately, that arrangement wasn't possible here so the sign is badly positioned. Plus, the sign is an ugly panel, not free-standing lighted letters."


"Yeah, that won't do at all." Bullehead finished his beer, crunched the can on his forehead, and tossed it onto the growing pile behind the picnic table. "Hmmm. Well, perhaps we could make a virtue out of necessity. Because the ride is set back from the perimeter path, we have to fill the resulting space somehow. So why not put a big sign with the free-standing letters in that space? It would look more like the real sign and be better positioned, while not making this whole area that much more inaccurate than it already is."


"Definitely worth a try, Sir," said Jaysef. "We'll get on it right away."


"Good," replied Bullethead. "Now, as to the next operational period, keep on tidying up this triangular area. Finishing up the kiddie coaster is going to be a major project but so will be theming some of the flat rides. And there are still some shops and midway games to do, not to mention lights, benches, and bins. I know we can't make a precise schedule due to highly variable supply issues, but keep the crew working. I don't pay them much but if they want any of that, they'd better not be sitting around. Until next time, gents! Meeting adjourned."
 

wowman

wowman
And now I feel lacking. You always come up with some sort of unique comment for all my posts (in each of the forums), but I have nothing else to say unique here other than what I already replied to in the other forum. - OK - I have something...which one of your inner voices wins all the battles???
 
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Bullethead

Bullethead
wowman said:
And now I feel lacking. You always come up with some sort of unique comment for all my posts (in each of the forums), but I have nothing else to say unique here other than what I already replied to in the other forum. - OK - I have something...which one of your inner voices wins all the battles???
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Geez, way to put me on the spot. Now I'll be at a loss for words next time you post something :).

Anyway, to answer your question, I really don't have inner voices. I'm neither possessed nor schizo, at least as far as I know. I am, however, either quite insane or just an animist, take your pick. I'm not sure myself. So yes, I 'hear voices" internally, but I know they originate externally, they just go straight into my brain instead of through my ears. Mostly it's non-human spirits (both genii loci and free-range). Usually, however, they're not talking to me, I'm just overhearing snatches of conversations they're having between themselves as we pass on the street, and most of them don't speak any language I understand. But there are a lot of such spirits around (or I'm totally nuts) so it's usually rather loud inside my head.

So, when I have an internal argument, it's just me vs. myself vs. I. And I usually lose ;)
 

Bullethead

Bullethead
I could not rest until I fixed the ugly sign on Ragin' Cajun. The new version looks very much like the real thing except it's way bigger and on a free-standing structure. But that's as small as it can be made, so it'll have to do.





 

Bullethead

Bullethead
Fisherman said:
Looks GREAT! But yeah I agree... I wish they'd give us smaller primative art shapes.
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Thanks! I think it looks just fine in isolation but not so much in context.

We definitely need smaller art shapes. Also, it would be a huge help if, for the NEW shapes only, they made all of them of the same size class the same thickness. I often wish that of the existing shapes, but if they go back and change that now, it will screw up WAY more stuff than I care to contemplate :).
 
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