Jene

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Ghirardelli's Dream - Hurricanes

This park uses a lot of CTR´s and I don´t really understand the use a lot of the times. Lacking texture and twitching. I did really like the canopy one on the modern building. I think the little vignets around the main map are fun. Shame there aren´t more of them. There are big differences in quality of the archy on the main map.

Neo Hot Springs - Soda Jerks

This park is quite crude in a lot of areas, looking partly unfinished, but I like it as a whole. The Street Gang Motor area is my favourite. Like the snowy top and waterfalls is old-school and the bottom is modern. Was this a choice or just time pressure?

With respect to all builders involved, both parks didn’t wow me as much as earlier parks have and I can understand that given R5 is a hard one (player fatigue, choosing which park goes to semi’s or finals). The Hurricanes park had nice areas, but didn’t capture me and Neo Hot Springs just won me over more on the totality.

Millenium Discovery Museum – Hurricanes

Awesome opening with that backwards element embracing the atom-statue. Oh wow, it’s also self-duelling. Look at that switch-track. This is one mind-blowing layout. Love it. The museum is a very large building. I like the graphics like the earth and the QR-code, but the building does look very crude. The amphitheatre is cool. Sky-walk looks like a lot of fun too. Those sinderblocks are an interesting addition. This park really feels like a next level in building indoors. Amazing interior-work. And the QR-codes work! That’s nuts. This park really feels like it could be part of the Smithsonian Institute. Amazing world-building. You guys even included Alexander’s time at Hogwarts. Such an overlooked part of history. But bad puns aside, this really is a park that screams fun and that I will probably revisit many times.

Bugs and bots – Lonely Hearts Club

Wow, that giant robot is one damn impressive centre piece. So many interesting shapes and so much movement despite being static. All the little bug-scenes are fun. A fun nod to the Starship Troopers movie. Love the use of the robo-coaster as a flatride. Great choice to go for that neon acid green for the bug-blood. Actually, I love the stylistic colour choices in this park: the dull grey backdrop, with the yellow/black, red/blue and purple/green colour-combo’s works fantastic.

Conclusion

I liked both parks a lot and had a lot of fun going through both of them. It’s a though choice between the beautiful aesthetic and giant sculptures of B&B versus the insane interior-work on the museum. In the end, the coaster of MDM just kept me staring mezmerized at my laptopscreen for longer than the B&B’s did, so my vote goes to the Hurricanes.   

Congrats to the Hurricanes for the win. NCSO too, that’s a unique accomplishment in H2H. I didn’t have time to dive into these parks when the vote was up, but that doesn’t mean I’m any less interested in finding out more about these parks. So let's dive in.

Wawel Castle - Dambusters

Alright, let’s go Poland! The castle looks beautiful. A lot of interesting shapes and forms. I think you really nailed the look of the real-life counterpart. Some Gregorian keys slamming in the background. Neat! Are those metal roof-panels new? Never seen them before. They are awesome. Going to be used a lot in Euro-parks I think. Archy around the castle is top notch as well. That walkway along the river, with the castle walls on the other side, really feels like a lot of places I’ve visited in Europe. The museum underneath the castle is nice. Greyish water dripping from electrical wires is a nice touch to really sell that Polish handyman-vibe. This is a really pretty park, but . . . imo for a H2H-park it misses another layer. Something spectacular or innovative, or just plain fun. It feels more like a (really great) Grand Tour park than a H2H-park. Where’s the pizzazz? No-one shouting Kurwa at eachother? No annual cabbage soup festival? So much unused potential to really make this park twerk in stead of shuffling.   

Namm Chalong Suu Oom - Hurricanes

Disclaimer, I’m not good at NCSO or all the other forms of non-CSO. Not good and to be honest, in most cases, just not as interested. On first glance, I didn’t really understand why this park won. Especially because it won by almost 20 votes. I did like the corkscrew over the lift at opening. That was a nice layout. Than I saw that Test of Faith was a take on the Donkey Kong-coaster. Loved that. It’s brilliantly done. Also, the smaller Temple, ricefields and the river market are really cool. The park kinda grew on me. There were some aspects that just didn’t do it for me though. Like the sanctuary covered in candy sticks and the log boat pagoda. Not my cup of tea I guess. But there are a lot of fun and creative ideas here.

Conclusion

In the end, I think both parks have some really strong aspects and some underwhelming aspects as well. I personally would have gone with Wawel Castle, because I think the overall quality is just better, but I can understand why a lot of people went with the liveliness and fun of Namm Chalong Suu Oom. Though the whole NCSO/DKSO-style isn’t my jam, I am really excited to see how these styles will combine with the NE-meta.  

Yucca Action Park – Soda Jerks

Strong opening with that beautiful locomotive and the nod at Breaking Bad. That groundwork is extra crispy crunch. Beautiful. Those UFO scenes are fun! Brilliant scenes with the Globe of Death, the shooting range and that cacti maze. Strong archy throughout. Though I love another take on a circus, I don´t really understand the giant mushroom cloud above it. Imo it clashes with the realistic take on the rest of the park (you know, apart from the giant UFO’s flying around). A case of ‘Less is More’, but that’s the only nitpick I have. Very strong park that succeeds really well in selling the UFO/hippy/Conspiracy – Family Park theme.

The Sailor – Dambusters

Beautiful opening scene with the church-ruins, starry skies and waterfall. Feels dream-like. The music adds a lot to the dreamy atmosphere. The busy town looks pretty with those coloured stairs. Very lively with the singing and drinking peeps. SpaceK’s dancing peeps are getting the love they deserve. Why are those people acting epileptic in the plaza? Oh, it’s a brawl. Right. Is that piss being dumped in the river? That doesn’t look so dream-like to me . . . Wait, is it meaned to be moonshine? Why do they throw it in the river? There is an elephant called hangover? I don’t think I’m completely getting this narrative. Anyway, that ship is amazing. And no trackitecture! Look how far we’ve come. Well, you guys have come. The archy varies in quality a bit. Many buildings are perfect, some look a bit crude or rushed. But in total it’s a really beautiful lively dream-like park.   

Conclusion:

Really liking both parks. I’m more a fan of fantasy than of realism and The Sailor is really packed with content, but I love the crunchy textures and how Yucca really sells it’s theme . . . So in the end I went with Yucca.  

So a little later than planned, but here´s some background on the building process.
 
On the 28th of November 2020 I casually started this new park named ‘Island of Enchantment’. Not expecting it to take me more than three years to finish. I just needed a break from my never-finished solo Disney Studios Paris.
 
I had been playing the Witcher III DLC Blood & Wine for some time and was really charmed by the city of Beauclair. I decided to make a small entrance area in a similar(ish) style. Having visited Port Aventura in Spain as a kid, I really loved it’s entrance area called ‘Mediteranea’. Especially how the entrance street has a curve, blocking the view of the rest of the park at entering. I can remember how excited I was when I first walked past that curve and the park ‘opened up’ in front of me and my family. That memory and feeling of discovery shaped this first area.

 PE 2020-11-28 Start.png (687.98KB)
downloads: 12
 
It was also the year where my son was born and when I was given the chance to start another training-program so ‘game-time’ was really sparse. I didn’t touch the save until almost three months later. By that time I discovered Brian’s Amusement Academy and Hacking Tutorials on Youtube. It got me so excited that I pushed through the baby-induced sleep deprivation to dive into custom attractions.
 

 PE 2021-02-28 Uitbreiding entree, start jungle, meer in het midden.png (1.47MB)
downloads: 15
 
At that time H2H9 was near. I played around with some different ideas and workbenches. I didn’t expect to really get drafted, so I was quite surprised and unprepared when I did. Still happy you took a chance on me Steve! One of those try-out sessions had some influences from Mayan, jungle, Dias de los Muertos in it. It wasn’t a clear concept, more like a cloud of vague ideas. I once posted a snippet in the Logan’s Run Discord, but without much context or elaboration it understandably didn’t catch any momentum. H2H9 had my full focus, so I didn’t do any work on this park for some time.
 
