Wonderland - A growing Themepark

[Valdo82]

So where to start? Wonderland was one of my franchise mode parks, as Frontier was firing updates every month, i felt that i stay in Franchise mode, since i was afraid that every new Feature will kill my Parks, also i couldnt close my last sandbox park, this made me turn my back on Sandbox for a while.

Again I am not the best builder in the world and mostly just average, but I am using this part of the forums, to present my creations and Ideas for the park.

OK, let's start:

Welcome to Wonderland:

Here is a guest shot of the Park Entrance: And you see two important things. First the main attraction of the entrance plaza: Gatekeeper (yes, i blatanly stole that name). A Vector Family LIM Launch Coaster and the overshadowing colorscheme: Red and Yellow.

I somehow said to myself that this entrance is Walibi Holland inspired, though it doesn't look anything like it. I guess the red waves gave me that idea.

As you see i am still using buses instead of a parking lot The first shot is of the Monorail, that also crosses the entrance. I love how you see the Skyline come together.
On the second shot, you see my struggle to illuminate the entrance plaza, i was not able to get the lettering all light up, but i keep enjoying the spotlights that worked on the coaster track.

The First Plaza

A shot from the Entrance: There is not much on the plaza, you have two rest areas on the sides, then it is dominated by the first building a small Building housing serveral infrastructures, The lamppost are accompanied by trash cans (and i forgot to paint one ) just to keep guests away from moving through the post. On the left side (not in the screen) This is all the Gatekeeper Coaster, entrance, exit and small backstage area.

This is a shot from the other side o the plaza, a bit far away, but still you see the exit and entrance of Gatkeeper (seperate load and unload station)

Here are some spots from the 'Mall building'. You have your drinks, guestservice and body dryer (needed for the rain and i have placed way to few)
The inside is sparsely covered with shops and toilets. The highlight of course again the coaster that roars over your head. All in All i like the building a lot as it serves as a nice divider between the two plazas of the 'resort' area of the park.


The next post will be go in deeper detail on the first Coaster, but for that i need to figure out some good recording settings to have a stable framerate.

 

[Valdo82]

Gatekeeper

Now let's talk about Coasters or better which Coaster to choose. Of course sometimes you have a very specific build in mind with a preset coaster, but here i was more open. I wanted serveral points:

• It should be a family coaster, meaning it should be free for all or with a low heigth restrictions.
• It should have somewhat of good capacity, as it is directly located next to the entrance, i wanted a 'line eater', so multiple trains with at least 16 seats per train would be great.
• No big structural coaster, I didnt want some imposing wooden structure or a big lift hill overshadow the complete first plaza.
• Step Up Coaster, also it should be family coaster, i still wanted a bit of bite from the coaster, a stepping stone to some more thrilling coaster, while not demonstrating the two biggest fears: going upside down and having a big lift hill. I though wanted some forces on it, some nice positive Gs coupled with some airtime.

So looking on this list, there are few coasters that can deliver that experience: And since Multiverse Coaster was overdone and would probably be too much of a gimmick. I deceided to go with the Vector LIM Launch coaster, I just checked a POV of 'big bear mountain', more to get a few of the coaster rather than copying the layout or anything, but since i never have ridden the model in person, i needed some small pointers.

Layout

The Layout is divided in two parts, the first being a small but not to compact bowl, while the second part goes more into the park and uses the structures/terrain that is there.
We have three rolling launches, while the first is rather tame topping at 70 km/h, the two later ones will push the 90 km/h. The step hill, almost a top hat, so maybe a junior top hat, has some nice floating airtime, with a rather step 70° incline. Some interactions with the monorail (the monorail was builded much later) and the rockwork give some nice near misses.
The second launch starts with a long and not whippy high speed S-bend the culminates into the double Airtime hills above the station, both give ejector airtime of around -1G.
The helix into the mall has some nice sustained positive Gs of around 2,5G while the Airtime hill in the Mall is very forceless. Then it closes into another Helix, with a small bunny hill over some pathway, giving a small airtime pop before rolling into the unload station.

Station / Queue / Operation Quirks

The Coaster runs a three Train Operation, while having 5 Blocksections, so theoretically it could run 4 Trains, but this would crowd the Track too much and result into full stops on the LIM Launches.

A small Shed serves as pre Queue dividing Quickpasses and standby line.

The actual queue is a mostly non theme cattlepen, with a short out and back along the width of the station, while then winding up to the station.

Exit / Backstage

The backstage area has the ususal power supply and a Staffbuilding (for the whole plaza) + Workshop hidden inside the building, due to bugs i need to have a normal path through the backstage area.

The ride exit are normal stalls as gift shops and a new photo kiosk. This shop i haven't converted yet and probably never will, as i would need to change the buildings.


So enough talk, here is the promised coaster POV: