Steve

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• United States

I find the commentary on the rockwork here to be interesting. Walt did the exact same thing throughout his Amusement Park design and no one batted an eye, let alone critiqued them. I think they look great, as does everything else (as usual!).

Not bad for DKSO.

 Screenshot 2026-02-27 at 9.10.08?AM.png (453.86KB)
downloads: 16

Before I get into speaking of our map, unsurprisingly, I think I agree with a lot of Xtreme's feedback on these entries. I really enjoyed AJ's snow theme with the dark tree effect around the map edge. And McCarthy's underground piping and industrial vibes below the ground were great. Morgan and mamarillas' entry also was incredibly striking with the rockwork pierced by the half diagonal roadway. Overall a great round from everyone where each map brought something to the table.

I don't want to outwardly speak for Xtreme so if they wanna chime in and correct me or bring their own insight in, then do feel free! But I'll do my best: I think it's fair to say that this came to fruition in a very casual manner. Much like Glow Worm, it was basically a "hey you wanna do this?" followed by a "yeah let's take a crack" and then it's off to the races all within a Discord DM one morning. We shot some ideas around for how we wanted to tackle the theme, even at one point mentioning a more Soviet and brutalist Tomorrowland before getting into a more Space Coast set in the 1960's vibe (we figured this suited our overall style more anyway while exploring a little more of a small unique twist of the stark white structures of Anaheim's Tomorrowland and some concept at from Disney). I think it was something familiar but a little out of our comfort zone.

As for the prompt, we wanted to take the time travel theme of the contest and twist it into the theme of the map itself, having the "time machine" send us into an alternate timeline of Disney bringing their theme park chops to Florida before building Magic Kingdom in the 1970s as a bit of a "test" of their presence in that demographic (as opposed to a California demographic). We figured a partnership between NASA and Disney wasn't too far out of the realm of possibilities given they had made media for the government in previous World Wars, etc. In hindsight it might not have been executed in a manner that made it especially apparent, but alas.

As for the build itself, it was as seamless as always with Xtreme. I consider myself incredibly fortunate to not only have found a genuinely great human to befriend but also one that happens to coalesce so well in RCT. Xtreme makes it easy to bounce ideas and screens off of, as well as the frequent Spongebob meme. Anyway, Xtreme started the bench and we both ended up getting some scenery in to noodle with. While doing that, we both attempted to get an idea of how we wanted the coaster to be and also the overall macro. Personally, the macro was important to me here (as always) because I knew that this might not be a show-stopping theme or simply considered "more of the same" from Steve with tropical foliage and Desert Palette V. So we wanted to break the grid as hard as we could to really emphasize the shapes the architecture afforded us; we definitely understood that the roundness would help so people were right in that we wanted to exploit it. We also figured that maybe the real Kennedy Space Center's layout was somewhat iconic enough to kind of use as a heavy reference to the overall map layout, so we used that as a base with injecting some of Tomorrowland into it and making sure the sightlines lined up well. Xtreme hit the jackpot discovery of those rounded roofs, though, and was maybe the catalyst of that "hell yea" moment where we knew we had something worth doing and doing well. I think another big moment was the PeopleMover and using the CTR street vehicles which not only emphasized some big curves but also brought some needed atmosphere and kinetics. At the tail end of the build (basically the last week), we were struggling with the backstage areas a bit and were thinking the overall map needed a little more "grounding" or "sense of place," so we ended up reworking the outskirts to accommodate more foliage and the water retention ponds/waterways which felt like a hallmark of Central Florida and brought in some needed atmosphere along with it.

I'm genuinely overwhelmed with the response this has gotten though, and can't thank everyone enough for the kind words. I was lucky enough to basically have an empty slate work-wise during November to work on this map several hours a day, otherwise I don't think it could have happened or at least maybe not at the level that it did. Xtreme and I definitely had a strong give and take of the map being in different time zones, and every weekend Xtreme put in some serious hours, too (see the dot map below!). It was just a straight up great experience, and one that I'll look back on fondly. I can't wait to see what the next one holds to keep the XCU alive. Thanks again, y'all!

 DKSC_dot_map.png (1.07MB)
downloads: 91

Not bad for DKSO.