After H2H9 ended I picked up on the park again and this weird little test of purple temples and jungle popped into my mind. I had also been experimenting with rollercoaster layouts. Layouts had never been my strong-point, but one spinning coaster layout stood out and seemed to match the area.
 
At the time I was still switching on and off on this park versus Disney Studios. Until a visit to Slagharens’ ‘Gold Rush’-coaster and a Youtube-tutorial about how to make a triple launch coaster in OpenRCT2 inspired me to build the ‘Kraken’-layout. After that, I decided to fully switch to this park as my primary solo. When I made the layout it somehow reminded me of an octopus and I thought it would be a fun macro-design choice to make an octopus-shaped plaza in front of it. From that, a backstory about ‘an under-water society where the water suddenly disappeared’ formed. 
 

 PE 2022-02-11 Troll planning.png (483.88KB)
downloads: 16
 
During H2H9 I learned a lot about macro-planning and I tried to incorporate my lessons learned in what later would become the ‘Troll Mountain’ by combining a log flume and a minetraincoaster. Even though this is the fourth area I started on, it was the last one to fully get finished. The feedback I got on Discord really helped me to push through on this area.
 
During H2H9 I build ‘Droomvlucht’ with Six Frags and Mr. Brightside. Before Six Frags came up with his beautiful white/blue/pink architecture that would dominate the centre area of ‘Droomvlucht’, I did some try-outs with a floral-themed building. Using a dark green base, with a red bulb and some yellow and pink accents. It didn’t made the cut for H2H9, but it remained somewhere in the back of my mind. When I reached a ‘dead end’ on the Troll Mountain area, I decided to focus on the other corner of the park and to give the floral theme a second chance. I loved the look of the giant flowers, but it was very hard to find fitting architecture for the area. Looking around for some original ideas, I stumbled on the tales of Charles Perrault. It inspired me to combine the giant flowers and bugs with classic French mansion architecture and to make a dark-ride based on one of his fairytales. I also thought it would be a nice macro-touch to show the life-cycle of the flowers beginning down the valley and working up to the rapid river.
 

 PE 2022-06-03 Floralis addition.png (1.5MB)
downloads: 16
 
Early on in the proces, I came to some sort of background story for the park around a harbour town with a hero looking to find a castle-like object on the other side of a central lake. In earlier versions I tried to copy the German Schloss Drachenburg, but later on I thought of adding a medieval/haunted town-area with a castle at the backside of the park. Having two similar shaped castles so close to each other seemed weird.
 
It was the Witcher III DLC again that inspired me to create the centre castle. It started quite chubby and after some feedback from the Discord’s WIP channel I changed it to its final form. Also, Ethan had the awesome idea to use the concave side for a theatre. Bless him.
 
After the castle was finished I was struggling with what to do with the remaining area. I had this vague idea of doing some medieval/ haunted town in the backside, but also wanted to create a buffer between the two castles. The park also needed an extra family-attraction too. I had a vague concept to add some old Dutch-style buildings with a little windmill and a small coaster, but it didn’t work. On my bi-weekly trip to the Efteling I saw a small medieval town in the Diorama attraction and it inspired the shape of the Drachenburg and Sunflower Fields area.
 

 PE 2022-12-28 Drachenburg.png (1.62MB)
downloads: 17
 
Around that time I visited a Turkish all-inclusive hotel with my in-laws. My memories on that hotel form the basis for the ‘Royal Palace Hotel’. There were also some quite impressive two-layered shopping malls in that area that formed the basis for the ‘Endeavor Shopping Mall’.
 

 PE 2023-06-30 Hotel.png (1.54MB)
downloads: 19
 
December 2023 I started to finish up the park. Still took me three months to round up on details and interiors, but in the end, I’m very glad I pushed through and got it in right before the H2HX draft.